Learning to Think with Conceptual Maps: The Strengthening of the Community of Maperos Castro Carazo

Abstract

This paper reports on the experience of accompaniment for the design and construction of concept maps (MC) through an introductory workshop, in which 14 students from different academic faculties of the Castro Carazo University, Costa Rica, participated. According to the authors Novak and Gowin (1984), the MC correspond to graphic and explicit representations of people's knowledge, manifested in the concepts and propositions of each individual. Thus, this investigation sought to analyze and document the learning process of the new student body that forms the community of "maperos" of the university. Therefore, the researcher went through the accompaniment given in the workshops, which allowed to identify the correct elaboration of the MC through exercises focused on learning. These workshops form part of a strategy for permanent training focused on MC as tools that facilitate learning, self-regulation, and autonomy. As for the method chosen to analyze the experiences of the new "maperos" during their appropriation process of the technology and understanding of the MC theory, the researcher used the ethnographic one. This method allows for documenting the transformation (learning curve) of the population of apprentices in the construction of the MC when going through an experience centered on the individual, with dynamic practices that go from the concrete to the most complex. Regarding the instruments to collect data at the beginning of each workshop, they corresponded to the following: a) textual evidence (visual ethnography) through a word cloud with the digital tool Poll Everywhere; b) an online questionnaire entitled Final Assessment Introductory Workshop MC through the Google Forms tool that included open and closed questions; and, c) observation log of the virtual meetings recorded by Microsoft Teams. Among the main findings of the study are the accompaniment strategies, which not only promote collaborative learning and the negotiation of meanings, but also facilitate scaffolding supported by interactive digital tools, glimpsed as some of the best strategies for learning to think about MCs. Secondly, learning for these new "mappers" appears as a permanent process; in addition, it is palpable that this introductory experience allows them to value MC as tools to develop higher-order thinking skills. Finally, the Maperos Castro Carazo community expands and strengthens each year through a permanent learning strategy that can serve as an example and good practice for other higher education institutions that are seeking the integration of MC in their training processes. Finally, the article shares a successful learning experience that can serve as a model to be implemented in other contexts.