Jessica Hill from the University of Toronto recorded a ten-minute ASMCUE session entitled “Cultivating student engagement in a large, asynchronous course using collaborative concept mapping,” Hill is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and in the teaching track/stream. Their goal was to describe the use of a concept mapping activity in an asynchronous online course and understanding the methods. Hill began by sharing the community of inquiry model for a successful educational experience. the model includes the social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence working together to support discourse, select content, and set the climate for the educational experience. Concept mapping, Hill mentioned, can be used “as a means of cognitive presence.” This reminded me of the NIST FALCON session on Friday with J. Momsen and colleagues talking about model building. Hill shared several examples and identified the nodes and relationships between the nodes. Hill asked, can concept mapping be used to enhance the social presence in a medical microbiology course that is a large, elective, asynchronous course. Hill shared that the course can have up to 1200 students! Hill seems to be proposing the use of Miro mind maps and concept maps as an asynchronous group assignment. Hill has already created a concept map for another course. Hill is inclined to emphasize to students that creating the concept maps is a useful study tool. Thus, they will likely grade for participation instead of a rubric. Hill welcomed feedback and wanted to learn from others using concept maps and Miro in an online asynchronous environment. I am interested! We have used concept mapping with Miro in synchronous virtual sessions. I wonder how this could work asynchronously, as it always seems that we run out of time!
