In keeping with the purpose of creating learning environments grounded in constructivist theories and meaningful learning (Ausubel, 1968), we apply concept maps (Novak & Gowin, 1984) as a strategy for cognitive organization, and as a visual resource with which to represent a set of conceptual meanings included in a proposition structure. The idea is to display the meaningful relationships between the concepts of the specific content to be taught and the students' knowledge of the subject.
The concept map constitutes an ideal teaching material with which to associate, interrelate, structure, discriminate, describe, and exemplify the content of a subject. To these characteristics, one must add that in recent years the technique has become very popular due to its natural integration with ICTs. In sum, concept maps are today very useful educational tools to help achieve meaningful learning (Ausubel, 1968; Novak & Gowin, 1984; Moreira, 2010).
For scientific subjects in particular, authors such as Novak & Musonda (1991) have pointed out that, in physics teaching, the subject matter may be regarded as "conceptually opaque". I.e., students find it hard to visualize the structure of the concepts involved, and the relationships between them. It is therefore important if that matter is to be learnt meaningfully for it to be presented in a "conceptually transparent" form, i.e., it is necessary to present the topics to students with a clearly related conceptual hierarchy.
The concept map is therefore a tool that is consistent with Novak's educational theory, and part of its usefulness is in detecting and facilitating meaningful learning (Pérez et al., 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010a). The concept map shows schematically an image of a person's knowledge about some particular topic, so that it can also reflect the extent to which that knowledge is the product of a process of meaningful learning. The map shows a series of concepts, organized hierarchically, together with the relationships that are established between them, thus explicitly showing the meanings with which each concept has been endowed.
Concept maps have been used at different educational levels because they allow students to better assimilate the concepts they are learning by a development of new propositions that they integrate into their existing cognitive structure, the result being meaningful learning (Jonassen, 2000; Novak & Gowin, 1984; Okebukola & Jegede, 1988; Roth & Roychoudhury, 1994). In the Theory of Meaningful Learning, the learning process consists of an interaction between the knowledge already existing in the student's cognitive structure and the new knowledge being assimilated. Building on the foundations of this theory, if used to their full potential, concept maps are particularly effective in encouraging meaningful learning, allowing students to construct their knowledge by organizing conceptual content into a hierarchical structure (Novak & Gowin, 1984; Novak & Musonda, 1991; Cifuentes & Hsieh, 2003; Kwon & Cifuentes, 2009; Haugwitz et al., 2010; Pérez et al., 2004, 2006, 2010a).
How the concepts are organized in a concept map (whether more linearly or more differentiated) can indicate the extent to which the creator of the map has learnt more by rote or more in a meaningful form. It is precisely this aspect that makes concept maps such powerful teaching tools. In particular, the meaningfulness of the student's learning will be easily perceptible when its content is organized into an interrelated structure. The elaboration of concept maps allows new information to be organized and related to the already existing cognitive structure, and clearly highlights the establishment of any erroneous relationships or the absence of any relevant concepts. As noted by Novak & Gowin (1984), students will perceive meanings to a greater or lesser extent depending on the new propositional relationships that they have noted and understood. With their use, the learner develops important analytical skills: the selection, organization, and elaboration of knowledge. The tasks involved in their construction and the interpretation of the cognitive structures they contain develop the students' intellectual skills.
Today, thanks to advances in the new technologies, there are many software tools available for the construction of concept maps. Examples are CmapTools, Inspiration, and CMT, inter alia. Various studies have shown the advantages in using such computer programs to facilitate constructing these maps (Alpert & Grueneberg, 2001; Anderson-Inman & Ditson, 1999; Cline et al., 2010; Haugwitz et al., 2010; Kwon & Cifuentes, 2009; Reader & Hammond, 1994).
Our research group uses concept mapping as a working tool in physics teaching (Pérez et al., 2000, 2004, 2006, 2010a, 2010b). For their construction, we chose CmapTools of the IHMC (Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL) (Cañas et al., 2000; Novak & Cañas, 2006). This is a toolkit that facilitates the creation of concept maps on a computer, using applications written in Java. It provides the ability to construct, navigate through, share, and critically negotiate models of knowledge represented as concept maps. It also allows their use in collaborative networks over the Internet, so as to facilitate group work. Thus, CmapTools users constitute a community which shares knowledge and technologies. Projects can be easily shared worldwide thanks to a public server network, accessible from any browser or through the free CmapTools software.
In our research, we have developed concept maps that are models of knowledge for teaching topics of physics, which were subsequently used by our students in validating their educational effectiveness.
The concept maps that we and our students have created (several thousand) are lodged on the Cmap site: "Universidad de Extremadura (España)", and in this way are integrated into the global network of concept maps hosted on Cmap sites, and that is distributed throughout the world. The ideal way to see them is to install the CmapTools software application on the computer, and visit the aforementioned Cmap site. Nevertheless, they can also be seen (with some limitations) at the Web address: http://grupoorion.unex.es:8001.
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