Abstract:

The target of the present study is to propose a new methodology developed for increasing the efficiency of the using concept maps made with the computer application CmapTools. This methodology would be applied in order to help our students to make meaningful learnings when these maps acquire a considerable size.

Our Orion Research Group of the University of Extremadura (Spain) has conducted a lot of didactic research which have made us been able to verify that most of the learning obtained during the university careers of our students of the Master’s Degree in Secondary Education Teacher Training are not useful for them. In fact, the acquired knowledge cannot be applied by them in solving everyday problems, which would be the ones that they should potentially solve to their future high school students. According to the cognitive theories of meaningful learning (by Ausubel and Novak) and the ones of knowledge development (by Reigeluth and Stein), in order to make learning truly meaningful there must be explicit and grounded relationships between the concepts that already exist in our cognitive structure and the new ones that are being learned. Furthermore, these concepts must be organized at hierarchical levels based on their relevance in the actual subject. This procedure that is suggested by those theories agrees on the one which must be followed for the realization of concept maps. In them, there are exposed a series of hierarchical concepts connected between verbal prepositions. For this reason, and for many years, we have been using concept maps as a didactic tool so as to help our students to construct meaningful learning. With the purpose of making easier the proceedings of developing these maps, we use the CmapTools computer application. Actually, it also allows collaborative, interactive and online work.

However, and after managing and evaluating many positive experiences, we came up to the conclusion that there exists an exception, and that is that as a map greatly increases its size, it becomes more difficult for students to understand. For this reason, we have begun to use a new methodology that allows the expansion of the maps to considerable sizes and their subsequent use by the students is relatively simple. This methodology is based on taking advantage of the possibility that the CmapTools application has, which is allowing the concepts of the map to appear sequentially little by little, and also in the production of an explanatory didactic video of the sequence with which an expert teacher is forming said map. Once this video is done, it must be used in three steps: firstly, the student must visualize the entire video, so that both the rate of progress and the order in which the concepts appear are determined by the teacher. Secondly, he must watch the video again, but in this time he is allowed to stop it every time he needs it, becoming the one who adapts the rate of understanding. Finally, and now using the CmapTools application, the student is allowed to interact with it, so that he is the one who decides the order of appearance of the concepts and the rate at which they are doing it.

With the aim of testing the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, we have developed a concept map about “The atom and atomic models” and a scripted video in which appears its sequence of elaboration. Both are also exposed in this communication.

Keywords:

Concept map, CmapTools, meaningful learning, education, Orion Group, educational video, didactic video, atomic models.