Session T4G

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The use of Concept Maps in Computer Engineering Education to Promote Meaningful Learning,

Creativity and Collaboration

Iñaki Calvo, Ana Arruarte, Jon A. Elorriaga, Mikel Larrañaga, Angel Conde Computer Languages and Systems Department University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

{inaki.calvo, a.arruarte, jon.elorriaga, mikel.larranaga, angel.conde}@ehu.es

Abstract - Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. The fundamentals of concept mapping are in Ausubel’s learning theory which is based on the assumption that meaningful learning occurs when the new concepts are linked to familiar concepts existing in the learner’s cognitive structure. Creativity can be seen as a very high level of meaningful learning. Database Principles is a compulsory subject studied in the second year of the Computer Engineering degree at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. The study presented in the paper was designed pursuing a twofold goal: (1) to introduce engineering students the Concept Mapping technique as a way to promote meaningful learning, and (2) to involve engineering students in both a creative and collaborative learning experience using concept maps. Final exam marks showed significant statistical differences among the experimental group and the control group. In addition, participants admitted that the use of the concept mapping technique to fulfill the objectives of this study is applicable to other domains, situations and problems. Index Terms – Concept Maps, meaningful learning, creativity, collaboration, Databases.

INTRODUCTION

In the days that engineering curricula is changing from providing mainly technical skills to applying creative solutions to new emerging engineering challenges, creativity is becoming an essential skill to be acquired by students [1]. The ability to react to a rapidly changing world and propose efficient engineering solutions depend now more than ever on the ability to be creative [2].

To be creative, learners need to know how to process information in ways that enable them to construct meaningful knowledge: learners must recognize and pay attention to the relevant and important pieces of information, they must organize them in a structure that is faithful to the worked topic, and they must integrate the content into their existing cognitive structure [3].

In addition to improve creativity, learners should be actively involved in their own learning process, socializing ideas among peers and discussing what they learn.

Database Principles is a compulsory subject studied at the second year of the Computer Engineering degree at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. Among others issues the course deals with the introduction to database systems, the entity relation model, the extended entity relation model, the relational model and relational algebra, and the SQL language. Introduction to database systems is a theoretical topic; in fact, it is the only topic within the subject with no practical exercises and it is traditionally evaluated only by means of a test. Probably this is the main reason why students do not take the topic seriously and prefer to work more in depth other topics which also include practical exercises. However, this theoretical part is very important to have sufficient grounds to understand Database Systems.

The study presented along this paper was designed pursuing a twofold objective: (1) to introduce computer engineering students to the Concept Mapping technique as a way to promote meaningful learning, and (2) to involve engineering students in both a creative and collaborative learning experience using concept maps. Introduction to database systems was the topic chosen for working in the experience; due to the detected weakness when students worked this theoretical topic in previous years. Elkar-CM was the used concept map editor.

The paper is structured as follow. First, an introduction to the concept mapping technique and its application in engineering studies are reviewed. Next, the study’s design issues and procedure are described. Finally, the results and the discussion are presented.

CONCEPT MAPPING TECNIQUE AND ENGINEERING EDUCATION

A Concept Map is a graphical way of representing and organizing knowledge (Figure 1). It is comprised of nodes and links, arranged in some order to reflect the domain information. Nodes symbolize concepts, and links represent relationship between concepts. Both nodes and links are labelled and may be categorized. Concept Mapping is the process of constructing concept maps. Although originally

Session T4G

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concept mapping was defined as a method to graphically represent knowledge and information [4], it has become a useful teaching and learning tool [5].

The fundamentals of concept mapping are in Ausubel’s learning theory which is based on the assumption that meaningful learning occurs when the new concepts are linked to familiar concepts existing in the learner’s cognitive structure [6]. Novak & Cañas pointed out that one of the reasons concept mapping is so powerful for promoting meaningful learning is that it serves as a kind of template or scaffold that helps organize and structure knowledge [7].

Khamesan & Hammond argue that one of the most promising uses of concept maps is its integration into collaborative learning activities [8-9]. Interaction and communication between group members not only helps to develop the reconstruction of individual’s understanding but it also provides some practice in important interpersonal reasoning skills [10]. Concept mapping and collaborative learning techniques complement one another [11]. While

concept mapping aids in the external representation of ideas, collaborative learning, with its emphasis on dialogue and discussion, furthers the elaborations of these externalizations so ideas can be shared. Learning environments are most effective when learners are actively involved in constructing their own meanings and doing so within authentic learning situations [12].

Inside the educational area, traditionally concept maps had been used for supporting learning, for assessing learning, and also for organizing and presenting information. There are plenty of studies that dealt with the evaluation of the effect of concept maps on students’ achievements in a wide diversity of areas. Nevertheless, in the case of Engineering Education, their use is not so wide. Some experiences of using concepts maps in engineering education are: as a tool to enhance learning [13-16]; to identify key concepts in the engineering design process and to explore expert-student differences [17]; to organize the learning resources related to a subject [18]; as a note taking tool [19] .

