The Comparative Effect of Computer-Assisted Collaborative and Individual Concept Mapping on Enhancing Business Statistics Learning Achievement: The Role of Students’ Cognitive Style

Business statistical technology is very important for enterprises. In today’s global business and economic environment, anyone can access vast amount of statistical information. The most successful managers and decision makers must understand statistical information and know how to use it effectively. Therefore, for most colleges of commerce and management in universities, business statistics is a required course. However, most business students have statistical anxiety when learning statistics and most statistics teachers struggle with how to enhance students’ learning achievement in statistics. This paper compared the effect of computer-assisted collaborative and individual concept mapping on enhancing students’ learning achievement in business statistics under different cognitive styles. The experimental results showed that the effect of computer-assisted collaborative concept mapping on improving learning achievement in business statistics is better than computer-assisted individual concept mapping. However, when considering students’ cognitive style, experimental results showed that comparing to computer-assisted individual concept mapping, computer-assisted collaborative concept mapping provides better assistance to improve statistics learning achievement for students who have field dependence cognitive style. However, for students who have field independence cognitive style, two kinds of computer-assisted concept mapping have not different effects on improving their learning achievement in business statistics. Implications for research and practice are discussed.