Meaningful learning occurs by integrating new information into their prior knowledge. The use of concept maps is a didactic strategy that can be used in the evaluation because it is useful for assessing the student’s knowledge. In other words, concept maps are an excellent basis for self-assessment because they allow the development of critical thinking and autonomous learning skills. The Conceptual Map is applied in teaching, learning and evaluation.
In teaching, it is used to present information in a visual way, provides an overview, points out important ideas, provides sequencing of content, and can be used as a pre-organizer. In learning, as it is an elaboration process, it allows teamwork, requires intellectual effort, awakens affective involvement, promotes responsibility, favors the organization of ideas and stimulates creativity.
And in the evaluation, it is used for the assessment of knowledge, showing the degree of initial knowledge and the degree of learning; it reveals misunderstandings and misconceptions and enables awareness of meanings. All this favors finding meaning in the program content necessary to achieve meaningful learning. The course is designed in a very simple way where the teacher will carry out guided activities and examples that will allow the process to be exercised and internalized.
Through a mind mapping app, the teacher can give feedback to the student about the successes and failures that they have (relationships of the scheme that each of the students has made with respect to the content), it also allows them to see some aspects that serve as a basis for eliminate possible misunderstandings.
If we recognize that some of the main aspects of the use of concept maps in teaching are the detection of misconceptions and the recognition of a certain level of learning, then there can be a reasonable expectation that concept maps are considered a reliable method, for teachers, to integrate the evaluation and instruction of our students. Concept Maps allow diagnosing the strengths and weaknesses of students.
It can also be used at the time of formative assessment: when the student makes significant learning and draws up a new map, it is very easy to assess the improvements in the degree of significance of the ideas.
On the other hand, the structure of the mental map tries to be an expression of the functioning of the global brain with its associative mechanisms that favor radiant thought in the specific field of reception, retention, analysis, evocation and control of information. The stimulation of this thought is enhanced with the use of color, images and symbols.
Creativity and imagination contribute to all this. The mental map, then, enhances the capacity for memorization, organization, analysis and synthesis. It is useful for any activity in which thought intervenes, and which requires considering alternatives and making decisions.
We can summarize the meaning of mental maps stating that they are a graphic representation of an integral and global learning process that facilitates the unification, diversification and integration of concepts or thoughts to analyze and synthesize them in a growing and organized structure, made with images, colors, words and symbols.