Concept mapping as learning tool in problem-oriented learning

In two studies we investigated whether concept mapping or summary writing is more effective in supporting students’ learning from authentic problems in the field of business. We interpret concept mapping and summary writing as elaboration tools aiming at helping students to understand new information, and to integrate it with prior knowledge. We hypothesize concept mapping to be superior to summary writing because concept maps represent important information in a structured graphical manner consisting of nodes and relations between the nodes. In contrast, summaries are characterized by a linear order of information. Thus, it might be more difficult to recognize and express interdependencies. Both studies had a pre-test and post-test design with two experimental groups (concept mapping and summary writing). In the first study, 39 students of a commercial high school (pre-university level) in their next to last year took part. In the second study 17 students aged 16-18 years from the pre-final year of pre-university education participated. Contrary to our expectations, in both studies the summary writing group outperformed the concept mapping group. We attribute the results mainly to the fact that students are more familiar with summary writing than concept mapping and thus continuous training might have led to other results.