The Effectiveness of Concept Maps for Students’ Learning and Retention

Abstract

The active learning literature has greatly expanded over the past few years. This article investigates the utility of employing concept map activities in a medium-sized class, and whether or not it improves students’ learning and retention of material. We find that concept mapping activities significantly enhance students’ mastery and recollection of class material. The size of the effect is considerably greater in our treatment group, relative to our control group. We discuss the advantages of this specific active learning technique, and offer suggestions for its incorporation into different institutional settings.

Keywords:

• Active learning
• concept maps
• pedagogy
• teaching

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) for the helpful active learning strategies and accompanying tutorials.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While ACUE was not a fiscal sponsor of this research, the ACUE course supported the authors in their research endeavours by providing them with online resources and peer support.

2 The Association for College and University Educators (ACUE) has designed an online course that both educates faculty on active learning techniques while also creating a community of faculty dedicated to testing them out in their respective classes and sharing challenges and best practices. ACUE works towards building teacher efficacy (Chase et al. 2001), in that it encourages faculty to establish a more reflective teaching practice. The authors of this article both participated in ACUE’s year-long course. As such, this study aims to not only evaluate the effectiveness of active learning methods in the classroom but also to help inform the ACUE model.

3 Surveys were intentionally not distributed on exam days in order to avoid respondent fatigue. Given that students knew the survey instruments did not impact their grade, the authors expected that students would disregard or withhold meaningful effort from the surveys if conducted on the same days when they were also being tested and graded. Additionally, given the anxiety some students face on exam days, the instructor tried to mitigate any unknown or unplanned activities on this specific day, and any activity that could infringe on the allotted exam time.

4 In our samples, and seen in Table 1 below, the control group averages 1.35 more questions correctly between time 1 and time 2, and the treatment group averages 2.35 more correct answers over the same time period. When all student responses are used, the former drops to 1.18 and the latter to 2.12. Similar results and minor deviations occur in the material retention samples.

5 The surveys administered to students included eight questions. The questions tested students’ factual knowledge of public administration and higher scores reflect more correct answers.

6 Lower numerical values for surveys indicate greater satisfaction, and the scores range from one to five.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brady Collins

Brady Collins received his Ph.D in Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an MA in Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His areas of expertise are in community and economic development, civic engagement, urban governance, and social capital. He teaches courses on public administration, public policy, qualitative methods, and urban politics.

Robert Nyenhuis

Robert Nyenhuis received his Ph.D in Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. His areas of expertise are elections, voting behaviour, and populism. He teaches courses on African Politics, Latin American Politics, and Human Rights.