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by beetree on 24 March 2014 - 23:03
by GSDtravels on 27 March 2014 - 00:03
Who said anyone was superior to anyone else? Because you give valid reasons for not buying what's being sold, you're superior? Pardon, Mme. I never said I was superior, nor did I ever imply it, ever. What I've given Shtal and Gouda are the reasons one could have for not believing and their responses are always, always rooted in science that they obviously parrot from those with an admitted agenda. If they want to stay within the realm of all things possible, they need to stop using what they call science to "prove" it.
There is nothing baseless about what's been posted, there is a major misunderstanding of science. And I am no scientist myself, but I am able to grasp the basics and what they've been posting is hogwash, scientifically. Because the facts don't add up to a supreme being, that doesn't "disprove" a supreme being, but it leaves huge question marks, those which can NEVER be agreed upon. Refuting their claims as false, when they are false, is honesty.
Speaking of attitudes of superiority, it seems to me that your posts are filled with that more than any other. You smugly claim:
"So far, it can not be a fairytale. There has to be more. IMHO", don't you? So, what makes your "opinion" superior? You do realize that you've made a scientific claim, without providing evidence, don't you?
The atheist POV is varied, there is no particular POV that applies to all non-believers, it's not set in stone. It goes to the heart of the individual and there is no atheist creed, per se. If you don't believe in a supreme being, you are an atheiest, period. You may be an agnotic atheist, as in: "As yet, I've not seen convincing evidence that a god exists and will reserve judgement until I do." Or you may be an agnostic altogether, as in: I don't know, I'm undecided and am waiting for more clear evidence to make that decision." Or you may be a Deist, as in: "I believe there had to be a creator, just because I can't fathom existence without one, but I don't think it has a hand our lives. It created us and walked away. ", or "One can never really know for sure." Or you may be a pure atheist, as in stating emphatically that "There are no gods." . And amongst all of those choices, it would go to the reasons someone has for that non-belief. Pure atheists just never saw the logic in it, it never made sense. Some have been injured by religion, as in being abused, sexually or otherwise and have come to see hypocisy, contradiction, deceit and become not only atheist, but bitter towards religion ---> any religion. Then there are those who are just happy to go about their lives, religion-free, and are met with derision and hatred for expressing those thoughts when confronted with religion. That's why I've stated that there are many things in my own particular stance on religion that would be more than pertinent to the discusstion, but it's still pointless. So, I guess your question wasn't as specific as you thought, was it?
by vk4gsd on 27 March 2014 - 01:03
pointing out the many limits of the current understanding in science or making claims based on false interpretations of science does not point to a creator.
shtal et al never post any positive argument for a creator or any evidence, they post things that science has either not answered yet or post perversions of what is known, sure these things can create doubt and speculation and thats the extent of shtal et al methods ie to create doubt in science thru lies and replace that doubt with simple unverifiable claims of their own, just never any actual positive claims or evidence, so feeble.
by beetree on 27 March 2014 - 01:03
Still, I am not going to entertain reading another paragraph that you have written, without having a bit more of my questions and promised explanations dealt with, first. I did explain before, how my patience for fancy, tap dancing avoidance has wore thin. I find reading comprehension is a many varied thing, too.
So, Travels please share how you have come to have the adult POV towards your views on faith, that you do profess to adhere to, as you had offered. And then please if you would, suppose to give a critique on the book and creation most commonly called the Bible at the historical time those first written words were given that name for the very first time. What a tongue-twister, and it will still be questioned, I bet! Then we can really begin to get to the rest of it. It all ties in at the end, believe me.
Perhaps tomorrow, I will have the desire to read the rest of your paragraphs, but experience tells me I will be dealing with all the cleaning up of motives and meanings looking for relevence, and that gets to be time consuming. Don't have time to put on my flak suit and check for land mines at this hour.
