Structured feedback on students’ concept maps: the proverbial path to learning?

Good conceptual knowledge is an essential requirement for health professions students, in that they are required to apply concepts learned in the classroom to a variety of different contexts. However, the use of traditional methods of assessment limits the educator’s ability to correct students’ conceptual knowledge prior to altering the educational context. Concept mapping (CM) is an educational tool for evaluating conceptual knowledge, but little is known about its use in facilitating the development of richer knowledge frameworks. In addition, structured feedback has the potential to develop good conceptual knowledge. The purpose of this study was to use Kinchin’s criteria to assess the impact of structured feedback on the graphical complexity of CM’s by observing the development of richer knowledge frameworks. Fifty-eight physiotherapy students created CM’s targeting the integration of two knowledge domains within a case-based teaching paradigm. Each student received one round of structured feedback that addressed correction, reinforcement, forensic diagnosis, benchmarking, and longitudinal development on their CM’s prior to the final submission. The concept maps were categorized according to Kinchin’s criteria as either Spoke, Chain or Net representations, and then evaluated against defined traits of meaningful learning. The inter-rater reliability of categorizing CM’s was good. Pre-feedback CM’s were predominantly Chain structures (57%), with Net structures appearing least often. There was a significant reduction of the basic Spoke- structured CMs (P = 0.002) and a significant increase of Net-structured maps (P < 0.001) at the final evaluation (post-feedback). Changes in structural complexity of CMs appeared to be indicative of broader knowledge frameworks as assessed against the meaningful learning traits. Feedback on CM’s seemed to have contributed towards improving conceptual knowledge and correcting naive conceptions of related knowledge. Educators in medical education could therefore consider using CM’s to target individual student development

Team Learning: the Missing Construct from a Cross-Cultural Examination of Higher Education?

Team learning should be an important construct in organizational management research because team learning can enhance organizational learning and overall performance. However, there is limited understanding of how team learning works in different cultural contexts. Using an international comparative research approach, we developed a framework of antecedents and outcomes in the higher education context and tested it with samples from the UK and Vietnam. The results show that a common framework is applicable in the two different contexts, subject to slight modifications. However, this study does not find that team learning (measured via the proxy of “attitude towards team learning”) exhibits any statistically significant relationship as a predictor of the proposed outcomes. Other findings from this study on educational contexts are important not only to scholars in this field, but also for practicing managers, particularly those who study and operate in the extensive global market

A NEW SPECIES OF RAMAZZOTTIUS (TARDIGRADA, HYPSIBIIDAE) IN A RAIN GUTTER SEDIMENT FROM ENGLAND

Five species of tardigrades were extracted from a sample from a rain gutter. Four of these, the heterotardigrade Echiniscus testudo and the eutardigrades Milnesium tardigradum, Ramazzottius oberhaeuseri, and probably Macrobiotus cf. sandrae are typical of xerophilous habitats. The fifth species, Ramazzottius varieornatus sp. nov., is new to science, and it can be readly distinguished from the others of the same genus by egg shell morphology, placoids and the type of cuticle

Student voice(s) on the enactment of the research-teaching nexus

This chapter offers a students’-eye view of the relationship between teaching and research through a meta-analysis of enquiries undertaken by student researchers in nine disciplinary areas in which students interviewed academics about their perceptions of the research-teaching nexus. Analysis of these investigations reveals a range of views held by academics (even within the same department) about the value of linking teaching and research. The analysis also demonstrates the value of partnering ‘students-as-researchers’ rather than simply conducting ‘research on students’. As a consequence of considering students as partners here, we offer a modification to the idea that the scholarship of teaching should necessarily be student-centred, but rather that students and staff should share a discipline-centred gaze