Dependence Maps: a Methodology for Subject Planning and Learning Assessment in Virtual Learning Environments Rommel W de Lima State University of Rio Grande do Norte
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Sergio V Fialho Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte
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Abstract
Accordingly, Orey [3] and Souza [4] presented some of the main pedagogic theories related to cognitive learning, highlighting the relevant aspects of learning and their association with Virtual Learning Environments. Among the many studies related to the association of cognitive theories with VLE, an area that stands out refers to learning evaluation [5]. In this case, one seeks to identify learning patterns and develop adequate tools for distance education [6]. Moreover, one also seeks to adapt traditional evaluation systems to the new requirements of the society, as discussed in [7]. Although there are several tools that include capabilities for the assessment of the results achieved by a student, one can verify that the current VLE do not favor self-assessment. Furthermore, when assessment procedures are available, current VLE are not designed considering the student as a central element of the teaching-learning process. In this context, it is necessary to think of a tool in which the assessment of the student’s results is part of the teaching-learning process, permeating and assisting the students in all stages of the tool operation and no longer as a separate activity performed at occasional moments. Such a tool must keep the simultaneity and concomitance of action between assessment and learning, blending these activities as a single process, that is, assessment as teaching par excellence. With this intention, this article proposes a methodology that will serve as the basis for development of a Web tool to be inserted into Moodle [8], an open source [9] VLE, to help in the process of assessment of the student's results, through the use of a new pedagogic resource called Dependence Map, which allows self-assessment and places the student as the main actor of the teaching-learning process. The Moodle was chosen to accommodate this new tool as long as it has proved to be a fairly used tool, working with GPL license [10]. The next section discusses the proposition of this work in more details. Section III briefly presents the theoretical references taken into consideration to define the Dependence Map and the pedagogical
The use of Virtual Learning Environments is more and more common as a support tool for classroom activities. In this case the objective of these environments is to provide pedagogic tools and methodologies to enhance the teaching-learning process. The main objective of this paper is to present the Dependence Map, a pedagogical tool that allows the teacher to plan a subject of study and its evaluation, based on educational aims, not on programmatic contents. Furthermore, this work presents a methodology, in which the Dependence Map is inserted, that includes the use of modern pedagogic theories. Also, the proposed methodology is being implemented in a software module under development, in order to be inserted in a VLE.
1. Introduction With the concurrence of Distance Education (DE) and the technological resources available in the new education environments, a more universal access to education is being granted, benefiting different social classes. Besides promoting the democratization of the education, one may also view DE as a way of changing the current educational system, through the improvement of the educational and teaching process [1]. In this sense, the use of Virtual Learning Environments - VLE is more and more common as an extra support to classroom activities. According to Demo [2], the use in VLE of the most recent technologies in information and communication allows the implementation of learning theories [3] that focus on self-learning procedures. It is not always possible to apply such theories in the traditional education system, either because of the incredulity in the results that could be achieved or because of internal variables of the system that oppose its application, such as the prior knowledge, by the teacher, of the student level.
methodology, specified in Section IV and V respectively. Finally a proof of conception is described in section VI.
2. Proposal The aim of this work is to present the Dependence Map along with a pedagogic methodology that assists a teacher in the planning of a subject or course. The Dependence Map defines a chain of educational objectives that identifies the goals to be reached in order to become proficient in a certain subject. It also enables to identify if the student has already reached the previous objectives, what allows him/her to work towards the current goals. Thus, for the student, the Dependence Map allows self-assessment, providing information not only about the proposed educational objective for a given content, but also listing the necessary elements to achieve that goal. With this pedagogic methodology, one expects to develop a Web tool that can be inserted in currently available VLE, extending their functionality and contributing to the improvement of the teachinglearning process. It is expected that such a methodology will be able to stimulate and motivate the student, as pointed out in [2]. The Dependence Map should promote formative evaluation, making it possible for learners to know their mistakes and successes, working as an element that contributes to the learning process and constituting, thus, a form of encouragement for the student to learn and not only to be concerned about the grade. Similarly, the Dependence Map also makes it possible to achieve the characteristics pointed out by [11], in which one seeks to develop in the student not only basic skills but also major skills, which involve problem-solving, critical reasoning and evaluation. Moreover, the students become more effective, aware and in control of their own learning process. Therefore, the methodology presented aims at improving the planning process of a subject or course in a virtual learning environment, enabling the adoption of procedures for the assessment of the teaching-learning process, through the following objectives: 1. To not only evaluate basic skills but also the major ones; 2. To guide the planning of educational objectives and, at the same time, to make possible the assessment of these objectives; 3. To serve as a strengthening element of the student's learning and the teacher's teaching;
4. To allow the student to work towards related educational objectives, starting from more basic levels until she/he is able to reach the level intended by the teacher; 5. To provide a pleasant form of visualization of the learning process; 6. To enable self-assessment of the student's achievements; and 7. Finally, and most important, to put the student in the center of the teaching-learning process.