Mostly, I just want you both to know how happy you have just made me with the thought we might get to play properly! Remember, I am looking for what you both envision as the creation of the Bible, the real actual physical, fact-only Bible with all it stories (that are not fairytales!); how you would critique that? And what it looks like.
The rest of those paragraphs you wrote, aren't going any where, soon, I bet. Good night for now, then. Well, honestly, I am going to read a bit. I bet you'd never guess in a million years what I am reading for the very first time. It is not the Bible, LOL.
by vk4gsd on 27 March 2014 - 01:03
yr assumed superiority is that you expect that others owe you an explanation at all.
as for the quote above i will give it a shot; but first i have to check what you are actually asking; by envision the bible creation i assume you mean how do i think the bible came to be as a written document?
have i interpretted your question correctly??
you want a factual history as far as historians know what time frame and what authors went into the bible?
seems like a dry kind of question hence i think i have not interpretted it correctly?
by beetree on 27 March 2014 - 12:03
This is going to be real quick at first, just to get the ball rolling. I have to accomplish some actual tasks in my day to day existence, today. I do want to address this comment of yours twofold, namely:
"yr assumed superiority".
- The assumptions would not be mine. I clearly state and you can go search it out as I am done pandering to correcting everything someone just is too lazy or purposely ignoring, but it went something like this, "I am not interested in being the smartest person in the room. That seems however to be crucial to others." I meerly chide the one's who are fearful of beginning such a challenge with myself, and have also labeled them as "intimidated." Either you will, play the game, or not. What can any one do but that, on an OT dog site discussion board?
- I am also going to take your inquiry seriously on what exactly the "game" playing is, in the belief that you might be making a good faith effort to "play fair". So I will indulge you, for the moment.
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/stem-conference/PhysicalSciences/Craig_Adam.pdf
Enhancing literature review skills within forensic science undergraduate project work
Abstract
Dr Craig Adam
Keele University
Chemical and Forensic Sciences, Lennard-Jones Laboratories, Keele University, Keele, Staffs ST5 5BG c.d.adam@keele.ac.uk http://www.keele.ac.uk/forensic/people/cadam/
All science students engage in project work, normally in their final year of study. A crucial part of that exercise is in understanding the context of and being able to evaluate their work through a sound knowledge of the relevant literature. This study seeks to enhance the skills of forensic science students in reviewing and critically appraising the primary literature on a specified topic using techniques of concept mapping. Concept maps facilitate the organization and extraction of key information from very many sources with a view to helping the learner to assimilate the material in a structured and systematic manner. Previous studies have shown that the learning skills of the student, their prior knowledge and the level of training provided may be important factors in working with concept maps. On this basis training materials were developed and delivered to the student cohort at the start of the semester. These focused on searching for literature, strategies for developing and constructing concept maps and using the VUE software to organize and present those maps. Individual tutorial support and feedback on drafts was provided to the students while they worked on their maps. The final maps were evaluated and student feedback on the whole exercise sought through written evaluation. The majority of the students found this a positive exercise that helped them prepare their written review and the most able students produced good maps. However, many maps fell short of expert quality in terms of being too simplistic in structure and in the organization of the themes within the topic. This suggests that the student’s familiarity with concept maps in general and the training provided in constructing them is of crucial importance in enabling their successful use as means of developing skills and enhancing understanding through acquisition of a structured body of knowledge.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission.
© 2012 Higher Education Academy
Keywords
Concept map, project, dissertation, literature review, forensic science
1. Introduction
All science students engage in project work, normally in their final year of study. A crucial part of that exercise is in understanding the context of and being able to evaluate their work through a sound knowledge of the relevant literature. Despite being able to identify some publications of relevance, students frequently fail to fully assimilate previous work and to acquire sufficient understanding to be able to properly evaluate the results of their own study. This project aimed to enhance the skills of final year forensic science students in reviewing and critically appraising the primary literature using techniques of concept mapping.
