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ICI Academic║Dr. Wang Zhe: How to Use Concept Maps Effectively?

2020-05-12



Dr. Wang Zhe and his partner recently published an article on Educational Psychology. The paper compared the effectiveness of three different concept map learningstrategies on students’ understanding of scientific concepts. The research found that concept map translation, as a learning strategy, is more conducive to learners’ in-depth understanding of scientific concepts and is worthy of further practice and application in classroom instruction.

Associate Professor Wang Zhe

ICI, ECNU

01

The Definition of Concept Map

Concept map is a kind of “advance organizer” to promote effective teaching. It is a knowledge representation tool proposed by Professor Novak of Cornell University. Concept map is composed of conjunctions (labels) between concepts, showing the propositional structure of “concept-conjunction-concept”.

Concept map can help students track their own learning process, enhance learners’ cognitive participation effectively, and promote students’ in-depth understanding of scientific concepts. Therefore, drawing or learning concept map is considered to be an effective teaching strategy to promote students’ in-depth learning. A large number of empirical studies on educational psychology at home and abroad have shown that concept map can promote the learning effect of memory retention and transfer of knowledge, and improve students’ understanding of concepts.

02

Why We Choose Three Different Concept Map Learning Strategies?

Concept maps are presented in different forms and used in different ways. In the process of instruction, some teachers use the complete concept map directly, while some teachers use the concept map partly in order to let students fill in the blanks. At present, there is no consistent conclusion on which form of concept map is more conducive to promote students’ cognitive participation and improve the level of students’ understanding of scientific concepts.

Dr. Wang Zhe and his partner designed a random experiment in a real chemistry classroom to compare learners’ learning strategies in three different concept maps (a. Translate the complete concept map in your own language; b. Fill the incomplete concept map with concepts; c. Fill the incomplete concept map with conjunctions), and explore which concept map learning strategies lead to the best learning effect in the real classroom situation, in order to maximize the use of the concept map as a learning tool.

03

Research Design

In a basic course of college chemistry, 212 college students were randomly assigned to three experimental groups:

1. Students in the concept map translation group will receive a complete concept map and will be required to translate it in their own language.

2. Students in the concept map filling group will receive a concept map with missing concepts and fill in the blanks.

3. Students in the conjunction filling group will receive a concept map of missing conjunctions and fill in the blanks.

The concept map was compiled by the chemistry teacher and describes the chemical concept “enthalpy” that has been learned this week. The complete concept map contains 10 concepts and 12 conjunctions (see figure below).


The concept filling group and the conjunction filling group received incomplete concept maps that were missing concepts or missing conjunctions respectively. After completing the translation of the concept map and filling in the blanks, the subjects of the three experimental groups will undergo a comprehension test on the chemical concept of enthalpy (including multiple choice questions and open-ended questions).

04

Results

The experimental study found that the learning strategy of concept map translation was more effective: the concept map quality of the concept map translation group significantly predicted the scores of open-ended questions in the comprehension test, and the understanding of chemical concept enthalpy in concept map translation group is significantly better than that in concept filling group and conjunction filling group. In the process of translating a complete concept map, learners need to self-explain the relationship between concepts and concepts, which can not only improve learners’ cognitive participation, but also promote learners’ in-depth understanding of scientific concepts.

In addition, the study is based on students without a priori knowledge background. If the students already have some understanding of the concepts they have learned, then the learning effect of the concept map may be different.

The learning time of concept map translation group was significantly higher than that of concept filling group and label filling group, while the answer time of concept map translation group was significantly lower than that of concept filling group and conjunction filling group. Although the traditional theory holds that concept filling and conjunction filling can also improve cognitive participation (constructive learning), due to the lack of timely and appropriate feedback on the results filled in by students in this experiment, the resulting confusion may increase students’ cognitive load.