Effects of Concept Mapping Strategy on Business and Economics Statistics Learning Performance

Abstract

Concept mapping is a learning strategy that emphasizes the meaningful relationships among concepts. It can help students clearly relate and distinguish differential statistical concepts. This strategy is also an example of an active and collaborative learning tool that instructors can use to move beyond chalk and talk. The author examined whether concept mapping strategy can be useful in helping students improve their learning performance in a business and economics statistics course. A single-factor, between subjects experimental design with three participant groups (collaborative concept mapping vs. individual concept mapping vs. traditional exercises) was employed. The experimental results suggested that adopting concept mapping strategy can significantly improve students' statistics learning achievement compared to using traditional exercises method, and adopting collaborative concept mapping can better improve students' achievement than using individual concept mapping. Furthermore, most of the students were satisfied with using concept mapping to learn statistics.