Definition of Concept Mapping

As stated at the website http://www.inspiration.com/visual-learning/concept-mapping a concept map is a type of graphic organizer, used to help students organize and respresent knowledge of a subject.  Concept maps begin with a main idea (or concept) and then branch out to show how that main idea can be broken down into specific topics. Concept mapping are helping for developing new ideas, to see how concepts are connected and give an clear overview of ideas. Also, by mapping, students can easily evaluate the information they collected about an topic. In this youtube video you can find more information about concept mapping. So, concept mapping places learners in the position of having to think metacognitively about the nature of the task and the cognitive processes of the discipline, like said in the course by Dr. Cope and Dr. Kalantzis.

A lot of individual learners use these kind of mapping during their own learning process. I’m teaching research methods, and for that I let the students make a conceptual map of the theoretical framework. It helps them to see in what way the different keyconcepts of their research project are connected.

Concept Mapping by groups

But, concept mapping can also be useful when groups are working together. Trochim (2006) defines concept mapping a slightly different comparing to the definition above, emphasizing mapping can involve input from one or more participants. He mentions that this kind of mapping helps people to think as a group, but they are still able to be part of a group as an individual (http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/conmap.php ).

Figure 1: Steps in Concept Mapping by Trochim

Trochim describes six differents steps in the concept mapping process. Depending on how many people are participating, a facilitator is necessary to organize the process at the start. In step 2 everyone is able to generate ideas, concerning the focus of this particular projects. When all the ideas are collected, everyone can structure the ideas. First to see what ideas are more or less the same, second to rate the ideas (how important, how innovative etc on a scale.). This process make it possible to choose an idea by the whole group. This kind of concept mapping is very useful during a research with a lot of stakeholders.  

Dr Karen Rohrbauck Stout gives an nice example how to work with mindmapping in a class, involving all the student in this video, (provided by Center of instructional innovation and assessment).

Concept mapping in digital ecologies

Considering concept mapping involves group thinking, what are possibilities to use this kind of metacognitive skills in a MOOC. For a start, you can try to collect ideas from peers in a MOOC about a particular topic. Or you can present your map to others and ask feedback. An area like padlet can be used to give space to all the ideas. You can do this at the start of a course, to see what students know, or by ending the course to see if students know all the concepts. An other idea is to collect assignments criteria for example students can use to give feedback.

Hwang, Wu and Ke (2011) conducted an experiment to compare the learning achievements and attitudes of the students who participated in a mobile learning activity using computerized concept map tools. The authentic learning environment was a butterfly ecology garden located in southern Taiwan. In this experiment, developing a concept map for describing a particular kind of butterfly was the learning mission. Metacognition was mentioned in the course as a play between the general and the specific. In this experiment design you can actually see how metacogntion works. One group of students could use the mindmap system, and access all the supplementary information just by themself. The other group als used the mindmap system, but when they changed something in the mindmap because of their observation, the system evaluated the changes, provided information and suggestions which supplementary information they could use (interactive).  The authors concluded that the interactive concept map approach is able to help students organize and refine their observations in the field. The experimental group performed significantly better.

This is a nice example of mixed learning, using the physical and digital school environment in an assignment. Iti shows you can use concept mapping in a digital school environment. Instead of using a system presenting feedback, you can imagine in a digital ecologies you can use the input of the students to enlarge your knowledge of the topic.

Hwang, G. Wu, P. & Ke, H (2011). An interactive concept map approach to supporting mobile learning activities for natural science courses. Computers & Education, 57, 2272-2280.

Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2015). Learning and new media. In D. Scott and E. Hargreaves (Eds.), The sage handbook of learning (pp. 373-387). Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/conmap.php  

http://www.inspiration.com/visual-learning/concept-mapping