Helping Teachers to Analyze Big Sets of Concept Maps

Abstract

We present a framework devised to help teachers analysing a collection of learners’ concept maps, with the aim to give priority to maps that could reveal learners’ cognitive problems, irrespective of the actual validity of the maps. The framework offers a 3-D visualization of maps’ features, that can be the more useful, the greater is the number of students. We present the framework, its measures, and its prototypical implementation. We investigated the perceived usefulness of the framework, and the cognitive traits that it could point out, through a questionnaire answered by a sample of teachers. The results are overall positive, and may allow for further study and experimentation.