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COGGLE MIND MAPS AS TEACHING AID IN NURSING PHARMACOLOGY AT A RURAL…
COGGLE MIND MAPS AS TEACHING AID IN NURSING PHARMACOLOGY AT A RURAL UNIVERSITY
Challenge of Pharmacology Teaching
Aim
Mind mapping software significantly facilitates the teaching and learning of pharmacology.
My own learning and teaching experience of pharmacology
As a third year Bachelor of Nursing student I had pharmacology
Ancient Greek Textbook
Critical of lecturing approach
Own pair of pharmacology lecturing shoes
Half the class stared with big, scared saucer eyes
Half the class lost
Content-laden curricula (Kaylor, 2014:108)
Difficulty in engaging students and to keep their interest when teaching pharmacology (Thomas and Schuessler, 2016:174)
Student Engagement
Known need to move away from the traditional teacher-centred educational approaches in favour of an active student-centered learning environment (Rosciano, 2015:93).
Become lifelong autonomous learners while it creates an opportunity for learners to engage with content
Educators are challenged to support student-centered learning in a manner that encourages students to connect and act upon their personal motivations to learn (Kaylor, 2014:108)
New strategies
Mind-maps for a Fresh Approach
Mind Mapping
Easy to learn content and understand relationships
A mind map is a visual representation of a network of connected and related concepts and aims to facilitate students to represent or manipulate a complex set of relationships in a diagram which facilitates analysis, memorising and understanding of those relationships (Davies, 2011).
Mind mapping is an active learning strategy not commonly used in nursing education. It facilitates the learning process and promotes the mind’s natural ability to think (Buzan and Buzan, 1996).
It allows the student to engage with the content in a creative manner and it is a unique method of learning and processing information (Spencer, Anderson and Ellis, 2013:291).
Spatial Challenge
Without success
If I am given a rectangular field to fill in, it usually ends up with fat letters to the left and their skinny cousins spilling over the right edge
I could not make the visuals of the information fit onto a piece of A4 paper.
Ease of Use
Using Microsoft Office to draw a mind map I realized that it was not practical – it simply took forever
Discovered Coggle
Mind Maps in Class
The undergraduate pharmacology module has a particular need for efficient teaching and learning.
Large volume
Six month semester
Mind maps were to be drawn up by the students in preparation for class
We had a session where a comprehensive mind map was created in real time from what the students prepared.
Constructive discussion of Content
Mind Map Assignments
Written assignments traditionally fail to let students engage with the most important ideas of the subject matter.
For a more effective approach students were required to submit mind map assignments of drug categories as specified by the curriculum.
Students would have their mind maps on hand for test and exam preparation
Student groups had freedom to create a mind map by any means in the first of two mind map assignments.
When the assignments came in all the other groups used Microsoft Word to draw their mind maps. The difference between these and the one by the group using Coggle was unmistakeable.
It was clear to me that everyone would benefit from using Coggle for the second assignment.
Coggle Overcomes Mind Map Challenges
Unfazed
The time-and-effort challenge is almost eliminated by the ease of item creation.
intuitively draws a connecting branch from the parent item to a new child item
Main branches are automatically colour coded
The spatial challenge is simply nullified by the fact that there is no limit on the size or number of elements
. Inter-item connections are maintained while they are manually moved around or the auto-arrange feature also works well.
Attractive
Coggle Characteristics
Free version of Coggle has all the features we need.
Online soft ware which enables instant collaboration
Coggle is stored in the cloud
Ubiquitous access
Easy sharing
Images can be embedded in Coggle mind maps
Enhance visual association
Recollection of Concepts
