Teacher and student interviews, student surveys, and assessment scores from multiple points in the PBS course show that mapping, as a visual representation of student understanding, benefits both the doing and assessment of projects. The findings of a complex relation of map scores with other assessment measures indicate that a simple, singular model of growth is not sufficient for explaining achievement in PBS and that more study is needed. This is a time of rapid technological change in educational technologies. This paper describes the use of concept mapping as a tool to gather data about student misconceptions. The examples provided in the paper are from chemistry, however, many other academic disciplines will benefit from a learning tool which allows students to develop an understanding of graphical representations of knowledge.
Concept mapping is a method used to comprehend and interpret a complex subject.
We describe a framework for computer-aided concept mapping that provides the means to easily trace the learning process. We present the construction of a concept map as a script which consists of elementary operations, like adding a new concept and linking it to other ones. Our approach can be applied in presentation tools, in evaluating the learning process, and in computer-aided learning. This chapter addresses the main functions of concept mapping as a student activity in their learning processes. Concept mapping can be used as a 1. design method to be used as a structural scaffolding technique before and during the development of hypermedia products, 2. navigation device for students who need orientation while they explore wide information domains like hypermedia documents on CD-ROMs or WWW, 3.