Abstract:

Visual Thinking (VT) is concerned with the use of visual resources (diagrams, simple drawings, short texts) to represent, organize or communicate ideas or contents. VT aims to favor the understanding of concepts to 'translate' to a visual representation a content or process. Lower thinking skills to remember and understand concepts are necessary as much as higher order skills to filter, manage and spatially organize contents. VT offers us a slower, but more effective, way to learn and teachers are increasingly using VT for educational purposes in their lectures.

Within the VT techniques, we have set ourselves in the so-called canvas as a template that allows to visually structuring the fundamental elements of an entity or process. As an example of use in the educational field, the PBL canvas proposed by conecta13, describes a Project Based Learning process in nine steps (key competences, learning standards, evaluation method, final product, tasks, resources, ICT tools, grouping and organization and dissemination).

On the other hand, we find the need to encourage STEM vocations, especially in women, given the decreasing interest in these areas (Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Mathematics) considered more arid and boring by students. This make us to face a paradoxical crossroad, since much of the jobs of the future will be linked to these fields. It is therefore necessary to bring the methodology of scientific thinking closer to the students by presenting it in accessible ways.

Here we propose a canvas that provides a visual structure to represent graphically the various steps of the scientific method. These steps include the systematic observation, formulation of hypothesis, design of the experiment to prove or discard them, to finally elaborate some conclusions leading to development of a theory. The canvas is used as a visual tool to support the design to summarize the results of the scientific experiment, to cover the different steps in a schematic way either with text or graphically. An empty template is provided as well as different examples of the canvas covered with experiments that can be carried out in different pre-university educational levels. In order to let this canvas become part of the public domain it is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, so that anyone can use it, copy or modify by free, with the only condition of attributing the corresponding authorship and keeping the license open.

Keywords:

Visual Thinking, Canvas, STEM vocations, Scientific Method, Creative Commons, Experiences in education, STEM in education.