Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge: Concept Maps as Facilitative Tools in Schools and Corporati

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We found that we could use the concept map tool to show precisely how the children's knowledge structures were changing over time. Differences in valid and invalid and invalid notions about the nature of matter and energy held by audiotutorial-instructed students black bars compared with students who did not receive audiotutorial instruction in grades 1 and 2 light bars. Impressive as our advances in understanding learning have been over the last few decades, even more striking advances have occurred in technologies useful in educating in just the past decade.

Foremost among these has been the development of the Internet and high-speed transmission of information, along with exponential growth in computing power. These advances have been so rapid that educational systems are, in general, far behind in exploiting the potentials that are offered.

Part of the difficulty in utilizing new technology is the cost of new hardware and software. While computer power has increased dramatically, and a peso, lira, or dollar buys much more, the costs are still substantial. Added to this, the cost for Internet access for all students is an additional burden to schools and families.

Some software is expensive, but there is much excellent software available at little or no cost, especially for schools. As costs continue to decline, and more and better materials are available, we can substitute electronic documents for most textbooks, and this can lead to total costs for instructional materials that begin to decline over time. Of course, books will always have a role to play, and few of us prefer reading screens to printed copy. This software can be downloaded at no cost for school use at www. Although there are a number of software programs that can be used to make concept maps, CMap has been explicitly designed to make concept mapping easy.

CMap also provides some special features such as the ability to organize discussion groups, locally or at a distance, using the Internet, attachment of icons to concepts that can access pictures, videos, URLs, other concept maps, or any other resources that can be digitally stored in a local or remote computer or server. A concept map prepared by a NASA scientist to illustrate key ideas about the nature of Mars and examples of two resources that can be accessed by clicking on icons on the map.

One of the problems with the use of textbooks is that they provide only one pathway through a given knowledge domain. Often this pathway may make sense to the writer, but it can never be the optimal pathway for all learners in any group. The same can be said for a lecture series. Given our knowledge that every learner has a unique cognitive structure, derived from a unique sequence of cognitive, affective, and action experiences, it is obvious that the fixed sequence of learning events scheduled by a text or syllabus is going to be less than optimal for all learners.

The challenge we face is how to accommodate for these individual differences and still move a group forward toward understanding of fundamental ideas in whatever field of study concerns us. Then the learners progress in their own idiosyncratic way to build their knowledge structures and represent them as a more complex, more elaborated maps. That is, new concepts and propositions can be best learned when they build upon and advance the understanding of related prior concepts held by the learner.

Moreover, cognitive development is enhanced by social interaction with peers who are at approximately the same ZPG. This would be favored in small group dialogue as collaborating students work to build and elaborate a concept map. Added to this figure by a cooperating group of students are some resources that can be accessed by clicking on the icons on the plant CMap. The added resources shown are a submap on bees also with added resources , a photo of a flower, a time-lapse video clip of a flower opening accessed through a URL , a photo of a bee on a flower, a germinating seed, and a text box explaining leaf coloration.

Thus we see that the students have created a veritable portfolio of materials dealing with plants. Furthermore, CMap software allows the map construction to proceed either synchronously, with the collaborators being online at the same time, or asynchronously, with the collaborators working at different times. This kind of collaboration, within a classroom, across schools, or across nations, can have both cultural value as well as contribute to better understanding of concepts by all participants due in part to the varying insights different groups bring to the process.

The insets show some of the resources accessed by clicking on icons and a sample text comment. It would be a very boring classroom where students did nothing but add to expert's concept maps and assemble resources from the Internet. We also expect that students would engage in field and laboratory studies, and data from these studies could be incorporated into their concept maps. There are exciting laboratory and field study suggestions on the Internet for almost any topic of study, as well as suggestions for gathering local resources for use in hands-on studies see, for example, http: Also, not shown are graphs, tables, or charts that might be constructed by a class or other groups of learners in showing, for example, rate of plant growth under increasing temperatures, and chromatographs of leaf and flower pigments.

Concept Mapping and Meaningful Learning

Teachers continue to play an important role in guiding the inquiry and organization of knowledge into various representation forms, as well as providing feedback and assessment of learner's successes. Of course, such open pursuit of knowledge using the vast resources of the Internet may soon surpass any teacher's knowledge on any given topic, but the teachers can learn along with the students, increasing their knowledge and competence, as well as providing opportunities for them to manifest their excitement in new learning. This may be especially true in sciences and mathematics, where most elementary teachers are poorly prepared and where students are highly interested in and very capable of achieving substantial levels of understanding, as shown in our year study.