3. Theoretical References The Dependence Map and the proposed pedagogic methodology follow the current trend of DE educational tools identified by [3, 4] and were designed and developed according to modern pedagogical theories, namely: Bloom's Taxonomy [12], Concept Maps [13] and formative evaluation [14]. Bloom's Taxonomy is used in the specification of the educational objectives that the teacher intends the students to achieve. It defines a classification, based on classes or categories of student's behaviors. Besides that, the taxonomy makes it possible to verify if the student has developed the necessary capabilities and skills to fulfill his/her individual formation. The visual representation, provided by Concept Maps, is used, by the teacher, to support the planning of the subject. For the student, the visualization of the existent relations between the several contents that compose a subject works as a strengthening element of the teaching-learning process. On the other hand, the relationship between the various contents promotes Significant Learning [15], by providing previous organizers, which function as cognitive bridges between the content to be presented and the student's cognitive structure [16]. Moreover, the graphic visualization of the existent inter-relations between basic concepts also allows a teacher to check the real importance of each concept related to the subject. It also makes it possible to more efficiently identify which category of the Bloom's Taxonomy to use and thus to more effectively link evaluations to each content. Concept Maps allow process feedback to be shown in a graphic way, with the level reached by the apprentice being presented to the teacher and student. For the teacher, this information can be used to review
his planning regarding the needs of a class or student. For the students, that makes self-assessment of the learning status possible, through the perception of their strengths and weaknesses. Thus, the use of these combined methodologies may promote formative evaluation, enabling the assessment process to occur throughout the period of the course and contributing as a feedback element of the learning process.
4. Dependence Map Bloom's Taxonomy enables the definition of the desired educational objectives for a given unit. Nevertheless, the taxonomy only allows one to check if the result was reached or not. Therefore, the exclusive use of Bloom's Taxonomy may present a problem when the student does not reach the proposed objective. In this case, both the teacher and the student can not identify where the fault may be in the teachinglearning process. The Dependence Map besides allowing the use of Bloom's Taxonomy to define the educational goals to be pursued, it also allows one to identify what prior requirements the student must have met to achieve the expected behavior. The teacher thus becomes capable to identify flaws in the teaching process or in the student's formation. Moreover, the student develops the capacity of self-assessment, through the identification of his learning needs. Thus, the Dependence Map consists of a set of educational objectives related between them, using the hierarchy defined in the Bloom's Taxonomy. The highest level of this map presents the educational objective defined by the teacher to set out a determined behavior expected from the students. This objective, in the context of the taxonomy, is characterized as belonging to a particular class. In this way, the Dependence Map shows the relation of dependence between this initial objective and any number of lower-class educational objectives that may contribute to the accomplishment of the initial objective. The relation of dependence repeats itself, and the Dependence Map may contain as many levels as necessary until one reaches the simplest class of Bloom's Taxonomy, namely Knowledge class. Figure 1 illustrates a Dependence Map in which one can verify the main objective of a given content and two dependence behaviors that the student must display to reach the expected behavior. The graphic visualization met by the Dependence Map makes it possible to present, in a more efficient way, the student's learning level, by means of the
Figure. 1. Generic Example of a Dependence Map.
exhibition of the objectives that he/she managed to attain. Dependence Maps could be used both in traditional and virtual learning environments. However, their very nature providing the students more autonomy in selflearning, recommends its use in VLE. Furthermore, in order to guide the student’s activities and at the same time to contribute to the learning process, after the identification of the dependences between educational objectives, the teacher should inform, through one of the VLE tools, the tasks related to each one of these dependences, that can help the student to overcome occasional difficulties.