2. Background
Both the development of undergraduate literature research skills and the application of concept maps to science education have received attention in the literature over the past twenty years or so. However, advances in the technology for investigating the primary literature over that time have tended to exacerbate some of the fundamental difficulties faced by undergraduates engaged in a review. Finding references is now much easier but doing so strategically so as to produce a focused, relevant and fairly exhaustive set of sources on which to base one’s writing, is more daunting than before. The majority of undergraduates possess neither the skills and experience of the expert, nor the time and environment in which to develop them, that is part of postgraduate research. The difficulties they face include being unable to narrow down their reading, lacking confidence in the research process leading to intolerance of the uncertainties, a poor appreciation of the nature of a scholarly network, immaturity in appreciating alternate views on a topic, lack of understanding of a citation trail and having a personal information seeking strategy that is at variance with that of the experienced scholar(1). Hence, students need to be able to overcome these difficulties through acquiring appropriate skills within a well-specified framework for their research.
Concept maps have been used in a variety of ways, within the sciences in particular, to reveal to both the teacher and the student what he or she already knows about a topic, through a diagrammatic representation of that knowledge, constructed either by the tutor (the expert) or independently (self-generated) by the student. As the student’s learning process progresses, the self-generated concept map should approach the type of structure that would be produced by the experienced scholar. Maps may be constructed on the basis of either an hierarchic scheme of concepts or in the form of a network. In both forms, the boxes (nodes) representing the concepts are cross-linked where appropriate by propositions which describe the nature of that linkage. Much work has been directed to the use of concept maps for the assessment of students’ knowledge(2) or for educational research purposes(3), though mostly at school level or in the early stages of higher education.
The implementation of concept mapping within the teaching and learning strategy has been explored in more recent years with a view to customizing delivery to the learner’s needs thereby optimizing the effectiveness of the teaching. In a study at school level(4), the competing approaches of providing an expert map, preparing partial maps (proposition identifying), providing skeletal maps (scaffolding) and requiring the student to produce their own map (self-generated maps), were evaluated. It was found that provision of some expert guidance, through either identifying propositions or providing scaffolding, were more successful than were self-generated maps. However, the limited amount of training in map construction and information overload may have impacted on the learning of this latter group. The relative immaturity of the learners may also be an issue here. A similar study at undergraduate level(5) specifically examined the impact of each student’s self-regulated learning (SRL) skills on their ability to use concept mapping. For those with high SRL skills more knowledge was acquired through using self-generated maps while for the group with a lower skills level none of the approaches proved more beneficial than any other.
The influence of prior knowledge has also been studied as a factor relevant to the undergraduate learner’s ability to work from both expert and self-generated maps(6). In this study the learning outcomes were evaluated in terms of the student’s competence in solving both well-structured and ill-structured problems based on the acquired knowledge base. Interestingly this revealed that, even for students working from a low level of prior knowledge, the use of self-generated maps was a more successful strategy. This suggested that structuring and representing knowledge in a meaningful way is more relevant to problem solving than is the amount of prior knowledge itself. This is at odds with earlier work(7) where prior knowledge rather than the mode of implementation of concept mapping was seen to be the main factor in students’ learning, though for those with low prior knowledge working with an expert concept map proved most beneficial.
In summary, previous studies suggest that when working with mature learners who have benefited from training in their construction and use, concept maps can prove to be an effective tool in structuring and representing new knowledge, particularly when some level of prior knowledge exists. On this basis their use in undertaking a literature review at final year undergraduate level appears ideal.
