A cooperative computerized concept-mapping approach to improving students’ learning performance in web-based information-seeking activities

Abstract Concept mapping has been widely adopted in the past few decades as an instructional or learning tool for helping students organize their knowledge; nevertheless, several previous studies have indicated the difficulty of applying this approach. In particular, for elementary school students, developing concept maps could be a difficult task, implying the importance of providing supports during the learning process. In this study, a computerized, cooperative concept-mapping approach is proposed to assist students in interpreting and organizing data collected in web-based information-seeking activities. To evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, a learning activity has been conducted on an elementary school natural science course. Two-hundred-and-twenty-fifth graders from seven classes were divided into an experimental group, in which the students learned with the proposed approach; and a control group, in which the students learned with the conventional computerized concept-mapping approach. From the experimental results, it was found that the students in the experimental group had significantly better learning attitudes, self-efficacy, and achievements than those in the control group. In the meantime, the cognitive load of the experimental group students was significantly H.-C. Chu Department of Computer Science and Information Management, Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan e-mail: G.-J. Hwang (&) Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan e-mail: Y.-R. Liang Chiayi County Tong-Rong elementary school, Chiayi, Taiwan e-mail: 123 J. Comput. Educ. (2014) 1(1):19–33 DOI 10.1007/s lower than that of the control group students, implying the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Keywords Concept map  Cooperative learning  Self-efficacy  Cognitive load  Web-based information-seeking Background and objectives Engaging students in searching for information on the web to answer a series of questions related to a target issue has been identified to be an important educational objective nowadays (Bilal 2002; Tseng et al. 2009). Such learning activities have been called web-based problem solving (Hwang and Kuo 2011). Researchers have indicated that, when trying to search for information on the web to answer the questions, students not only need to know how to use search engine and keywords, but also require the ability of selecting web pages related to the target issue, abstracting web contents from the selected pages, organizing the derived information, and making summarization (Chiou et al. 2009; Tsai et al. 2012); moreover, it has been reported that most students have difficulties in organizing and summarizing information instead of searching for it (Hwang and Kuo 2011). Consequently, it is important to lead in knowledge construction tools to help students organize the searched information in web-based problem-solving activities. In the past few decades, concept maps have been widely used, no matter whether in traditional in-class instruction or in computer-assisted learning. Many studies have reported the effectiveness of using concept maps as a knowledge organizing tool (Chiou 2008; Chu et al. 2010a; Hwang et al. 2011a, b); for example, Hwang et al. (2011b) employed a computerized concept-mapping approach in an elementary school natural science course and found it to be beneficial to the students in improving their learning performance. On the other hand, several studies have revealed the problems of applying this approach (Charsky and Ressler 2011); for example, Lim et al. (2009) indicated that students might fail to successfully develop concept maps owing to their lack of self-regulated learning skills. They also reported that learner-generated concept maps were more helpful to students than the expert-generated ones. Consequently, it is important to provide learning supports to help students develop their own concept maps in an effective way, in particular, for those elementary school students who might have difficulty in developing concept maps to interpret and organize what they have learned or the data collected on the Internet. It is also valuable to investigate the students’ perceptions of developing concept maps with different learning strategies, such as learning attitudes and selfefficacy, as well as their learning performance (Tzeng 2009). Researchers have indicated that cooperative learning can be considered as a potential learning strategy that can help students cope with difficult learning tasks via peer interaction (Hwang et al. 2008; Kao et al. 2008, 2012). In a cooperative learning activity, students are assigned to groups and are encouraged to work cooperatively to complete their learning tasks. Johnson and Johnson (1994) indicated that successful cooperative learning requires a definite goal which 20 J. Comput. Educ. (2014) 1(1):19–33 123 everyone can work together to complete, and emphasized the responsibility of each team member, such that the cultivation of social skills is emphasized in the cooperative process. In addition, cooperative learning is able to help students cultivate responsible attitudes in the learning process (Gillies 2004). Consequently, this study aimed to propose a computerized concept-mapping approach to improving the learning performance of students in web-based problemsolving activities, in which students need to search for data on the web, select the searched web pages, abstract information from the selected pages, and summarize their findings to answer a series of questions related to the target issue. Moreover, to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an experiment was conducted on an elementary school natural science course to answer the follow