As graduate candidates in the Strategic Communication and Leadership program at the University of West Florida, we are constantly challenged to assess our personal progression throughout the curriculum. Below is an example of such a self reflection, which was penned after completing a course outlining teaching methodologies and activities.

In the spring semester of 2022, I was fortunate to participate in the Communications Skills Training program offered to graduate students in the University of West Florida’s Communications Department.  The premise of the class was simple (to learn about teaching methodologies and related activities), however many of us agree that the experience was far more profound than what we were expecting.  Before the semester began we were divided randomly into groups of four students.  Each group was then assigned a date on which we, as students, would take the helm and teach our fellow students the course material to be covered on that date.  As a group we were responsible to design and facilitate a classroom learning experience around the assigned material, with each group member leading the class for 1/4 of the period.

Our group was responsible for conveying information on Teaching Learning Activities, so I chose to incorporate personal experience in conceptual learning and focus on concept mapping.  If the students, who had never been exposed to concept mapping, could successfully collaborate and construct a concept map by the end of the presentation, then I would have achieved my personal academic achievement goal.  Given that we were only allotted a small window of time to convey the information, it was an interesting challenge to trim away all but the essential information to convey just what a concept is and how we link concepts together to form the maps.

Each group utilized a slide presentation to convey the instructional portion of our lesson plans, and incorporated activities designed to reinforce the learning session.  My portion of our slide presentation focused on teaching the fundamentals of conceptual learning theory and the two primary building blocks of concept maps (concepts and linking phrases, which form propositions).  Due to time restrictions there were many aspects of concept mapping theory that I was forced to leave unsaid, however the goal was to empower the students with enough conceptual knowledge that they could begin to construct knowledge models in the form of concept maps themselves.

After laying out an extremely truncated foundation of conceptual learning theory, I walked the students through a series of Cmaps, that increased incrementally in complexity, each constructed with the ihmc software suite CmapTools.  At the end of the lecture I gave a short demonstration of concept map construction in CmapTools, and constructed a simple concept map in real time. This demonstrated how quickly propositions could be constructed with the simple addition of a well thought out linking phrase that defines the relationship between two concepts.  At this point, the students were (in theory) equipped to try their hand at making concept maps of their own.

The learning activity challenged the groups to construct a concept map (on poster board) about an assigned planet (Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus), utilizing their planets corresponding wikipedia page for data mining.  Each group began scouring wikipedia for facts about their given planet, and rather quickly were defining the relationships between all of the concepts that had been extracted from the articles.  After a 5-minute Cmapping session, I collected the concept maps and analyzed them in front of the class.

Even though the students were only educated on the bare fundamentals of concept mapping, each group was able to successfully create a coherent knowledge model of their given planet.  For the most part, the conceptual relationships of the concepts were surprisingly well defined and the class verbally expressed satisfaction with their understanding of the concept mapping subject matter.  A short time later we received peer evaluations, and while the majority of the comments were directed towards our group as a whole, there were a few that addressed my performance specifically:

“William is a TEACHER! He taught and I learned! He did an amazing job with the lecture, it was engaging and easy to follow along. The activity fit perfectly and really connected his ideas (no pun intended.)”

“William— I think that your session explaining the concept of concept maps (pun intended) was excellent, and you did a very good job. I thought your learning objective was clear, and I think I met it as a student in the class.” 

“Team 3 did a great job! All four members know how to engage an audience. The activities were fun and definitely helped me learn the material… William’s activity is definitely something I will use from now on.” 

We all learn from our experiences, and teaching a graduate class how to concept map was illuminating to say the least.  It’s easy to say “given more time I could have…”, but real-life teaching scenarios aren’t necessarily going to adhere to a three hour time block.  However, if faced with the exact same scenario, there are a few approaches that I would modify in order to improve upon the students experience.  First off, rather than rushing through the explanation of the concept maps created for the lesson, I would take more time to walk the students through the thought processes used to define the relationships between concepts.  Secondly, after introducing key concepts, I’d engage the students in short conversations to gauge if everyone understood subject matter clearly.

All in all, my first graduate teaching experience was incredibly enlightening and far more informative than I truly expected it to be.