The Best Way to Learn – The Worst Way to Teach are a pair of columns by David Bressoud (DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Past-President of the Mathematical Association of America).
I discovered the references to these columns at the Mathematics for Computer Science page, listed under further readings.
Bressoud advocates use of IBL (Inquiry Based Learning), quoting the following definition for it:
Boiled down to its essence IBL is a teaching method that engages students in sense-making activities. Students are given tasks requiring them to solve problems, conjecture, experiment, explore, create, and communicate… all those wonderful skills and habits of mind that Mathematicians engage in regularly. Rather than showing facts or a clear, smooth path to a solution, the instructor guides students via well-crafted problems through an adventure in mathematical discovery.
I want to draw you attention to: “…the instructor guides students via well-crafted problems through an adventure….”
I “get” the adventure part and agree the “well-crafted problems” would be the key to using this method to teach topic maps.
But, the creation of “well-crafted problems,” I could use some suggestions. I have fallen out of the practice of asking questions about some of the resources, but those aren’t really “well-crafted problems.” I think those would be more along the lines of having one or more plausible topic map solutions. That students could discover for themselves.
The Academy if Inquiry Based Learning has a number of resources, including: What is IBL?, the source of the quote on IBL.
Looking forward to your suggestions and comments on using IBL for the teaching of topic maps!