5. Pedagogical Methodology The proposed pedagogical methodology has four objectives: to support the teacher in the planning of a subject or course, to assist the teacher in the definition of educational objectives, to support the teacher in the creation of Dependence Maps and guide the development of the student's activities.
5.1. Support to the Planning of a Subject The proposed methodology begins with the support to the teaching activity of planning a subject or a course. For this, the goal of the methodology is to strengthen the teaching-learning process, changing a programmatic content based plan into a Concept Map. The Concept Map of a subject or course enables a better planning of its contents, showing, in addition to the subjects that will be studied, the theoretical relations between them. The proposed methodology guides the teacher in the creation of Concept Maps, through a three steps procedure: 1. Definition of the relevant contents of the discipline that will be used as the basic concepts in the Concept Map; 2. Identification of the existing relationships between the contents. These relationships form the links between the basic concepts, and finally 3. Supply of a name for each of the relations. These names will identify the connections between concepts, thus forming the propositions. Although these three stages are necessary to the elaboration of any Concept Map, in practice what happens is that the program of a subject can be quite extensive and, so, the methodology allows the Concept Map of a subject to be composed of several levels. In order to do this, each concept from the Concept Map can be expanded. In this case, the three steps
mentioned above for the creation of a Concept Map must be repeated for each requested expansion. The idea is that there is no limitation on the number of concept expansions in a Concept Map, this decision relying on the level of detail that the teacher wants to give to the discipline.
5.2. Support the Definition of Educational Objectives After guiding the teacher in the development of the Concept Map, the next step of the methodology is to assist him in the definition of the educational objectives that the student must achieve for each of the contents presented in the map. The definition of an educational objective is carried out in two steps: 1. Initially, the teacher must identify the level, according to Bloom's Taxonomy, in which he wants to work the content. The choice of this level must be made in accordance with the choice of a verb that best defines the educational objective; 2. After that, one must set out the educational objective by means of a phrase, using the chosen verb, in order to characterize the expected change in the student’s behavior.
5.3. Support the Creation of Dependence Maps After defining an educational objective, the teacher must create a Dependence Map that will identify the previous behaviors changes that the student must have been through in order to achieve the proposed objective. If necessary, the initial level of the student can be identified through various procedures: preliminary tests, interviews, self-assessment made by the student, among others. The methodology for the creation of a Dependence Map is based in the same steps used to define an educational objective. From the chosen level of the educational objective, the teacher must identify what previous behaviors, in a lower level of the taxonomy, can affect the current objective. This process can be repeated, creating a chain of related objectives, until the expected behaviors fit the lowest level of the taxonomy or until the teacher determines that the definition of previous behaviors is no longer necessary.
5.4. Support the Student's Activities The proposed methodology provides a Concept Map of the subject contents and, for each content at least
one educational objective and a Dependence Map related to this objective. These two graphic elements: Concept Map and Dependence Map are of great importance, because they serve as a guide for the development of the student's activities. The Concept Map provides a comprehensive view of the content, showing the relationship between relevant concepts and thus contributing to the process of assimilation and reflection, helping the student to internalize significant information that favors the learning process. Additionally, through the use of a Concept Map, it becomes possible to relate contents to the available pedagogical material in the VLE. Also, through the Concept Map, the student accesses the educational objectives related to each concept and the Dependence Maps related to each objective proposed by the teacher. The Dependence Map favors the process of selfassessment, allowing the student to identify flaws in his process of learning. Accordingly, it allows the teacher to check for gaps in the teaching process.
