LEARNING THEORIES

 

MIND MAPPING FROM A CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH

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A couple of weeks ago, a colleague and I started working on an overview of next year’s programme, which would incorporate the use of podcasting (more information about the benefits of the use of podcasts in higher education here).

Podcasting is not new to me: I am a huge fan and avid consumer of podcasts, but quite surprisingly, I never considered creating podcast-type recordings for pedagogical purposes.

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I have been doing some research on the subject – reading extensively, watching tutorials and quite naturally listening to podcast episodes – in order to find information on how to conduct interviews and acquire basic technical skills, among others. My motivation is intrinsic: I am genuinely interested in the subject and simply want to know more about it.

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Mind (or concept) mapping is a teaching (and learning) technique that I often use to organise my thoughts and make connections. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the amount of ideas that clutter my head and I need to sit down and put everything on paper to give some sort of a structure. Mind mapping helps me have a clearer view in terms of learning outcomes and adopt a top-down approach.

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Mind mapping also facilitates collaborative group work and integrates learners’ prior knowledge to build something new or to make sense out of a recently acquired concept. I think that all teachings that involve (learner-generated) visuals are all constructivist in essence. They allow learners to take ownership of knowledge. Some teachers have taken visuals to a whole new level and the approach has produced amazing results. One of them is Jade Blue, an EFL teacher based in the UK, whose blog is an extraordinary maze-like language teaching lab.

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Visuals are definitely an aspect of (language) teaching that I would like to explore in more detail in the near future. Designing infographics as part of the course has rekindled some old memories of the fun that I had while drawing as a child. Recently, I have taken to pen and paper again while trying to learn Spanish and through the process, I have discovered much more than just learning the language. Here is an account of my experience.

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