3. Concept maps and literature review
Concept maps facilitate the organization and extraction of key information from very many sources with a view to helping the learner to assimilate the material in a structured and systematic manner(8). This is, of course, the main aim in carrying out a literature review as part of independent project work. The objectives are to determine the main concepts underpinning the field of study, to establish how they are interlinked and to enhance this understanding with further detail on those areas of particular interest. In practice this may be achieved by extracting this information from a systematic exploration of the literature through identifying key concepts, techniques, methods, materials and applications associated with the topic. These may be used to identify the nodes and cross-links that will provide the skeletal framework for the map. The combination of two nodes and a cross-link produces the proposition which embeds knowledge within the map. This context bears some relation to work on the application of text mining techniques to automatically construct concept maps that embed and structure knowledge from academic articles(9). Here, keywords were used as nodes and links established based on examining the text within the papers for the most frequently occurring combinations of keywords, to generate very basic concept maps without constructing full propositions. This approach has been taken further and the term Concept Map Mining has been defined to describe this undertaking(10, 11). However this work is directed at providing feedback on student essays through comparison with an expert map and in assisting in tutor marking, rather than as a learning tool for the student.
In this present work, the concept map is constructed and developed manually through the student’s own exploration of the literature using a variety of strategies based on electronic resources such as the Web of Science, Google Scholar and other internet tools. It may then be used as a structured resource for retaining this knowledge, to develop a deeper understanding and as a framework for devising and producing a written review of the research topic. To assist with the construction of the map and to enable it to be readily edited and expanded according to the student’s current understanding of a topic, the VUE concept mapping software package(12) was selected due to its flexibility, ease of use and availability as an open source product. This has the facility to link in directly any relevant publications either as text-files, images or as web-links to journal websites as well as the user’s own notes on any particular aspect of the map. These resources may be associated directly with either nodes or cross-links and allow a complete organized electronic resource to be assembled for each research topic.
4. Projectimplementation
The cohort comprised thirty-seven students who were studying forensic science in their final year as part of either a dual or major honours degree. As such all had been exposed to broad prior knowledge of the discipline though none had used concept maps in any formal way within their study programme. An initial survey of the students showed that many had experience of using the primary literature within their other degree discipline (often a biological science) in the previous year and had prepared a review from their research. However, in devising the training programme, no assumptions were made about the students’ previous experience and basic skills in either searching for articles or in constructing concept maps. All the cohort were required to produce a literature review as part of their team-based project and those studying for a major in forensic science were also engaged in preparing an individual dissertation on a separate topic.
Three training sessions were delivered at the start of the semester. The first focused on the mechanics of exploring the literature using the Web of Science and other facilities. It reviewed the information accessible through the detailed information displayed by the search and how that might be used to explore the topic further. The possibility of supplementing this by Google Scholar and other web-based search to hunt down articles was also mentioned. Further searches using key author’s names, references and article citations were discussed and illustrated using a forensic example. The significance of highly- cited papers and using references to trace back to earlier key articles were both explained. Finally, the use of setting up a marked list and e-mail to provide a record of the work was described. The students could then start to identify key articles relevant to their review prior to the next stage of training.
The second presentation examined the principles behind concept maps and their application, together with examples of how they may be constructed using the results of literature searching. The basic principle of forming propositions by linking nodes with appropriate cross-links was explained in detail using simple examples (Figure 1) and then extended to more complex exemplar maps. Using relevant examples from forensic science, possible strategies for extracting key concepts from the output of search listings from the Web of Science were then described. These examples were followed through to illustrate how the map may be built up in stages and extended according to the scope of the research topic itself. More specifically, starting from key words in the titles and abstracts, a list of concepts may be extracted and ranked according to their frequency of occurrence then categorized according to headings such as aims, materials, techniques and processes for example. From further reading of the abstracts and articles, propositions these concepts may be constructed and assembled into a skeletal map. This should then be reviewed with the aim of identifying thematic areas which would define the spatial organization of the concepts within the developing map. Particular themes are then researched in more detail in order to expand particular regions of the map according to the interests of the student and relevance to the project or dissertation topic.
Figure 1: An illustration of the construction of a fragment of a networked concept map for fingerprint science (see link!)
The final presentation explained the use of VUE. The package was made available in the computer laboratory and students were encouraged to download a copy for their home use. The discussion included how concept maps may be assembled and displayed, the use of colour-coding to identify thematic areas and how links may be inserted to bring up relevant files, images or web-links using this package.