6. Proof of Conception To illustrate the generation of a Dependence Map, as well as the proposed methodology, the example presented herein examines the methodological procedures in the planning of a basic discipline on Computer Networks. In this example, the discipline
was taught in a Specialization Course in Applied Information Technology. The program of the discipline is shown in Figure 2. Figure. 2. Example of Programmatic Contents.
In the above example one can notice the limitation imposed by the use of a plan based only on programmatic contents. For instance, the program of the discipline does not show the relationship that exists between the various content items. Also, it does not specify what is really expected from the students with respect to each of the basic concepts of Computer Networks, e.g., should they describe these concepts, explain what they mean, apply them in concrete examples of real networks or what? So, the teacher should begin with the planning of the discipline. In order to do that, he should produce the Concept Map containing the contents of the course. After performing the steps mentioned for the creation of the Concept Map for the first module of the discipline, the result is presented in Figure 3.
Figure. 3. Example of a Concept Map. In addition to contributing to the learning process [13], it is possible to notice, by comparing the Concept Map in Figure 3 with the programmatic contents based plan of the discipline in Figure 2, that the graphical visualization supplied by the Concept Map enables a better understanding of the content and the verification of the real importance of each item. After the development of the Concept Map with the contents of the discipline, the next step taken should be the definition of at least one educational objective and its respective Dependence Map for each one of the concepts present in the Concept Map. Assumed that the teacher, based on the Concept Map in Figure 3 and following the previously mentioned steps to specify the educational objective, has defined that one of the expected behaviors related to the concept of "Computer Networks" is: "To compare the hardware components of wireless networks with those of wired networks." The next step is then to create the Dependence Map for this purpose. Again, following the necessary steps to create the Dependence Map, the result is shown in Figure 4. Figure. 4. Example of a Dependence Map.
In this example, the educational objective proposed by the teacher belongs to the Analysis class [9]. Thus, the teacher must identify which lower class behaviors the student must fulfill to achieve the identified goal. In this case, the teacher has defined that, in order to achieve the proposed objective, the student should first be able to demonstrate when it is better to use wireless and wired networks, which belong to Application class goals. Similarly, prior to achieve these Application class goals, the student should be able "To differentiate the characteristics of wireless networks and wired networks", a Comprehension class goal, whose achievement depends on other four Knowledge class goals, as shown in Figure 4. So, without going through this chain of objectives, the student will not be able to adequately compare the two networks components. This example shows the advantages of the Dependence Map: with it the student realizes what the teacher's aims are and what he must do to achieve the proposed objective. Thus, if students fail to achieve the proposed objective, they are able to check if they have still not mastered one of the previous required behaviors goals. In this case, the student must work on this behavior to achieve the current objective. On the other hand, if the student already masters the behaviors described as necessary to achieve the objective, and even so he has not succeeded, the teacher will have an indication that his plan contains a flaw. Therefore, the teacher may review the Dependence Map, including new dependences or modifying the existing ones, in order to better guide the student's formation.
7. Conclusion With the development and improvement of computer technology, the use of Virtual Learning Environments is expanding not only in the area of DE. Currently, several disciplines and courses, especially in technological areas, begin to use these tools as a support to teaching activities.
In those cases, a VLE is used as a mechanism to support the teaching-learning process and, in this sense, studies and tools seek to improve this process through the use of modern pedagogic theories. The proposal presented herein shows that it is possible to improve VLE's capabilities through the use of Dependence Maps and a suitable pedagogical methodology. The Dependence Map provides a mechanism that allows the teacher to assess the fulfillment of educational objectives rather than programmatic contents and places the student as a central actor in the teaching-learning process, enabling him to work within his current level of knowledge and favoring formative evaluation.
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[12]
[13]
7.1. Future Work Currently, a software module is under development, using the methodology presented herein, to produce a component to be inserted into Moodle, an open-source Virtual Learning Environment. Although the method has shown good results in the planning of several disciplines, its contribution will be only fully tested within a computerized environment. Besides, we hope to deepen the study of the impact that the methodology produces in the teaching-learning process and starting form the analysis of the obtained results, to check possible improvements in the methodology and in the tool as well.
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