Instructor's Guide

Quizzes, Reflective Questions, and Activities

The following assignments are embedded in the Concept Maps tutorial:

• Activity 1: Quiz - What is a Concept Map?
• Activity 2: Quiz - Benefits of Using Concept Maps
• Activity 3: Creating a Concept Map
• Activity 4: Evaluating a Concept Map

 

Relationship to Other iStudy Tutorials

This tutorial should be used after any tutorials on problem identification and data collection because you must have a conceptual base (built by data collection) from which to build a concept map.

 

Suggested In-class Methods of Presentation

Lecture

• Explain the purpose/intent of the tutorial.
• Explain general information about concept maps, and why concept maps are important.

Discussion

• Reinforce the basic concept map material as listed in the Key Points section later in this document.
• Provide examples of how concept maps can be used in topics that are relevant to the students.

Optional

• Have students work in small groups to interpret a concept map on a local or current event topic.
• Have students work in small groups to construct a simple concept map on a local or current event topic.

Note : This is an excellent opportunity to utilize and reinforce the cooperative learning techniques found in the iStudy Cooperative Learning tutorial.

 

Key Points

These points are covered in the iStudy tutorial, but should be emphasized in any discussions.

• What is concept mapping?
• What are the components of concept maps?
• Show examples.
• Steps in developing a concept map.

Assessment Criteria

Jonassen (1996) provides examples of how concept maps in general can be used to assess learning. If the students create a concept map for your assessment, use the following information to assess the concept maps. However, it is important to keep in mind that there is no "right" concept map. Each student, or group of students, will likely build a different map, based upon their personal experiences. It is also important to understand that assessment of a concept map must be consistent with the needs of the content domain (Jonassen, et.al, 1997).

• Assess the change in the student's map at various stages of the course.
  Concept maps can be a dramatic way to view how a student's knowledge changes as a result of instruction. Concept maps that the student creates at the beginning and end of the course provide evidence of changes to the student's knowledge structure. Concept maps created at regular intervals during a course can be used to monitor student progress.

 

• Compare the student's concept map to the concept map of an expert.
  The student's concept map can also be compared to the concept map of an expert, most likely the course instructor. This model allows the instructor the opportunity to assess if the student's knowledge structure is becoming more similar to his or her own. Before selecting this model, however, it is important to understand that one of the major advantages of concept maps is that they allow students to represent knowledge through their personal experiences. This model, therefore, somewhat compromises an important advantage of concept maps.

 

• Compare the student's map to the goals of the course.
  A third model is to compare the student's concept map to the goals of the course. Reviewing individual concept maps will provide evidence of how much the individual student progressed toward these goals. Closer examination of the concept maps drawn by the entire class concept maps may point to opportunities of how to improve the course.

You may also use the Concept Map Evaluation Checklist as part of your evaluation. A RTF version is included for download on the left sidebar of this page.

 

Criteria for assessing concepts (nodes)

Criteria	Assessment
Accuracy of concepts	Is the learner's perception of the content domain accurate? Are the concepts correctly labeled?
Breadth of concepts	Does the concept map reflect the breadth of the content domain? A concept map with a greater number of nodes reflects greater breadth.
Depth of concepts	Does the concept map reflect the depth of the content domain? The depth of the map is measured by the number of levels of concepts.
Relative importance of concepts	Are major and minor concepts represented as such? Is greater weight given to more important concepts?

 

Criteria for assessing relations (links)

Criteria	Assessment
Validity of links	Are the relationships established between concepts or nodes valid? If the map is hierarchical, are hierarchical links established? Likewise, are causal links established if the map is causal?
Preciseness of link labels	Are the labels used to describe the exact nature of the relationship?
Economical use of links	Are links established in the most economical way possible, without becoming too general in nature?

 

Through observing both the group's and the individual's activity, the instructor may assess student performance. Assessment criteria are as follows (instructors supply the percentage weights):

 

Assessment Criteria

Where	Domain	Activities	%
iStudy Tutorial	Knowledge	The student can define the following terms; concept map, concept links, concept link labels.
In-Class	Comprehension	The student can define what a concept map is, and how it can be used to analyze information.
In-Class	Application	The student can interpret a given concept map.
Task in Manual	Synthesis	The student can develop his/her own concept map.
			100%

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