Beginning in the elementary school, assessment begins to be the plague of both teachers and students. It is not easy to assess how a young mind is grasping new meanings and skills, especially in the traditional classroom setting. The result is that much of school assessment captures little more than the student's acquisition of facts, problem-solving algorithms, and concept definitions, with little attention to whether or how they are building powerful knowledge structures. This is clearly the case with most state and national assessment programs that are now so popular with politicians in the United States.

With regard to skills, assessment of reading and reading comprehension, speaking, or quantitative representations is often limited, at best, or even ignored. Moreover, the students who are learning for understanding will do much better when they are asked to transfer their knowledge to novel problem-solving situations Basconas and Novak, ; Novak et al.

Over a span of years, students whose teachers emphasize preparation for exams become skillful at playing the school game and may score high marks with little or no understanding of most disciplines. The most disturbing thing I uncovered in a study of bright, motivated, successful MIT undergraduates years ago was that, although they did very well in high school physics, got high marks, almost none felt they really understood the material. His observations could be applied to virtually every area of school studies in high schools and university.

And yet, only 10 concepts, properly organized in cognitive structure, are necessary for understanding why we have seasons. Of course, if we were to include the wet and dry seasons commonly seen in tropical climates, a few more concepts and propositions would need to be assimilated into the structure. Similarly, most MIT graduates, faculty, and alumni interviewed could not explain where the weight of a log came from. It is easy to underestimate the tenacity with which learners will persist in rote-mode or near rote-mode learning strategies.

The Promise of New Ideas and New Technology for Improving Teaching and Learning

After all, these have most often led to success in school assessments, and they often require less mental work than seeking to understand the material that is being presented. The assessment problem is enormously difficult because there are no easy solutions.

Concept maps used in instruction can also be used subsequently as powerful assessment tools, as indicators of student understandings or faulty understandings. However, introducing concept maps into instruction is not easy for teachers or most students. The whole educational system in the United States and most other countries makes the transformation difficult, as Kinchin has observed. Portfolios, written works, and other assessment tools can be used, but all of these put greater demands on the teacher and students than the ubiquitous multiple-choice tests. There is also the difficulty of dealing with the affective or emotional dimensions of learners, especially if they feel threatened by the subject matter.

When students feel they cannot understand a subject, their best ego defense is to stay with strategies that have been successful for them in the past. Rote-mode learners get trapped into a cycle of memorizing whatever they can and hoping this will be sufficient to pass, thus failing to build the knowledge structures that could permit them more easily to learn meaningfully and gain in confidence and success in future learning and novel problem solving.

At the University of Rochester, a number of science courses are using student tutors with small groups in the solution of problems. Part of the training program for the tutors includes building sensitivity to student ego needs as well as guiding their work on the problems. The approach has been shown to result in superior achievement, as well as more positive attitudes toward the subject Tien et al. Other instructional strategies are also effective for achieving student understanding of the subjects they study Mintzes et al. In the past decade, we have seen a growing interest in the interplay between students' cognitive development and their psychomotor and affective development Edmondson and Novak, The bottom line in all of this for education as I see it in my theory of education is this: The traditional classroom is likely to be with us for many years to come.

However, there are good reasons why we shall see increased use of electronic tools in terms of both cost and educative value. For example, in the relatively poor country of Colombia, the mayor of Medellin is pursuing a program to provide high-end computers and high-speed Internet connections for every student in the city. The exponential growth in distance-learning opportunities utilizing electronic tools also illustrates this trend, even though many of the current distance-learning programs are hardly more than the talking face of the instructor with a few additions.

In due course, the better distance-learning programs will also influence instruction in the classrooms. We envision a better mix of personal contact between students and the teacher, and also between students, in a decade or two, as all instruction becomes increasingly involved with the use of the Internet and other electronic resources. A successful implementation of computer-assisted collaboration among students within and between classrooms, including classrooms in different countries, has already been achieved Canas et al.

Navy is currently exploring with IHMC ways that concept maps can be used both as instructional training tools and as tools to capture, preserve, and better utilize the expertise of senior personnel about to retire. These units can be entirely self-contained and brought into communities without telephone lines or even electricity.

They are providing new employment opportunities to people in the villages where they are installed, and some of these communities are selling local products using their own Web site for promotions. Senior citizens in these communities are learning to use the Internet to communicate with children and relatives anywhere in the world. The LINCOS project not only has high educational potential, but also is helping communities to work more collaboratively across age groups and in diverse applications, including better political communications.

