Development and Practical Evaluation of Concept Mapping Software to Support Node Compression

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to focus on the “node compression” method (Saito & Tonishi, 2008) proposed in concept mapping research, and to develop software for creating concept maps that support this method. A node compression function has been newly implemented in Inagaki et al. (2001)’s software “Undo-Kun.” We carried out a practical evaluation of the software for use in science classes. In the practical evaluation, we examined the classes that used the newly developed concept mapping software with the node compression function in comparison with a control group of classes that used paper-based concept maps. The results showed the concept mapping software with the node compression function improved the user-friendliness of node compression and encouraged the activation of learners’ metacognition, and also, deepened the understanding of the learning activity “node compression”, in comparison with paper-based concept mapping.