Over the weeks following these presentations, students were given individual support when requested in working on their draft maps. Following electronic submission, the maps prepared by students were evaluated and the literature reviews that they submitted towards the end of the semester were assessed in the usual manner which included an interview examination. Anonymous feedback was sought from the cohort at the end of the semester as part of the project evaluation itself.
5. Discussion
The project was evaluated both by the tutor and through qualitative anonymous written feedback from the students. On the basis of their prior knowledge and the basic training provided, it was not surprising that all the students understood the basic ideas and had few problems in working with the VUE software. The most able students were able to use this approach effectively and produce good maps. For many students, the identification of key concepts and the construction of proper propositions as well as organizing a map where there were many inter-related concepts, were more challenging tasks. The concept of a proposition was often not clearly understood and this resulted in weak maps with some areas poorly defined. Arranging concepts within the map to maximize the thematic structure which is the key to producing a map that may lead to a well-structured review was also not carried out effectively in most cases. Many did not refine their draft maps sufficiently or include the links to their references as extensively as was expected. All of these points reinforce the conclusion that the user needs to be experienced in creating and working with concept maps to be able to use them effectively, particularly in a fairly advanced application such as this.
Despite this, the majority of the students found the training sessions on literature searching techniques and concept maps either very useful or useful while around half felt the same way about the lecture on using VUE. A large majority felt that concept mapping overall had had been either helpful or very helpful in preparing their review and indeed had been of greater benefit than supervisor support. Among the unprompted comments some students admitted that they should have started using concept maps earlier in their preparation for the review.
This evaluation suggests that the students’ familiarity with concept maps should be increased by introducing them earlier in the course and developing their use in a variety of ways. For example, handbooks can present module content as a concept map and students can be encouraged to construct them across a variety of coursework tasks during the earlier years of their degree.
6. Conclusion
Concept mapping techniques have been used to facilitate the production of a written review from researching the primary literature in forensic science. The evaluation reinforces previous studies that suggest the student’s familiarity with concept maps and the training provided in constructing them is of crucial importance in enabling their successful use as means of developing skills and enhancing understanding through acquisition of a structured body of knowledge.
7. Acknowledgements
This project was made possible through the award of a development grant from the Physical Sciences Centre of the UK Higher Education Academy. I am grateful to Dr Chrystelle Egger for useful discussions and contributions in the planning of this project.
by Hundmutter on 27 March 2014 - 17:03
Maximum understanding of subject by maximum audience,
for instance. Don't know there's much call for 'concept mapping'
in these 'ere parts.
Just to let you know Bee that I am a 'player' who will not play,
because I honestly don't think it is worth the effort to follow the
contorted paragraphs you've been coming up with here. What
have you done with the REAL Beetree ?
I am an atheist. I like poking Shtal and Gouda because they are
so irritatingly and publicly sure they are right, everyone else is wrong,
and we will all suffer for it, come the end. End of. Linda xx.
by beetree on 27 March 2014 - 17:03
so irritatingly and publicly sure they are right, everyone else is wrong, ...
on the filp side.
That you believe this, too, well, that just opens up another philosophical can of worms!
... and we will all suffer for it, come the end.
.
by Hundmutter on 27 March 2014 - 21:03
I get from what the two preachers write, not what I am saying. So no can of
worms to open, I'm afraid (at least as far as I am concerned).
Not clear what (or who) you think you will be 'humbling', or why you wish to ?
Are you trying to be deliberately ambiguous with these posts, or is it coming
naturally ?
by beetree on 27 March 2014 - 22:03
So, I am off to paint and create! This bent of conversation is so other brain in me! I have to let it go! And physically GO! Have a nice night, er, rather day for you? LOL. Oh, and everyone else, as to playing this out, there is always the option, that I'm leaning towards now, where we can agree to all just say, "Let's not, but— say we did! "
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