The Application Study Of Fostering Creative Thinking Of Undergraduates With Concept Maps

After the literature research, the author finds that the concept map is a tool to support the discovery teaching and creative thinking. But because there is a little correlated research about it home and abroad especially it is the primary stage of the using of the concept map, it is badly needed to carry on the systematic analysis of the theoretical and the direction of the practice method. Therefore, the related research of the concept map has become an important research topic.The main purpose of this thesis is to refer to the research of concept map home and abroad to design a model of instruction under the guidance of the Cognitive Learning Theory, the Constructivism Theory, the theory of instructional designing and multiple evaluation theory .We verify the efficiency of this model with the methods of action research and questionnaire research.In chapter one, firstly we introduced the background of the research background and current condition of concept map home and abroad, then we indicated the goal, the content and the significance of this research, lastly we indicated the designing and the some limit condition of this research.In chapter two, firstly we elaborated on the creative thinking theory, and analyzed the possibility and the methods of fostering the undergraduates'creative thinking and introduce some methods of the creative thinking evaluation. And then we introduced the concept map, and found that the concept map was useable to foster the undergraduates'creative thinking.In chapter three, we introduced the objects of this research and designed a learning project of concept map for the undergraduates to develop their abilities of creative thinking according to the modern learning theories, teaching designing theories and some relevant research outcomes. The concept map learning project designed by this research follows such a general guideline as it should promote students' ability of creative thinking. The author designs three activities of concept mapping in different stages and forms by combining together the concrete learning content, causes the student to experience creating process of"question asking--question exploring—question resolving", adopts such tactics as team collaborative concept mapping, self-evaluation and mutual-evaluation and so on, inspires students to compare and analyze the productions of concept mapping vertically and horizontally, and stimulates students to restructure the information , and find new relationships between concepts ,and eventually master the approaches of how to learn. In chapter four, the above mentioned work was soon followed by a preliminary test on the concept map learning project, in which the author takes students of the 2007 Grade from College of Communication at Shan Dong Normal University as study object, who participated the compulsory courses of The Introduction of Educational Technology, carries out the action research for two times and adopted some methods as questionnaire, observation, interview, object analysis, case study and so on.In chapter five, we concluded and illustrated our main work and research results. The study indicates that: 1. Concept map is an efficient tool to foster students'abilities of creative thinking. 2. The concept map learning project designed in this research is practical, and has formed the related application strategies in the practice foundation: (1) set up the student example; (2) stimulate the student motive;(3) student individual concept mapping;(4) team collaborative concept mapping;(5) concept map self-evaluation and mutual-evaluation.