A Support Environment for Learning of Class Structure by Concept Mapping Using Error-Visualization

Abstract

For learning science, it is important to understand various concepts and relations between them. Especially, it is essential to understand class structure. To understand class structure, learners are required to consider the meaning of classes, properties of them and super-subrelation between the classes. The consideration facilitates deep understanding in science. However, the learners only memorize the class structure without understanding. For example, junior high school students often memorize the class structure about plants in Biology. In order to let them consider the class structure, it is effective for them to construct the class structure by themselves. In this study, we use concept map to express the structure. When they construct the concept map including the class structure, they may fall into error. We develop a support environment which visualizes their error to revise the structure by themselves. We report the evaluation of the environment in junior high school.