USING CONCEPT MAPS TO ENHANCE STUDENTS’ COMPREHENSION OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS

The article deals with the use of concept maps for a constructive overview of the telecommunications subject.The use was two-fold: at a first level, concept maps were used for the presentation and classification of core telecommunication concepts and processes such as signals, transmission techniques, links networks and services while, at a second level, parts of the individual concept maps were correlated in order to identify basic features of specific telecommunication services and applications.Regarding the first level, the overall telecommunication subject was presented as a set of layers that, from bottom to top, are (i) the signals and information representation, (ii) the transmission techniques (classified into digitization, modulation and multiplexing), (iii) the link types (that is, cable, terrestrial wireless, satellite and fiber-optic links), (iv) the networks and services (classified into dial-up, data and broadcasting) and (v) the telecom market (mainly, involving standardization and regulation issues).At the second (and more constructive) level, students were asked to correlate elements of the individual concept maps in order to identify specific telecommunication applications.For example, the amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation (FM), that are elements of the concept maps regarding transmission techniques, were associated with the terrestrial wireless links (element of the concept maps for links) for the radio broadcasting service while the phase shift keying (PSK) modulation technique combined with satellite links refers to satellite TV broadcasting.Other examples were the association of certain transmission techniques (e.g.digitization and amplitude shift keying -ASK-) and certain link types (cable and fiber-optic) with telephony and data services as well as the association of requirements for basic transmission parameters (such as bit rate, bit error rate -BER-and transmission delay) with telecommunication services such as telephony, data transmission and broadcasting.The presentation took place during a two-teaching-hour lecture in the framework of the "Telecommunication Systems" course (an introductory semester course on communication principles) towards the end of the course in order students to have already encountered essential telecommunication concepts and processes.The active participation of students was encouraged particularly at the second level (correlation of the individual concept maps).The whole process was evaluated by means of a short questionnaire which included questions on whether concept maps had helped students improve their general knowledge of the telecommunications subject as well as their ability to associate basic concepts and elements in order to identify features of actual telecommunication services and applications.