FIGURE 1

A CONCEPT MAP SHOWING THE KEY FEATURES OF CONCEPT MAPS [7]

ELKAR-CM CONCEPT MAP EDITOR

Elkar-CM [20] is a multilingual collaborative CM editor that allows synchronous collaboration based on token-passing. Figure 2 shows the interface of Elkar-CM. At the right, the edition window where users can draw the CMs is shown. The left side of the figure groups the collaboration management functions: at the top of this window the user can ask/release the token; in the middle the connected users

are displayed and at the bottom (communication messages) the chat service is shown.

Beyond the common characteristic included in most of the CM editing software, two are the most representative characteristics of Elkar-CM. On one hand, it is able to record the stages during the development of a CM using a log file. This feature allows the users to replay the evolution of the CM development using video-like buttons. On the other, the tool can be localized not only at interface level but also regarding the final CMs it generates.

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FIGURE 2

COLLABORATION PROCESS USING ELKAR-CM (ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE ORIGINAL BASQUE LANGUAGE VERSION) Elkar-CM is aimed at two types of users: the system

administrator and the author of CMs. Authors can have two roles depending on their responsibility with the CM. Each CM has a supervisor and a group of authors that collaborate on its development. The supervisor of the CM manages the group of people that collaborate in the development of the CM. Each author is the supervisor of the CM s/he creates. When talking about collaboration and knowledge sharing, a key issue is the communication process among the community of authors. Elkar-CM provides two ways of facilitating this communication. The users can interchange ideas through the chat utility and they can also use the flags and notes area to annotate the nodes and relationships of the CM. The chat is synchronized with the actions performed by the users and it is also included in the operations log so the user can replay the development of the CM together with the communication maintained between the authors. This allows asynchronous work. The log stores the information about the actions performed, including the user, time and type of action, and also the interventions on the chat performed by the users.

STUDY

In this section, the conducted study or experience is presented. The design issues, participants, instructors, instructional material and learning resources, and procedure are described.

I. Design

This study took place during the second term of the 2009/10 academic year in the compulsory Database Principles subject of the Computer Science degree at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU.

The main goal of the study was to introduce engineering students the Concept Mapping technique as a mechanism not only to promote meaningful learning but also to stimulate creativity and collaboration.

II. Participants

Two groups of students were enrolled in the subject. Randomly, one of them (5 students) was selected as the experimental group and the other (23 students) as the control group.

III. Instructors

Two lecturers and three PhD students participated in the study. One teacher was the responsible of the subject. She has many years of experience teaching this subject, concretely 15, and is well trained in creating and assessing CMs built using both paper and pencil, and software. The other teacher and the PhD students, developers of Elkar-CM, are members of the Ga-Lan research group of the Computer Languages and Systems department in the Computer Engineering School at the same university [20].

IV. Instructional material and learning resources

A 25 slides document that contains a summary of the main concepts and ideas underlying the worked topic and one bibliographical reference [21] constituted the instructional material for the Introduction to Databases topic (two first theoretical chapters of the book). Students were also provided with handouts that included an introduction to concept mapping, examples of well constructed concept maps, instructions for downloading and installing the software and an online user guide.

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FIGURE 3

CONCEPT MAP DRAWN BY A STUDENT (ORIGINAL BASQUE LANGUAGE VERSION)

V. Procedure

The study was composed of eight phases: (1) content teaching sessions, (2) study presentation and call for participation, (3) Elkar-CM presentation, (4) individual concept map development, (5) student team formation and collaborative concept map development, (6) testing, (7) exam, and finally, (8) analysis and evaluation of the concept maps, logs, tests, and exams.

• Content teaching sessions. Students took two

introductory 60 minutes lectures on the chosen topic. At this time, students were provided only with a summary of 25 slides that contains the main ideas related to the topic.

• Study presentation and call for participation. In a lecture the subject lecturer briefly presented the main characteristics of the study to the students enrolled in the chosen group (experimental group) and all of them accepted to take part in the experience. Instructors provided students a handout containing important details such as concrete activities to fulfil, timetable, etc. Students also received an introduction to the concept mapping strategy and they were provided with examples of well constructed CMs.

• Elkar-CM presentation. During the first 15 minutes of a one hour and quarter laboratory session students were briefly introduced to the main characteristics of Elkar-CM for working individually. Then, they had time to

practice with the tool and started creating a CM related to the topic Database Systems. In addition, students were provided with instructions for downloading and installing the software in their own computers.

• Individual concept map development. Students had three weeks to work on the generated map before giving it in. During this period of time students worked autonomously completing the CM generated in the lab session. Students had access to both the subject teacher and the software instructors in case they needed assistance. Figure 3 shows one of the CM written in Basque language drawn by a student.

