CONCEPT MAPPING: A NEW LEARNING STRATEGY FOR THE PRINCIPLES OF BUSINESS ORGANISATION COURSE

Universities are currently experiencing a period of change and restructuring into what is known as the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). EHEA represents a process of educational reform based on three types of transformations: structural, curricular and organisational. The integration of Spanish universities in this new EHEA is bringing conceptual and methodological changes not just to the structure of university education, but also to the teaching-learning processes and the conditions under which they take place. This work focuses on organisational changes.

EHEA is prompting a change in the teaching model towards the consideration of students as the main actors in the educational process. This change requires new teaching strategies where students are asked to resolve problems with tools provided by the teacher. In this context, this work presents concept mapping as a useful teaching tool for promoting the development of generic and specific skills in students while also constituting a firm commitment to independent study. We address the usefulness and content of this approach in relation to the various competences it is intended to promote in the Principles of Business Organisation course.

The use of concept mapping in Business Organisation courses is not new. The novelty lies in the construction of these diagrams in order to perfect the technique, that is, they are made by expert teachers who want to contribute to generalising the use of these maps for teaching purposes, because of their broad performance potential. The technique is certainly very useful for understanding and framing strategies, decision-making processes, theories and concepts, among others. It also provides added value for Business Economics as a scientific discipline. In the same vein, the unity principle governing Company Strategic Management makes this type of teaching materials even more useful, as they provide visualisation of typical connections between different concepts, interrelations among strategies, analysis of the consequences of business decision-making, and so on. And finally, of course, their visual impact facilitates the assimilation of more difficult concepts.

The experiment was applied to 355 students on the Principles of Business Organisation course in the second year of the Industrial Technologies Engineering degree course at the Advanced School of Industrial Engineering, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. As a general outcome of the study, marks in the subject show considerable improvement in all the groups.