A picture is worth a thousand connections: the facilitative effects of diagrams on mental model development and task performance

Enhancing global thinking can reduce the misconception of accumulation: A potential way to mitigate climate change

Climate change and global warming have long been attention and concern all over the world. However, there is always a debate about when and to what degree to take action like reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Recently, researchers found that the public has misconceptions about climate dynamics, which might be a reason for people do not support prompt mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. The core problem of misconceptions is the stock-flow (SF) problem, which refers to the difficulty of inferring the behavior of a stock variable given information regarding its inflows and outflows. We elaborated on the idea that global thinking is beneficial for comprehending SF problems and proposed that global thinking enhancing display based on highlighting the areas of difference could be a possible way to shift one's thinking process to the right one, which was proved by two studies. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Making it tangible: hybrid card sorting within qualitative interviews

Purpose

Qualitative researchers and information practitioners often investigate questions that probe the underlying mental models, nuanced perspectives, emotions and experiences of their target populations. The in-depth qualitative interview is a dominant method for such investigations and the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how incorporating hybrid card-sorting activities into interviews can enable deeper participant reflections and generate rich data sets to increase understanding.

Design/methodology/approach

Following a review of relevant literature, the case illustration presented is a grounded theory study into the student-researcher information experience with personal academic information management. This study uses hybrid card sorting within in-depth, semi-structured interviews, a unique adaptation that extends multi-disciplinary awareness of the benefits of card-sort exercises for qualitative research.

Findings

Emerging from diverse fields, ranging from computer science, engineering, psychology and human–computer interaction, card sorting seeks to illuminate how participants understand and organise concepts. The case illustration draws largely on methods used in interaction design and information architecture. Using either open or fixed designs, or hybrid variations, card-sort activities can make abstract concepts more tangible for participants, offering investigators a new approach to interview questions with the aid of this interactive, object-based technique.

Originality/value

Opening with a comprehensive review of card-sort studies, the authors present an information experience case illustration that demonstrates the rich data generated by hybrid card sorting within qualitative interviews, or interactive interviews. This is followed by discussion of the types of research questions that may benefit from this original method.

The use and effectiveness of interactive progressive drawing in anatomy education

Anatomical relationships are challenging concepts for first-year medical students. The use of progressive drawing, where an image is created from a blank template, has long been utilized for outlining anatomical relationships and continuity from one region to another, and has shown positive outcomes for student learning. More recently, computerized progressive drawing has been introduced; however, challenges, including issues with visual clarity, have been described. In this study, 17 computerized screencasts of drawings covering neurovasculature of the limbs, abdomen, pelvis, head, and neck were created and provided to first-year medical students at Morehouse School of Medicine. An animated method for drawing was utilized to increase visual clarity. Surveys were provided to 181 first-year medical students to collect feedback about these screencasts. Sixty percent (n = 108) of students completed at least one survey. Respondents rated all 17 screencasts with a minimum of 4.7/5 for helpfulness in learning the material for course examinations. A majority of students (77.8%) reported viewing the screencasts more than once on at least one survey, and students reported varying methods for utilizing the screencasts. A majority of students provided positive feedback relating to technical quality. Some significant differences in course performance were seen based on screencast usage. The positive responses from students indicate that this is a useful method in medical education. Anat Sci Educ 11: 445-460. © 2018 American Association of Anatomists.

Critical social thinking

As technology, globalization, changing work demands, and a growing reliance on teams are changing the work environment, the social complexity surrounding work functions is increasing dramatically. While a variety of socially relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) have been examined, we argue that studying them in isolation is no longer sufficient, as individuals require a repertoire of KSAs that must be utilized in combination to be effective in complex social situations. Thus, we propose the construct critical social thinking (CST), a holistic, integrated approach to understanding the processes that enable individuals to function in such settings, and the KSAs that are necessary for each process. Because the significance of the CST construct is closely tied to the growing need for it in practice, we also integrate disparate training findings and link them to components of our conceptual model, enabling us to put forth initial insights regarding the approaches through which CST can be trained effectively.

Facilitating Knowledge Building in Teams: Can a New Team Training Strategy Help?

Problem-solving teams composed of members possessing unique knowledge tend to be ineffective because of impediments that limit information sharing, including the sampling advantage of common information and differential schema structures among team members. Teams using a team training strategy aimed at ameliorating these impediments were expected to experience knowledge building and high performance. Data were collected from 40 teams of three co-located members, which were randomly assigned to a training or control condition. All teams completed a realistic military-based hidden profile problem-solving task. Teams in the training condition were trained to build knowledge using an information board (which served as a knowledge object) accompanied with schema-enriched communication. Teams in the control condition operated as typical co-located problem-solving teams and did not use an information board or receive the training. All hypotheses were supported. Teams experiencing the training strategy had higher knowledge transfer, interoperable knowledge, cognitive congruence, and performance than control teams. The training strategy appears to be effective in aiding teams to ameliorate communication impediments. Apparently, teams externalized their knowledge by communicating aspects of their schemas for task knowledge and visually representing and collaboratively structuring that knowledge.

TPL—KATS-card sort: A tool for assessing structural knowledge

The study of how individuals organize knowledge has been a popular endeavor for several decades. As a result, techniques have been developed to assess how individuals represent and organize knowledge internally. Although several conceptual knowledge elicitation methods have been developed and used to assess the organization of knowledge, their use is often labor intensive and time consuming. Presented here is a software tool that was developed to reduce the problems associated with manually administering the conceptual knowledge elicitation technique, or card sorting. The TPL-KATS-card sort software not only simplifies the administration of the task, but also adds features to the card-sorting task such as media insertion, time stamping, and instructorless administration. In the present article, an introduction to the card-sorting technique is provided, the new software tool is described, and the advantages of the software are detailed.