Mapping the student learning mindset onto learning spaces
- 1. The Student Perspective Process & Cognitive Mapping Leah Emary, University of Sunderland @LeahEmary
- 2. Process Mapping or Cognitive Mapping A playful arts and crafts activity where participants model or map for researchers how they: • Accomplish a task • Experience a space • Move through time and space • … This can help you: • Understand ‘how’ and ‘why’ • Richness, context • Language Leah Emary, University of Sunderland @LeahEmary
- 3. Now it’s your turn… • Please choose prompt 1 or 2 on your page • We will draw for 6 minutes – please take a better done than perfect approach! • Exchange with the person next to you, and talk through your maps together. Leah Emary, University of Sunderland @LeahEmary
Editor's Notes
- #2: 3 minutes background to the method, 1 minute of instruction and 6 minutes of them drawing, 4 minutes to exchange.
- #3: A participant’s mental representation of their physical environment/process/or the way they move through time, represented as a drawing or a model for the researcher. Subset of the delightfully-called ‘cultural probe’ which is getting a participant to take photos for you, do a diary, create something which they can then talk through with you. Not just a scale model of what happens but what is most important/salient. Highly qualitative – this approach is about getting context, a very wide angled view or a very complex, messy understanding of an individual, trying to put yourself into the shoes of students, seeing the world as they see it. In my case I was interested in a ‘map’ or flow chart of how they did their research. The colour coding allows you to see what occurs to them first and what develops as they think. Advantages: context, richness, identifying a problem, bottlenecks, frustrations and getting a full understanding of an individual problem or case study with a very small cohort. It can give you vocabulary and a compelling story. It can be fun. It plays to our strengths as librarians: active listening, question asking, rapport building, liminal position in terms of discipline. Disadvantages: data is time consuming to process, it’s not generalizable.
- #4: What did they draw first? What did they mean by…? Did they discover something they didn’t know before? How could you use this to understand what students need in terms of space and services? Would this serve a purpose for relationship management, annual reporting, impact, skills offering, staffing etc?