Information Science Reference

Table of Contents:

Section I: The use of Concept Mapping and Collaborative Learning in E-Learning

Chapter I: LOLA: A Collaborative Learning Approach Using Concept Maps

Patricia Lupion Torres, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, Brazil

This paper aims a method of collaborative learning for distance education that was defended in a PhD thesis and used in several subsequent research studies. The proposed method, plus the quantitative and qualitative analysis were applied to students on a postgraduate course in education. The steps taken to carry out the research were: new bibliographic review; restructuration, implementation and follow-up of the methodological proposal of an on-line lab; preparation and application of questionnaires; analysis and discussion of the data obtained. We worked with a non-probabilistic convenience sample.

Chapter II: Collaborative Learning and Concept Mapping for Language Teaching

Rita de Cássia Veiga Marriott, University of Birmingham, UK

In this chapter, Marriott proposes the use of collaborative learning and concept mapping activities for teaching foreign languages to higher-intermediate and advanced language students. She introduces LAPLI (The Language Learning Lab), a blended methodology of integrative CALL (computer assisted language learning) and the Internet. By using the tools available in a collaborative VLE (virtual learning environment) in this student-centred approach, students not only develop their reading, writing and communicative skills but are also encouraged to learn meaningfully and to develop their creativity, responsibility and social skills while working individually and collaboratively throughout the activities.

Chapter III: The Assessment of Interactive Learning: The Contributions Made by Online Portfolios and Cognitive Mapping

The authors discuss how interactive assessment, combined with cognitive mapping techniques and the use of online portfolios, can contribute to the debate about new pedagogical and learning assessment practices in the context of interactive online information and comunication technologies.

Chapter IV: Eliciting Thinking Skills with Inquiry Maps in CLE

Alexandra Okada, The Open University, Brazil

This chapter presents the contributions drawn from the study exploring the use of inquiry maps in academic research for eliciting thinking skills. This work also points out the potential collaborative learning environments (CLEs) have to enable students to learn different mapping techniques and to help them share ways in which they can apply inquiry maps to elaborate their scientific projects.

Chapter V: Concept Maps as a Tool for Promoting Online Collaborative Learning in Virtual Teams with Pre-service Teachers

Our chapter covers a description of a theoretical framework that adopts concept maps as a tool to enhance collaborative learning in virtual teams. It was developed by drawing on studies in the literature and our own research in online collaborative learning in coursework and pre-service teacher education programs. The framework is underpinned by socio-constructivist learning theories for collaborative learning with online technologies. The use of a concept map to illustrate the framework is presented and the pedagogical benefits are highlighted. The framework is applicable to all higher education courses in promoting collaborative virtual team learning.

Chapter VI: Factors Influencing Individual Construction of Knowledge in an Online Community of Learning and Inquiry Using Concept Maps

This chapter describes a study that used the community of learning and inquiry and concept maps as strategies to facilitate individual construction of knowledge in an asynchronous online course. Six factors influenced the concept map creation, which in turn affected individual construction of knowledge: group characteristics, social presence, cognitive presence, facilitation style of student, discussion summary format, and teacher presence. Working in a collaborative community allowed students to explore different ideas and concepts, but it was through the individual concept map work that students refined and expanded their knowledge and constructed personal meaning. The chapter concludes with strategies to facilitate individual learning in a collaborative online environment personal.

Chapter VII: Distance Collaboration with Shared Concept Maps

This chapter describe several practices on Web Mediated Collaborative Concept Mapping that were set up in informal partnerships among teachers, from different schools - countries, and their students within the community of World Wide Maps (WWmaps). Starting from various examples of such practices, some models of collaboration will be designed, compared and criticized, for the sake of being useful to other teachers to challenge and plan suitable strategies to get engaged in similar experiences. To this task, the context where distance collaboration can be established, and the theoretical background will be both examined to show the reasons why this kind of collaboration should be recommended as an educative target.

