Digital Portfolios and Concept Mapping in Engineering Education

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Digital Portfolios and Concept Mapping in
Engineering Education

• Kari Lehtonen
• Helsinki Polytechnic

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Contents

• Reforming the engineering education
• Total Project Learning, digital environments
• Theoretical background
• Concept mapping
• Digital portfolios
• Case Industrial Management
• Results and consequences

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Engineering education in transition

• A need to develop engineering education to meet
  the challenges of todays and tomorrows world
• Total Project Learning the solution?
• a sequence of real-world, interdisciplinary
  learning projects
• Digital tools and methods are essential?

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Digital environments and learning

• Constructivism and semiotics as theoretical
  background
• Meaning, learning, media and communication as
  semiosis
• Models, representations, maps, processes,
  concepts, scientific inquiry, iconic logic

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Concept mapping

• method to represent information visually
• helps to understand complex knowledge
• structure nodes, attributes, relations ...
• fosters creative and critical thinking
• mapping programs and hypermedia
• use as collaborative and groupware tool

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Concept mapping Example
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Digital portfolios

• Organizing personal knowledge digitally
• Views to digital portfolios
• storing
• assessment and presentation
• co-operation and sharing
• modeling and structuring the world
• Tool for professional development

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Digital portfolio development
- Initial conceptions - Preliminary conceptual
structure - Studying, experimenting, collecting
information ... - Organizing information,
constructing knowledge - Feedback and discussion
- Review of digital methods - Directory
organization, sharing and access - Digital notes,
applets, references ... - Hypertextual portfolio
with conceptual structure - Organizing digital
resources for next projects
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Industrial Management

• New engineering program in Helsinki Polytechnic,
  started in 2001
• Business-oriented software engineering
• Total Project Learning and digital learning
  environments
• Experiments with digital portfolios also in other
  engineering programs

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Results and comments

• Combination of a new engineering program,
  real-life projects and modern IT-methods has been
  a success
• Use of digital portfolios lead to higher
  motivation, satisfaction and pride
• Work to do in pedagogical questions and
  administrative issues

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More information

• Kari Lehtonen, kari.lehtonen_at_stadia.fi
• Digital portfolioshttp//cs.stadia.fi/lehtonen/
  DPF/
• Industrial Managementhttp//cs.stadia.fi/TUTA/

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