Scoring Concept Maps

An article by Darin Wagner    No Comments

I was sorting through some files and found notes I had taken back in April of 1999 at a conference at Penn State focusing on “Exploring Learning Technologies.” One session I attended was on “The effects of incorporating concept mapping into computer assisted instruction.” What caught my attention within my own notes was a line or two about how to score a student generated concept map. The suggestion for scoring is posted below:

• Identifying concepts [ 1pt each ]
• Placing the concepts in hierarchies [ 1pt for each level ]
• Connecting concepts [ 5pts each ]
• Explaining the cross-connections / cross-links* between concepts [ 10pt ]

*Another important characteristic of concept maps is the inclusion of cross-links. These are relationships or links between concepts in different segments or domains of the concept map. Cross-links help us see how a concept in one domain of knowledge represented on the map is related to a concept in another domain shown on the map. In the creation of new knowledge, cross-links often represent creative leaps on the part of the knowledge producer. There are two features of concept maps that are important in the facilitation of creative thinking: the hierarchical structure that is represented in a good map and the ability to search for and characterize new cross-links.

“Novak, J. D. & A. J. Cañas, The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct Them, Technical Report IHMC CmapTools 2006-01 Rev 01-2008, Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, 2008″, available at: http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.pdf.

Do you score concept maps? If so, how do you do it? What other methods might be used? Please share!