A concept formation support method and its prototype system using structural modeling and concept map

This paper aims at using structural modeling and the concept map to support concept formation by students. The following procedures are proposed: (1) presentation of concept labels and their identification; (2) construction of consistent concept map; (3) precise specification of the necessary minimum number of guidance points. It is generally considered that the educational process should not be a mere feeding of knowledge to the student, but should encourage knowledge formation by the student, based on the understanding of related concepts. The concept map method was proposed in pedagogy as a means of extracting the process and the content of concept formation in quantitative form, for interactive discussion between the teacher and the student. Hitherto, it has usually been assumed that the concept labels to be used in concept map formation are given by the teacher to the student. In the proposed method, in contrast, the student is also given the opportunity to present concept labels. Another aspect of the past approach is that the teacher has been expected to find logical inconsistencies in the concept maps constructed by the student or to specify guidance points. This paper restricts the discussion to concept maps with the transitive property. Then, by introducing FISM, which is a structural modeling technique, effective and consistent concept map formation by the student is supported, and the minimum necessary number of guidance points are specified. An experiment was performed using the prototype system, and the possibility of learning was verified by the results obtained by the subjects. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 36(14): 91–101, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (). DOI 10.1002sscj.10191