• Student team formation and collaborative concept map development. In a lab session students were briefly introduced to the main characteristics of Elkar-CM for working collaboratively. Then, they were organized into groups (2 and 3 students) and, after physically distributing members of each group in different laboratories, they collaboratively created a CM from scratch. Again the Database Systems was the topic. Interaction types between the members of each group were: talking, chatting and map annotating. All groups worked independently from each other. After the session, the instructors responsible for Elkar-CM software collected the information saved in the server and the final maps and the information about the collaborative concept mapping process together with the interaction logs were gathered for evaluation.

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• Testing. Each student completed a survey to evaluate the experience. The questionnaire was composed of 20 open items. It allowed participants to give their opinion about: interest student had in the study, preferred learning method, experience with concept maps in general and with concept mapping software in particular, subject learning, quality of the created maps, concept mapping technique learning, usefulness of the concept mapping technique for learning purposes in general and for learning Database concepts in particular, questions about collaboration and interaction aspects of the activity, opinion about the features of Elkar-CM, whether it is easy to use or not, problems encountered during the study, and some others.

• Exam. Of the 10 exam questions, six were taken from the Introduction to Database Systems topic.

• Analysis and evaluation of the concept maps, logs, tests, and exams. The subject lecturer worked together with the software developers with the aim of analysing the final results (see next section).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The results of the study are based on the following data: Students’ opinion expressed in the tests, teacher’s evaluation of the CMs, the student’s marks and the interaction history. All the students who accepted to participate in the study finished the experience.

I. Students’ point of view

Participants had a really good opinion about both the Elkar-CM software in general and the usefulness of Elkar-CM for promoting learning and collaboration. Although most of the participants (80%) were not familiar with concept maps before this experience they all recognized that the concept mapping technique is a good strategy for learning. Participants were happy with their participation in this study and all of them (100%) were positively impressed with the collaborative part of the experience: it was an enriching experience. Students remarked that during the collaborative phase of the experience they could exchange information and knowledge with their peers and identify new points of view of the same topic.

The whole group of participant recognized having learnt the concept mapping technique. Regarding the quality of the generated CMs, 100% of students admitted that the CM obtained in the collaborative session did not improve the quality of the map generated individually; students spent an average of 4 hours in the individual work and 1 hour in the collaborative lab session.

II. Teacher’s point of view

Two sources of data were used to evaluate the domain acquisition of the students. The assessment of both the generated CMs and final exam questions related to the topic. The criteria followed to evaluate the maps were creativity, clarity, correctness and completeness, and synthesis capability. Considering four levels of performance:

excellent, good, satisfactory, and unsatisfactory, it must be pointed out that the quality of the maps individually generated was higher than the map generated collaboratively. 80% of students got the highest mark and 20% obtained the good level. The score of the collaborative maps were good.

Regarding the students’ outcome in the exam, six questions related to the topic were included in a 10-item exam. The mean of the marks of the students who belong to the experimental group was 4.8, 2.4 points higher that the mean (2.4 points) of the control group’ students. A t-test analysis confirms that results are statistically significant (p<0.01).

Chat interaction analysis was carried out in the collaborative activity. After classifying the interactions gathered from the chat logs into the main skills identified by Soller et al. [22], it was found that 50% were related to Conversation, 15% to Active Learning, 18.3 % to Creative Conflict, and, finally, 16.4% were found irrelevant or even inadequate.

III. Confirming the results

Considering the small number of students of the experimental group the next academic year (2010/2011) the same study was carried out getting also positive results. Student opinions were quite similar to the previous year. Regarding the marks of the maps individually created the proportion was 75% excellent and 25% good. In the collaborative maps the percentage was 25% excellent and 75% good. Concerning the exam marks, on a 0 to 6 scale, the mean mark got by the experimental groups (5 + 12 students) was 5.0 while the mean mark in the control groups (23 + 6 students) was 2.7. Again the difference was statistically significant (p<0.01).

As a conclusion the authors want to remark that the results of the study are positive. The quality of the generated CMs both individually and collaboratively was satisfactory and exam results were better in the experimental groups of both academic years than in the control groups. It seems also clear that in addition to better learn the subject domain a software like Elkar-CM helps to learn the concept mapping strategy. Considering that the quality of the collaboratively drawn CMs were not better than those built individually and that students had a positive opinion of the collaborative phase of the experience it can be concluded that students valued positively the collaboration process itself because it allowed them to exchange information and knowledge with their peers and to identify new points of view of the same topic.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work is supported by the University of The Basque Country (EHU09/09), the Spanish Ministry of Education (TIN2009-14380), and the Basque Government (IT421-10).

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AUTHOR INFORMATION

Iñaki Calvo, PhD. Student, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, inaki.calvo@ehu.es Ana Arruarte. PhD. Associate Professor, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, a.arruarte@ehu.es Jon A. Elorriaga, PhD. Associate Professor, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, jon.elorriaga@ehu.es Mikel Larrañaga, PhD. Student and Lecturer, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, mikel.larranaga@ehu.es Angel Conde, PhD. Student, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, angel.conde@ehu.es