Section II: The Use of Concept Mapping and Collaborative Learning in Face-to-Face Situations

Chapter VIII: Collaborative Learning: Leveraging Concept Mapping and Cognitive Flexibility Theory

Chaka Chaka, Walter Sisulu University, South Africa

This chapter investigates the relationship between collaborative learning (CL), concept mapping (CMing) and cognitive flexibility theory (CFT). Its main contention is that concept maps (CMs) are multi-purpose tools that can be applied to diverse disciplinary fields and that CFT promotes complex and ill-structured problem solving and higher-order thinking skills. For example, CMs can serve as tools facilitating CL; assessment tools; vehicles for collaborative curricular endeavours; and higher-order thinking and problem solving instruments. To substantiate its argument, the chapter uses 15 research studies to highlight the afore-mentioned functions served by CMs and to establish the link between CL and CMing on the one hand, and between CMing/CL and CFT on the other hand.

Chapter IX: Teaching Critical Thinking and Team-Based Concept Mapping

The process of concept mapping can be used for directing learning as well as recording what has been learned. If a student prepares a concept map of the material to be used during a group problem solving session, their grasp of the material is deepened. If that student also knows that the map will be scored to produce a grade and that the links representing higher order thinking, such as hierarchy branching and cross-links, have more heavily weighted scores, then their preparation is of considerably higher quality than if left to simply read over the material. This chapter discusses the impact of a student’s Myers Briggs personality type on how they prepare for collaborative learning in problem solving groups and how concept mapping helps them to develop the blind spot that is characteristic of each personality type. It will be seen that concept maps are a tool that can be used to deepen reading, enhance communication, and develop each student’s thinking skills regardless of their personality preferences in learning.

Chapter X: Intersubjective Meaning-Making in Dyads Using Object-Typed Concept Mapping

This chapter discusses how a concept mapping software tool that integrates a typology of knowledge objects (nodes) and a typology of links can mediate the process of meaning-making and of meaning-negotiation of a dyad of adult learners engaged in a collaborative concept mapping activity, more specifically in the context of a text comprehension task. This case study shows that the tool and its object-typed concept mapping language induce certain types of epistemic actions as well as the formation of diverse representational rules by participants, which were jointly and progressively elaborated by them in an intensive effort to share meaning.

Chapter XI: Collaborative Learning by Developing (LbD) Using Concept Maps and Vee Diagrams

Collaborative Learning by Developing was researched in a University course. Both individual and collaborative concept mapping and improved Vee heuristics were used in learning process evaluation. Both Cmap Recorder and videotaping of discussions during group concept mapping were used. The main result was that plenty of face-to-face dialogue was needed before the shared understanding and group concept maps were created. First the main concepts were fixed and then other concepts and their relationships were elaborated. Differences between individuals and two groups are analyzed. In the collaborative learning process, the feeling in both groups was as if they had a unified and shared thinking process. Students continued each other’s talking and thinking very fluently like they had had "common brains".

Chapter XII: A Systematic Review of Reserch on Collaborative Learning with Concept Maps

This chapter reviews research about the collaborative use of concept maps for learning. The review incorporated a systematic literature search, analysis of dependent variables as effect sizes, and discussion of representative studies. Students who learned collaboratively by constructing concept maps outperformed those who learned from other activities such as studying texts, outlines, lists and lectures. However, no effect of studying pre-constructed concept maps in collaborative settings was statistically detected.

Chapter XIII: Exploring Semiotic Approaches to Analysing Multidimensional Concept Maps Using Methods that Value Collaboration

Christina J. Preston, University of London, UK

This chapter explores the relevance of multimodality theory, an emerging branch of socio-cultural semiotics, to meaning-making and its assessment in teachers´ continuing professional development. The focus is on a specific multimodal, multi-layered, multi-authored and multimodal artefact defined as the multidimensional concept map (MDCM). This investigation of the MDCM as a holistic sign represents a different approach to analysis from Novakian methods of scoring and content analysis. The findings illustrate the potential power of MDCMs in collaborative knowledge building within a community of practice when learners are valued as co-researchers. The study results in two experimental research tools for development by the concept mapping community: one framework for the semiotic analysis of MDCMs, and a second is a framework for researchers to use in defining their relationships with their subjects.