These concept maps would be used as illustrated above for the Plants concept map. At this writing it appears likely that we will get the funding needed to implement this project in developing countries and the United States. We expect this will provide significant impetus for change in instructional practices as individuals and schools move to utilize these resources fully, together with CMap software and Internet resources.

The cognitive scaffolding these maps could provide in sciences could serve to illustrate how similar maps prepared by experts might be used in every discipline. Imagine the opportunities this could open up for the 2 million parents now doing home schooling.

Publisher Summary

Once these programs are implemented, there will be some excellent research opportunities to assess the successes and shortcomings of the program and distribution methods and ways to improve them. For example, a study done in Maracay, Venezuela, with high-school physics students showed that students preparing concept maps in their studies far outperformed, by about two times, their classmates who used only conventional text problems and questions for preparation throughout a school year Basconas and Novak, We also administered a popular intelligence test to all students and compared achievement for high-, middle-, and low-ability groups.

These results are what we would expect if concept mapping encourages meaningful learning and thus building students' knowledge structures, whereas most nonmapping students continue to learn largely by rote. The data were even sufficiently sensitive to the latter effect that we see a dip in mean scores for the mapping students for unit 4 but no such dip for nonmapping students.

Since the curriculum moves from the early, closely related studies of forces and kinematics in units 1—3 to the study of electricity and other wave-related work in unit 4, the results are exactly what the assimilation theory of learning would predict. As students built their conceptual structure dealing with forces, motion, and kinematics, their problem-solving success improved.

When they moved into a new conceptual domain, they needed to build up relevant cognitive structures in this domain. This study and many others clearly support our optimism for the science concept map scaffolding project see Novak and Wandersee, Mean problem-solving test scores for concept mapping and nonmapping high school physics students, shown by low-, middle-, and high-ability groups, for eight study units during the school year.

Also shown are trend lines Poly drawn using the means for the high-ability concept-mapping upper line and traditional lower line students. Perhaps for the first time in the history of education, we have the opportunity to make a quantum jump improvement in education, or at least I believe so. Admittedly, there is much to be learned in melding new technology with our growing understanding of human learning and the structure of knowledge.

Corporations are also recognizing that there are new and better ways to educate not train their workers to organize, share, and utilize their knowledge and significantly enhance the creativity of individuals and the corporation Fraser and Novak, ; Novak, Corporate leadership has long recognized the necessity for building on new basic science ideas and technological knowledge from the sciences and some other fields, but they are only beginning to recognize the distinction between training and educating and the power and relevance of the tools and ideas presented here.

EPRI is currently engaged with IHMC in a project to use concept maps to capture expert knowledge and to seek alternatives to utilize their knowledge assets better. While education is a significant portion of the budgets of any nation, the funds are relatively small compared with the huge resources that can be generated from better utilization of knowledge in corporations and governmental groups. I would predict that within the next decade we shall see new kinds of partnerships forming among educational institutions, corporations, and governments.

The challenge is clear: This is the challenge that I extend to you. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List Cell Biol Educ v. Gordon Uno, Monitoring Editor. An earlier version of this article was presented in Urbino and Milan, Italy, in September This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract There have been enormous advances in our understanding of human learning in the past three decades. Open in a separate window.

DiSessa observed, The most disturbing thing I uncovered in a study of bright, motivated, successful MIT undergraduates years ago was that, although they did very well in high school physics, got high marks, almost none felt they really understood the material. A subsumption theory of meaningful verbal learning and retention. My assignment was to compile all the various theories being taught in the course and in the end I had mapped all the different theories, providing myself with a strong understanding of how they are similar, different, and how they connect to each other and to my previous knowledge.

I can honestly say that after using concept maps in this course, my learning was positively and significantly impacted and the theories I learned are now firmly rooted in my brain. While my course was at the graduate level, concept mapping can be done with almost any topic at any level.

For example, at the English as a Second Language ESL level concept maps can be used to identify the antonyms and synonyms of a specific word. Creating timelines for a history class is another example of creating a concept map. The possibilities are endless, but consider your audience. Some learners might need to start with a template while others can create their own entirely.

What are your thoughts or experiences with concept mapping for learning?

Join the conversation in the comments section below. Using concept maps in learning: Free Concept Map Software: Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge: I remember what it was like being a new instructor: My goal as a writer for Learning Connections is to help instructors with common teaching issues, whether they are ff, blended or online.

I want answers to those frequently asked question to be easy to find! Monday, 25 June Here are some helpful resources to get you started Using concept maps in learning: Tagged under concept mapping.

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