Title: Intuition and conceptual awareness for experience-based learning

Authors: Piet Kommers

Addresses: University of Twente, Faculty of Educational Science and Technology, Division of Educational Instrumentation, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands Fax: +31 53 4894580

Abstract: Beyond the process of acquiring knowledge and skills, learning gets more attention as a process of existential awareness; media for learning need to be designed in this respect. The social communication among students has been highlighted many years ago in the traditions of cooperative learning. Now when ||distance learning|| tools become the default modality of learning, there is a new need to revise the identity support for learners. This article articulates ||conceptual awareness|| and its tools and methods. It is the opportunity to let students visualise and externalise conceptual structures that underlies exploration of a new thematic area. Concept mapping is its more prominent member. As learning now becomes more in the nature of a design process, concept mapping is not likely to be the ultimate tool. The elicitation by narrative schemes and ||Woven Stories|| is a key element in the generation of tools for conceptual awareness. Similar to the development of the London underground map as an anchored view of the city of London, now learners are invited to make their own ideational landscapes where the horizon is the ||unknown so far||. Sharing ideational landscapes between students also has a potential for multicultural communication among learners from different cultures. The ongoing research is developing a ||conceptual algebra|| to facilitate the detection of conceptual clusters and interconnect networks by various learners.

Keywords: agents; computer simulations; concept mapping; constructionism; expert systems; multiculturalism; virtual reality.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEELL.2003.004015

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning, 2003 Vol.13 No.5/6, pp.501 - 512

Published online: 10 May 2004 *

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