Thursday, August 10, 2023

Hexagonal thinking

Example of hexagonal thinking initial page with terms on the left such as Information Literacy and Misinformation and hexagons on the right

This is an interesting technique to stimulate discussion and learners' abilities to reflect and construct an argument. It is explained in the post Hexagonal Thinking: A Colorful Tool for Discussion (11 September 2020) by Betsy Potash.
You give people a list of words (names, concepts etc. that you think are associated with the topic you are teaching) and learners get into groups and place them on hexagons, arranging them so that they feel they are connected meaningfully together. If you are using physical hexagons, you can give people a pile of hexagons with the words written on them, if it's digital you can have the hexagons blank, and you have to put the terms onto the hexagons. Finally, learners highlight a few of the connections and write an explanation explaining each of those connections. Potash's post explains this clearly, with examples, and there is also a podcast at the top of the page.
For an information literacy class you could take it further and ask the learners also to find references that show the connections between the terms. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/hexagonal-thinking/
You can get her Google Slides deck which includes a template you could use at https://nowsparkcreativity.com/free-hexagonal-thinking-digital-toolkit and the image shows a quick example I threw together - the task for the learners is to move the hexagons and place the terms in meaningful relationship onthe hexagons. You have to give your email and agree to subscribe before you get the slides - this does mean you then get automated emails from Potash, but they are at least about educational ideas, and you can of course unsubscribe.

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