Chapter XIV: Expanded Collaborative Learning and Concept Mapping: A Road to Empowering Students in Classrooms

A new society asks for a new education. Despite not solving all educational problems, innovative methodological strategies can change the traditional dynamics which still prevail in the majority of contemporary classrooms. The new formative demands posed by post-industrial society require more than disciplinary knowledge transmission, and some skills – such as lifelong learning, creative thinking, and teamwork - must be simultaneously developed throughout formal education. Peer review and concept mapping can be combined to create an expanded collaborative learning experience, as presented in this chapter. More than a theoretical discussion, this chapter also describes the implementation of expanded collaborative learning in a higher education classroom during an introductory course about natural sciences.

Chapter XV: Mapping Concepts with Fisherfolk

Denis Hellebrandt, University of East Anglia, UK

In the chapter “Mapping concepts with fisherfolk”, Denis Hellebrandt starts out by presenting a conceptual background about complex systems, followed by an account of the use of concept mapping in a case study of small-scale fisheries in southern Brazil. Denis' chapter ends with a reflection on his current experience and on the application of the technique in similar projects.

Chapter XVI: Using Concept Mapping to Improve the Quality of Learning

The chapter presents two complementary studies, a research project and an innovation project, that highlight the differences between the non-regulative and the regulative use of concept mapping, and the differences between individual and collaborative concept mapping. The results demonstrate the advantages of regulative and collaborative use.

Chapter XVII: Concept Maps and Conceptual Change in Physics

Some recent experiments related with the collaborative use of concept maps to physics teaching are presented in this chapter. The first is a study of how a team of teachers designed learning sequences using three-dimensional maps. In the second, concept maps are constructed and then collaboratively re-constructed by various groups of students.

Chapter XVIII: Using Concept Maps to Assess Individuals and Teams in Collaborative Learning Environments

This chapter focuses on the use of concept mapping, broadly defined to include both graphical and textual representations, for assessment in collaborative learning contexts. Several tools developed by the authors integrate concept mapping as the primary means of assessing progress of learning in complex and problem-solving domains. This chapter presents an overview of the theoretical and empirical foundation for these assessment tools, and discusses their applicability to collaborative learning environments (CLE).

Section III: The Use of Concept Mapping and Collaborative Learning at Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Schools

Chapter XIX: Enhancing Autonomy, Active Inquiry and Meaning Negotiation in Preschool Concept Mapping

Gloria Gomez, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

This chapter reports on a case study investigating the use of an authoring tool for preschool concept mapping. Beginning with a literature review of the field, it continues by explaining why collaborative learning is close to passive with current mapping approaches used in preschool. The development of a tool designed to address these issues is described. The study´s characteristics and results on how the tool was used for organizing, retaining, and sharing knowledge are presented. Finally, an analysis of the results demonstrates that tools which enhance children´s control over the process of map building can promote child autonomy, active participation, and transform teachers into partners.

Chapter XX: Consensual Concept Maps in Early Childhood Education

Rosario Mérida Serrano, University of Córdola, Spain

This work shows a research to adapt concept maps to the sociocognitive competence of 5 year-olds participating in an early childhood classroom, understood to be a social context for learning. In this study we intend to demonstrate the sociocognitive benefits experienced by young children, specifically 5 year-old children, as they participate in the production of consensual concept maps.

Chapter XXI: Concept Maps and Meaningful Learning

This paper describes the fundamentals of collaborative learning and the use of concept maps with different individuals in a hospital. The study also aimed to involve health professionals and health educators in this process and thus gather information to develop a Learning Object.

Chapter XXII: Concept Mapping and Formative Assessment: Elements Supporting Literacy and Learning

Concept mapping and collaborative learning are discussed as literacy strategies in this ethnographic case study. This paper emphasizes the use of concept mapping as a formative assessment strategy in the content area of marine ecology in high school science classrooms. Concept mapping integrated with collaborative learning was used to engage students to construct and re-construct their understanding of a complex scientific concept, the energy cycle. The results showed that students benefited from the combination of collaborative learning and concept maps to focus their writing on key ideas, to organize their ideas, and include specific details. Most importantly, initial concept maps and revisions provided the teacher with evidence of student learning in the form of formative assessment products, to guide teachers’ focused feedback and clarify specific ideas for re-teaching, as well as students’ self-assessment.