El mapa conceptual como estrategia de aprendizaje y de evaluación en la universidad

Abstract

In Higher Education, students rely on strategies that will facilitate their «learning to learn». In turn, university professors need evidence that student performance does improve with such strategies. The aim of this research is to discern whether building concept maps of the contents of a subject during the teaching period helps students to better assimilate the contents and therefore to improve their grades. The influence of this learning and assessment strategy in students’ performance can be seen in the results of three courses given at the School of Education of the University of Granada. Here we report an analysis of the overall grades of all the groups (N = 196 students), in which a similar methodology was developed. The results confirmed our hypothesis. A higher score on the maps led to higher test scores. The concept map as a teaching strategy allows students not only to analyze concepts to achieve a more effective study mode, but also improves their academic performance.