4G: Using Graphical Representations of Students’ Knowledge as a Learning Activity

Abstract

This breakout session will promote discussion about a unique method of assessing students’ knowledge that may be used as an alternative to other automatically scored activities such as multiple choice or fill-in questions. The Graphical Interface of Knowledge Structure (GIKS) is a recently developed tool that converts students’ written responses into visual representations of their knowledge structures that can be compared to a visual representation of an expert’s knowledge structure. The GIKS also converts students’ essays to two scores: (1) keyword occurrence and (2) links in common. In the Summer 2016 and Fall 2016 semesters the GIKS was used in an online introductory statistics course. During those semesters the scores obtained using the GIKS were validated. This breakout session will demonstrate how the GIKS can be used as a formative learning activity by providing students with visual representations of their knowledge structures and providing them with feedback and the opportunity to revise. Participants should bring a laptop to access the GIKS during the session.