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11. Small group discussions about using HyLighter and students' background influ-
ences were extremely rich and enlightening, especially because about half of
the class was born abroad.
Students' comments on articles and case studies, and their end of semester eval-
uations demonstrated collaborative, meaningful learning, thinking critically and
metacognitively, and transferring from their own experience to what they learned in
their coursework. Online dialogue about readings elicited participation of shy stu-
dents who did not participate in class because they felt self-conscious and/or were
insecure speaking in a nonnative language. Online they could take the time to look
up spellings of words and did not have to worry about their pronunciation or speech
speed, so they were more comfortable as contributing members of a community of
learners.
HyLighter not only opened windows into students' perspectives and experiences,
but also elucidated questions students had and topics they wanted to know more
about, which was used to refine and extend instruction. I identified and corrected
students' misconceptions through analyzing and responding to comments in the
case studies. For example, one student thought that praise was an intrinsic motivator
because it made the student feel good inside. Another student confused Kounin's
classroom management principle “withitness” with his concept of “overlapping”
and erroneously referred to “withitness” as “whiteness,” perhaps because English
was not her native language. By correcting these errors within the context of the case
studies, learning occurred in a meaningful situation which facilitates comprehen-
sion, memory and transfer. The professor's and selected students' annotations were
used as models to scaffold other students' development of effective highlighting and
commenting skills.
Collaborative Concept Mapping
In Spring 2005, with cooperation from the Institute for Human and Machine
Cognition, developers of CMAP, online concept mapping software, and David
Lebow, developer of HyLighter,
g
raduate, and undergraduate students in Adolescent
Learning and Development collaboratively developed electronic concept maps using
a combination of HyLighter and CMAP. A concept map is a knowledge represen-
tation with linking words specifying relationships between ideas and is designed
to promote meaningful learning. “The meaning we acquire for a given concept
is formed from the composite of propositions we know that contain that concept.
The richness of meaning we have for a concept increases exponentially with the
number of valid propositions we learn that relate that concept to other concepts.”
(Novak, 1998, p. 40). At the end of the semester, groups of students presented their
collaboratively constructed concept maps to the rest of the class.
Combining HyLighter with Concept Mapping can have potential benefits
including
