Using concept maps to characterise cellular respiration knowledge in undergraduate students

ABSTRACT

Meaningful learning occurs by relating new information to and revising prior knowledge, making it essential to understand student knowledge before helping them move toward a more scientific understanding. In this study, we characterise prior knowledge about cellular respiration in undergraduate students enrolled in introductory biology by analysing student-constructed concept maps (N = 182) and interviews (N = 9). Students were instructed to create concept maps from a bank of 20 concepts with the purpose of interconnecting the processes of cellular respiration, showing how pools of ATP are generated and used, and identifying where the events of cellular respiration occur. Student maps were analysed for content, quality and organisation of knowledge. Interviews were used to corroborate inferences made from concept maps. Students had a simplified understanding of cellular respiration and its processes as evident by cognitive structures with limited quantities of schemas that were vaguely connected and linearly organised. Furthermore, students had a better understanding of glycolysis than fermentation. Instructors can use these findings to help students build better knowledge of cellular respiration by focusing on incorporating relevant schemas, creating quality connections among schemas, and organising their knowledge of cellular respiration to reflect biological complexity.

KEYWORDS:

• Education
• concept map
• metabolism
• postsecondary
• assessment

Acknowledgments

We thank Steven Harris, James Buescher, and the teaching assistants for their help in implementing the mapping activity. We thank Sinan Akkoseoglu, Jai Kumar Mediratta, McKenzie Kjose, Shirley Kala, and Taylor Uhlir for their logistical and technical support. We thank Erica Stuber and Christopher Chizinski for their advice on statistics. We thank Elena Bray Speth and her group for providing input on the correctness rubric. And we thank Jenny M. Dauer and Cory Forbes for their input on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Division of Undergraduate Education [1432001].