Abstract:

Effective learning is always an active process where students should create and construct their knowledge themselves. To support this independent work, creative strategies for elaborating, structuring, visualizing and memorizing learning contents are welcome in every domain. They are especially useful in subjects considered as difficult or for students with learning difficulties. Mind maps, concept maps and advanced organizers are familiar tools for visualization. Modeling is one of these creative learning strategies, with the benefit, that it is additionally fostering computational thinking and digital literacy. In this paper, we focus on modeling with diagrams used as learning strategy. These diagrams originally come from the field of computer science, where modeling is a crucial concept and visualizing technique. We mainly use diagrams of the Unified Modeling Language (UML), a graphic modeling language used in software engineering. With UML diagrams it is possible to cover respectively visualize a broad range of situations and learning purposes across all subjects from primary up to secondary education. Our research focuses on detecting those diagrams that are most useful and practicable for teachers and learners without computer science background. The paper introduces the use of modeling as brain-based learning strategy and describes which models and diagrams can be used for which purpose and in which context in order to support and enrich learning and teaching in different subjects. Besides giving some creative ideas and best practice examples for primary and lower secondary education, the paper summarizes qualitative results gained up to now, which build the basis for our new international project “Modeling at School”. Finally, we give an outlook on this project, its research focus and some preliminary results.

Keywords:

Learning strategies, advance organizers, computational thinking, problem solving, creative learning, text comprehension.