This week our class focused on WTS 1.3—Investigate and Think Critically: research, manage, and evaluate information and solve problems using digital tools and resources. The ISTE Wikispaces page on Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making suggests that students:
- identify and define authentic problems and significant questions for investigation
- plan and manage activities to develop a solution or complete a project
- collect and analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions
- use multiple processes and diverse perspectives to explore alternative solutions
All of these bullet points are very pertinent to nursing education and as I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, critical thinking is a big buzz word for our discipline. The nursing process covers all the aspects mentioned above: assessment, diagnosis, outcome identification, planning, intervention, and evaluation. Nurses must identify and define the problems their clients’ present with by collecting and analyzing data with which to make informed decisions or diagnoses. Nurses investigate, plan, and manage activities around client needs and use multiple processes and diverse perspectives to explore solutions for clients. In short, nurses use critical thinking all the time!
This week we were also told to become familiar with online mapping software for brainstorming. It’s no surprise that cognitive mapping has been linked to improved critical thinking. Samawi (2006) reports on the effect of concept mapping on critical thinking skills in a quasi-experimental study of baccalaureate nursing students. The results suggest that concept mapping triggers critical thinking which guides the student to engage in meaningful learning. The mind maps the students created showed more complexity over time, allowing the researchers a means to evaluate the students’ evolving critical thinking skills. There are many free online mind-mapping tools available: Webspiration, Bubbl.us, and Mindmeister are a few. I signed up for Mindmeister and found it to be fairly intuitive (after a short video tutorial) although somewhat cumbersome to use. Feedback from classmates indicated that Bubbl.us had limitations as well. The Mindmeister tool allows for real-time collaboration showing each users work in a different color so you can track what’s happening. The maps are importable and exportable to other formats, allowing integration to a blog or other sites you may have.
It’s important to remember that critical thinking affects all forms of communication: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Technology can enhance communication, but can too much technology be detrimental to critical thinking? A study at UCLA by Greenleaf (Wolpert, 2009) indicates that “as technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved.” Learners have changed as a result of exposure to technology; reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media such as video games and television do not, Greenfield said. Greenfield recommends a “balanced media diet” in order to develop a variety of skills. No one medium is good for everything. I agree. As a non-traditional baccalaureate student a few years ago, I was introduced to mind-mapping much later in life than most. I find it a difficult task at best. Add in the challenges of new online technology and I find it overwhelming. If I must create a mind-map, I am probably going to utilize post-it notes and colored pencils. Let me apologize ahead of time to my instructors…
References
Wolpert, S. (2009). Is technology producing a decline in critical thinking and analysis? UCLA Newsroom. Retrieved from http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/is-technology-producing-a-decline-79127.aspx
Samawi, Z. (2006). The effect of concept mapping on critical thinking skills and dispositions of junior and senior baccalaureate nursing students. The Second International Conference on Concept Mapping. Retrieved from http://cmc.ihmc.us/cmc2006Papers/cmc2006-p159.pdf
