Learning Maps

Learning maps, a subset of concept maps, are organizational graphs to represent and present information in terms of relationships between the different parts of a map constructed as a gestalt system where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Concept maps and learning maps are visual abstractions of mental “places” and their connections to each other to give users a better grasp of knowledge landscapes. Such cognitive maps can be divided into two intersection types: maps to organize and analyze information and maps as education tools, with the latter further subdivided into maps for learning and maps for assessment. Learning maps therefore are spatial instructions to facilitate more self-modifying learning through dynamic adaptive processes with multiple alternate nodes and pathways to realize specific goals. This entry further discusses how learning maps are used for learning and assessment and the relationship of learning maps to systems thinking.

In education, learning maps as a learning aid can be used to lay out a study or lesson plans, to help with problem solving, and to master concepts and content. For example, these maps can be used for constructing main elements of a problem or problems with the steps needed for arriving at a solution and for making summaries of content and of key concepts contained in textbooks. Unlike traditional outlines that order content, concepts, and procedures as linear lists with little association with the listed items other than perhaps temporal relations, learning maps organize information as dynamic structures in which different content, concepts, and procedural nodes are interconnected by logical, heuristic, associative, hierarchical, and other relationships.

It has been argued that learning maps teach a different way of acquiring knowledge that can be correlated with systems thinking. This open-ended and holistic cognitive mode is important because [Page 957]students and teachers cannot rely exclusively on thinking processes that are linear, fragmented, and reductionist to deal with today’s complex problems. Learning maps can be a tool to promote learning as a process that allows for taking different pathways toward different ends.

By regarding the overall process of learning as a systems map, learning maps have the ability to organize information according to structures as changing holistic parts that serve as interacting nodes as parts of a dynamic system that can contract or expand depending on learning objectives. Learning maps complement and reinforce systems thinking in that these maps are graphic devices that represent system characteristics such as open and infinite expandability, interconnected dynamic structures, and multiple parallel flows to lay out different paths leading the student to higher orders of thinking such as evaluating, hypothesis making, and thinking in highly abstract patterns.

Although there have been numerous studies on concept maps as assessment instruments, few studies have been specifically dedicated to learning maps as such. Nevertheless, what research exists on learning maps as a tool to measure academic achievement is not without significance. For example, a group of researchers at the University of Kansas has been researching the use of Dynamic Learning Maps (DLM) to assess the cognitive ability of students with significant cognitive challenges, with results that may be extended to measure cognitive ability, in general. The DLM alternate assessment researchers constructed learning maps as assessment maps because traditional multiple-choice testing does not allow students to fully demonstrate their academic knowledge or knowledge potential.

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