In my last post about ChartaCourse, I alluded to the pedagogical benefits of putting our teaching materials into the concept map format.
As law professors, we usually aren’t exposed to the world of education research before entering academia. When we suddenly are lucky enough to find ourselves professors we wouldn’t know where to find it, even if we had time. Consequently, we tend to re-create the teaching we were exposed to as students (hey, it worked for us). Quick -- classes start in a few weeks -- better choose a casebook. Maybe even a newer edition of the one we used as students. Maybe it even has a ready-made syllabus! And then?
And then years pass. And each semester, we become a little more path dependent. Eventually, we have traveled the same path so often it becomes an exceedingly comfortable rut. But, the hard truth: a rut is a rut, and staying in it is a disservice to our students when something better is readily available. I speak from experience.
When I began handing out pencil-and-paper charts to my students, I certainly had no intention of dumping my casebook. Frankly, it never even occurred to me ask what education researchers had learned about teaching materials, until I was surprised by how much the charts helped my students. Even then I only began researching because I thought I might get something publishable out of it -- perhaps I had discovered something new!
Nope. It turned out that what I had discovered was old hat even in antiquity. I was about as cutting edge as an architect who thinks he invented pyramids. My charts even had a name: concept maps.
Concept maps generically refer to graphical representations of the relationships between ideas, which are represented by key words or terms. The ideas/terms are placed within boxes or circles called nodes, and the relationships between them indicated by a line that connects them. To indicate a hierarchy between the concepts, the nodes assume parent / child / sibling relationships indicated by their spatial representation from left to right (or top to bottom – both work).
For example, in the map below, there is a graphical representation of the relationship between nodes labeled with the concept-representing terms “The Right to Use”, “Zoning”, “Accommodating Impermissible Uses,” “Nonconforming Existing Uses”, “The Variance”, and “Special / Conditional Uses.” With just a glance at the map, you recognize that the latter three concepts are lower order concepts relative to, and existing within, a higher order concept of “Accommodating Impermissible Uses,” which itself exists within a higher order concept called “Zoning”, which itself exists within a higher order concept called “The Right to Use.”
Nothing too shocking or revolutionary there -- it's like an outline or a table of contents. But using this format (1) provides a constantly visible representation of complex relationships that, even if we are aware of them, are usually only unarticulated and implicit and (2) is interactive, so that it unfolds with the student's understanding. But it turns out that something as simple as presenting concepts organized into the format of a hierarchical map actually produces demonstrably superior learning outcomes compared to a book-text format alone, across educational levels and disciplines.
(click on image to enlarge it)
The best meta-analysis of concept mapping studies is probably Nesbit’s and Adesope’s Learning with Concept and Knowledge Maps: A Meta-Analysis, 76 Review of Educational Research 413. The authors examined 55 studies involving 5,815 participants at all educational levels and across disciplines. They concluded that “concept mapping was found to benefit learners across a broad range of educational levels, subject areas, and settings” and that “the evidence presented in this review should persuade teachers to make extensive, well-planned use of concept mapping activities and preconstructed concept maps.” Some formats are more effective than others; some uses are better than others; but overall it is beyond a doubt that concept maps are superior to text alone in student comprehension and performance.
Why? Most researchers seem to agree that the pedagogical benefit of the map format is that it reinforces what some call the “cognitive scaffolding” of systemic knowledge. The visual structure is not a substitute for understanding; it is a facilitative framework in which understanding is constructed, deepens, and resides. Moreover, some researchers believe that constant visual representation of the relationship between components of a system allow the learner to delve more deeply into the individual components. In that sense, mapping is a little like marking a trail as you explore the unknown – you will go further if you are confident you will not become lost.
I’m trying not to shill too strongly for ChartaCourse, but I do want to mention two things it brings to the mix that, if the research is correct, should improve upon most concept maps, or at least make patent some of the latent potential within them. First, some research suggests that concept maps are especially beneficial when constructed collaboratively. Because we’ve made the charts customizable, if professors choose to they can work with their classes, live and in real-time, to create new nodes, re-arrange existing nodes, or fit new content within an existing framework. In my experience, that is a powerful learning tool. Second, because our software embeds the content within the chart itself, there is no artificial separation of structure and content. It works as an organic whole.
I suspect that many of us create maps representing the systemic relationships between concepts in our heads, almost reflexively. For many of us, it is ‘how we think.’ In fact, in my practice as an attorney in a complex area of regulatory law, it is probably how I survived. But if that is true, why shouldn’t we make those structures manifest, and in doing so help our students not only to better understand the content of our courses, but also to utilize and create cognitive scaffolding of their own?
Comments