Concept Mapping Tools Research Articles

A Case-Based Framework for Interactive Capture and Reuse of Design Knowledge

Aerospace design is a complex task requiring access to large amounts of specialized information. Consequently, intelligent systems that support and amplify the abilities of human designers by capturing and presenting relevant information can profoundly affect the speed and reliability of design generation. This article describes research on supporting aerospace design by integrating a case-based design support framework with interactive tools for capturing expert design knowledge through “concept mapping.” In the integrated system, interactive concept mapping tools provide crucial functions for generating and examining design cases and navigating their hierarchical structure, while CBR techniques facilitate retrieval and aid interactive adaptation of designs. Our goal is both to provide a useful design aid and to develop general interactive techniques to facilitate case acquisition and adaptation. Experiments illuminate the performance of the system's context-sensitive retrieval during interactive case adaptation and the conditions under which it provides the most benefit.

Concept Mapping as a Mindtool for Critical Thinking

Concept mapping is a mindtool (cognitive tool) that can enhance the interdependence of declarative and procedural knowledge to produce yet another form of knowledge representation known as structural knowledge (Jonassen, 1996). Structural knowledge is best described as knowing why something is the case. It helps learners integrate and interrelate declarative and procedural knowledge by activating the perceived static nature of declarative knowledge and by increasing the awareness of why one knows how to do something. By using computer-based concept mapping tools as a cognitive or learning strategy, learners can sharpen inference-making and critical thinking skills and can avoid the acquisition and accumulation of inert (unusable) knowledge. This article discusses the use and application of two computer-based concept mapping tools, Inspiration® and Semnet®, in educational contexts to foster meaningful learning and understanding. Inspiration® and Semnet® are visual thinking environments that allow users to create concept maps, semantic networks, outlines, graphic organizers and other comprehension monitoring activities. The article addresses the use of computer-based concept mapping as a learning strategy, an instructional strategy, and as a collaborative thinking tool, offering guidelines for educators on how to implement these uses in the classroom.

Four stages in designing educational hypermedia

The design of educational hypermedia is often seen as a process of gradually progressing from content into interaction design. In the final shaping of the hyperlinks, menus and orientation pages, too many decisions are normally made at the same time. This article presents a four-stage design process that gives more attention to the conceptual and metaphoric aspects to be covered. Schematic representations are proposed as the main devices to validate design steps. A repertoire of concept mapping tools is discussed. The full sequence of conceptual, metaphoric, structural and navigational design is finally integrated as a scaffolding method for project teams in hypermedia developing projects. The conceptual exploration method was applied and evaluated in the 1977 Summer School of Nova University at Lauderdale, Florida.

Probing personal knowledge: The use of a computer-based tool to help preservice teachers map subject matter knowledge

This paper reports on the use of a HyperCardTM-based tool to create and modify concept maps about science related subject matter. The tool was trialed with seventy-one preservice teachers who were planning to teach a science topic to a primary school class. Data gathered from interviews, journals and analysis of concept maps indicated that the concept mapping tool was easy to use because it generated little cognitive load and quickly became transparent to the users. This allowed preservice teachers to focus their attention upon the construction of their maps and to organise their cognitive frameworks into more powerful integrated patterns. It was also found that the process of concept map construction may enhance preservice teacher thinking about effective teaching.

Computer-based tools to support learning from hypertext: Concept mapping tools and beyond

Although hypertext can be a useful way of delivering learning materials it is problematic in that there is no requirement to actively manipulate knowledge as part of the interaction. The mindtools, or concept mapping, approach requires learners to construct graphical representations of the information that they cover forcing them to engage more actively in the information as a consequence. Advocates of concept mapping argue that by encouraging learners to represent their knowledge using a node-link formalism, learners are forced into activities that aid the organization and integration of knowledge, and that the map itself can serve to communicate the learner's knowledge more effectively than text. This paper reports the results of a study designed to test the effectiveness of a concept mapping tool in aiding student learning from a hypertext system. It was found that use of the concept mapping tool enhanced the scores on a post-test when compared to standard note taking. Qualitative analyses of the process of network construction, and of the maps produced argue that there may be a case for offering learners more support in the networks that they construct, to explicitly encourage structuring activities and it is hoped integration, and more encouragement to revise networks so to enhance their use in communication.

Auto-monitoring: Theoretical touchstone or circular catch-all?

Until I read Ray McAleese's paper, I perhaps had a rather simplistic psychologist's view of concept mapping. It was, I felt, a technique - one of several - that helped learners to articulate their burgeoning understanding of some topic, providing a canvas on which to record, expand and manipulate their knowledge. The activities involved in concept mapping could be linked to well-known psychological principles of understanding, memorization and learning: effort, elaboration and depth of processing; generation and enactment effects; encoding specificity and encoding variability; the distinctions between explicit and implicit representations; metacognitive strategies and reflection, and so forth (Hammond 1993). These psychological underpinnings, while not in any sense providing an integrated 'theory' of concept mapping, give a view of when and why the use of concept mapping might be effective in some situations and not in others, and how different concept mapping tools differ in the claims they are making about their educational use (Trapp, Reader and Hammond 1992).DOI:10.1080/0968776940020106