Effectiveness of Information Organizing Activities After Lecture in Mathematics: A Comparison Between Kit-Build Concept Mapping and Structured Summary Writing

Abstract

Teaching mathematics could be a challenging task because the students are expected to understand many interrelated concepts and abstract representations (e.g., mathematical symbols). Some learners, especially those with weaker mathematical foundations, may fail to grasp the relationship between important concepts in the subject. To address such an issue, one of the typical learning strategies is providing structured summary writing (SSW) as an information organizing activity to improve learners' understanding and retention of knowledge through explaining relevant concepts using their own words. However, low-achiever learners who do not have sufficient ability to identify and extract important concepts from the learning materials may have difficulty writing a good summary, thus minimizing their improvement due to a high cognitive load. Despite their potential for enhancing mathematics learning, prior studies have reported some challenges in using summary writing and traditional scratch concept mapping. In this study, kit-build concept mapping (KBCM) is proposed as an alternative to help learners improve their understanding of mathematics through reconstructing a teacher-created concept map from provided components. KBCM scaffolds learners to grasp the structure of the knowledge domain without requiring them to extract the structure from scratch by themselves. The results from an experiment involving 105 undergraduate computer science students from two linear algebra classes confirm the potential of the KBCM to be a better alternative for improving learners' overall understanding of a mathematics subject compared to the typical SSW activity. Some characteristics of KBCM and SSW are discussed.