Assessing the Gains from Concept Mapping in Introductory Statistics

Lee

Journal of Statistics Education

2020

One of the main goals of statistics is to use data to provide evidence in support of an argument. This article will discuss some popular forms of writing assessments currently in use, to demonstrate the differences between the methods for structuring the students' learning to support their arguments with evidence. We share a model, which was originally created to assess students in introductory statistics and has been adapted for the second course in statistics, which takes a unique approach toward assessing the students' understanding of statistical concepts through writing. In this model, students are expected to answer prompts that required them to (1) take a stance on an argument, (2) defend their position with facts given in the prompt, (3) discern the implications that those facts implied, and (4) give a proper conclusion to their argument. We provide examples of a few of the writing assignment prompts used in the course, their intended assessment purpose, and common answers that students gave to these assignments. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Section: Writing Assignments Already In Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Writing Assignments to Assess Statistical Thinking

Lee

Journal of Statistics Education

2020

“…The aim of the study is in line with previous research-"to increase our understanding of how different mapping techniques affect the representation" [11]. Statistics and data analysis are often used in concept mapping studies (e.g., [16][17][18]) because they have terminological agreement and strong theories with abstract and more technical concepts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…A lot of knowledge structure studies use statistics as a domain (e.g., [16,18,33,41]). Firstly, statistics has strong terminological agreement.…”

Section: Knowledge Structure In Statistics Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Concept Maps with and without a List of Concepts Differ: The Case of Statistics

Kapuza

2020

Education Sciences

Concept mapping is a popular tool for knowledge structure assessment. In recent years, both the amount of research about concept maps and their measurement ability have grown. It has been shown that concept maps with different types of tasks, for instance, links between concepts given or selected by a respondent, provide information about the different aspects of students’ knowledge structure. This study explores features of concept mapping with and without a list of concepts. At first, eleven masters students constructed concept maps with a topic on statistical data analysis and, after three weeks, repeated the task with the same topic and a predefined list of concepts. Both types of concept maps were evaluated using traditional scoring indicators and indicators from the network analysis. All indicators were tested for significant differences, and then the content of these maps was analysed. Results show that the list of concepts forced respondents to construct more connective maps, which is related to a more developed knowledge structure. Moreover, it is easier for them, when including even abstract concepts, to define their role in the domain. However, respondents use concepts and group them in different ways depending on the instruction. It seems that respondents feel a “list stress”, which leads to differences in the content. These findings demonstrate the possibilities of using different concept mapping tasks for learning and assessment.

“…Hayes (1992: 203) adds that mind mapping can reduce the struggles faced by students when writing by providing them with a systematized strategy at the beginning of the writing process. Besides, mind mapping can serve as a medium to increase students' motivation, including at higher levels of education (Doorn and O'Brien, 2007). The following is an example of a mind mapping procedure (Buzan, 1993; The University of Adelaide, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reinforcing Students’ Short Functional Text Writing Skill Through Mind Mapping Technique

et al. 2022

This research is generally aimed at problem-solving and improvement attempts for students’ writing skill, especially in short functional text writing. In particular, it is also expected to contribute to the betterment of the teaching and learning processes of the Short Functional Text Writing subject in the Department of English Education (DEE) in the Faculty of Teacher Training and Education of Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta and as an alternative technique in teaching the subject for the lecturers. Class Action Research (CAR) is applied to identify whether using mind mapping can help reinforce students’ skill in writing short functional texts. The subject of this research is the first semester students who are being taught Short Functional Text Writing subject. The researchers gathered the data from two cycles in a qualitative manner. The data were obtained from the observation, the results of the tests and the questionnaire. The results of this research are that the students’ motivation increased since they could harness their creativity in making a variety of mind maps from different media and the students’ comprehension about short functional texts improved since mind mapping could help them understand the materials