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Top1. Introduction
Concept Map (CM) is a graphical tool for organizing and structuring knowledge by depicting concepts as nodes, and relationships between concepts as edges, and often used as a follow-up strategy for learning English through reading comprehension (Hilbert and Renkl, 2008; Kalhor and Mehran, 2017). CMs are a very relevant tool for EFL-based computer science (CS) students (Wei and Yue, 2017; Roy, 2010). Research on CMs, and data visualization is increasingly gaining popularity in business (Ivanovs, 2015). CM has long been used in higher education for promoting higher order thinking skills, for information retrieval, for developing models for effective leadership and business organizations, and in other fields (Kinchin, 2014). CMs are often used in language learning as a visualization method for content comprehension with pre-task planning, for meaningful learning and critical thinking, and as a definite means to facilitate reading comprehension. CM is a significant learning tool in many professional fields including nursing (Wahl and Thompson, 2013); electronic engineering (Toral et al., 2007); business and public administration (Lawless, Smee, & O'Shea. 1998); and accounting education (Maas, & Leauby, 2005).
This project draws inspiration from a study on computer-based approach for translating text into CM representations (Clariana and Koul, 2004). This case study is focused on designing CMs based on the processing of TESLA’s (a major Silicon Valley company producing cutting-edge electric cars) business and technical information from text articles. The study is designed to identify if students are able to comprehend business English text and represent it graphically with reasonable critical thinking. Further, the idea is to explore if concept mapping, summary writing based on CMs and social network analysis could act as sequentially presented complementary strategies towards better content comprehension. This study explores students’ ability to move back and forth between text and graphics as a series of learning activities for detailed meaning-making. The idea is to investigate if students can make logical connection between ideas, identify the key terms, action verbs, and the sequence and linkages that makes the best sense. Like many CM studies in the past, this study too analyzes the effects of using several types of CMs, but allows them to freely choose a CM for a given context based on convenience of use, their own understanding of the content, and connectedness between content units. This will help explore if novice students with low-moderate English proficiency and without much CM experience could represent information meaningfully (Roy, 2010).