Reflection-Mind Maps

Challenge.

I am a member of a committee of innovation from my faculty and our challenge is to design and  implement the Innovation lab for industrial engineering. The assimilation, understanding and  application of knowledge, which are carried out by Students at the university level experience the  constant challenge that the professors of the Higher Education pursue with tenacity. For this, the  use of various didactic strategies that specifically deepen not only theoretical postulates, but also,  regarding the theory-practice relationship. The construction of learning significant requires strategic  treatment, which puts critical on the skills of the thinking and problem solving. Hence we need to  learn how to teach in a innovative way.

Selection

The mental map, as pointed out, is a didactic strategy to favor the learning of concepts, which will  be associated and connected with other situations, what that will allow an analysis and reflection of  the assimilated. In this sense, a temporal hierarchical representation is defined as a mental map and  arbitrary links between different data; according to a tree structure, whose objective is structure  and make information emerge. At the same time, visualized as the structure of a visual image that  makes it easy to extract information and annotate and memorize the details with ease.

Application.

In the committee we always say that ICTs have become one of the basic pillars of society and today  it is necessary provide citizens with an education that takes this reality into account. The ICT  educational possibilities have to be considered in two aspects: their knowledge and its use. So, we  make workshop just to imagine how would it be a lab that can be used as a source of application  and innovation. User-centered design (students and teachers), participatory design, and usability  and user experience were used as the basis for creating the laboratory activities. In this way, the  real needs of the students and teachers could be addressed and the solution that would satisfy them  could be summarized graphically.

Insights

Through workshops, interviews and focus groups, we realized that the students were focusing on  the application of new technologies to solve common problems and wanted to intervene more in  the learning process through the learning-by-doing methodology. The teachers understood that  they could teach concepts more creatively and applying the theory in new technology laboratories.

Thus, we began to estimate what resources and equipment would be needed to implement the  laboratory.

Approach.

According to the definitions of the students, it is seen that they agree on that a mind map is a tool  or strategy to structure a process and, in turn, it serves as a guide to ensure the rational approach  to a goal. Also, students in a consensual way they determine that the mental map allows to convert  or capture an idea in a graphic form, that is, it allows to concretize the thought of ideas in a real or  tangible proposal.

