Helping students learn - schema building

One of the most exciting uses of the glossary is to help learners develop categories of knowledge, make connections to their experience, and to elaborate the concepts.

For this purpose, glossaries help students create what educational psychologists refer to as a schema (plural is schemata). A schema is a category that represents general knowledge. Think of it as a file folder where you can organize your knowledge. A successful educational project allows learners to create a number of file folders, or schemata. At the end of the day, the resultant structure is an interconnected web of nodes of knowledge, which encourages associations and additional ways of thinking.

So, when creating a glossary, you will be creating a database of individual entries, and will be grouping them by creating labels that you will attach to the schemata.

Once you have developed the structure of your glossaries/schemata, you can then develop activities that foster interactive...