The effects of knowledge maps versus list-style lecture aids and cooperative versus individual review strategies were investigated. Eighty-five undergraduates viewed either knowledge maps or lists while hearing a lecture on descriptive statistics, then reviewed the information alone or with a partner, using either maps or lists as review aids. Dependent measures were free recall and scores on a multiple-choice test including factual versus application-level items. Other measures included self-reports of prior knowledge and confidence, and repeated-measures ratings of comprehension and predicted test performance. Recall performance was influenced significantly by the interaction of format with confidence; that is, less confident students were helped by having maps while more confident students did better with lists. An analysis of notetaking behaviours revealed that map-users annotated their handouts significantly less than list users. Also, the metacognitions of map-users with regard to their comprehension and predicted performance were less accurate than list-users, as shown by correlations between self-ratings and test scores. Map-users with low confidence had the least accurate metacognitions.
Learning strategies are based on the cognitive perspective of a learner as an active, selective agent whose existing knowledge structures and skills must be engaged for meaningful instruction to proceed. For the most part such strategies as summarizing, paraphrasing, organizindre-organizing information, and comprehension monitoring have been shown to be beneficial for readindstudy tasks. These same strategies should also improve learning in lecture situations, where students commonly employ rote strategies during both notetaking and review . The purpose of the study reported here was to adapt learning strategy principles to lecture learning by implementing two potentially interactive approaches: knowledge maps as devices for organizing lecture information, and scripted cooperation as an active review strategy.
Knowledge maps are two-dimensional node-link diagrams for representing information. The nodes typically contain key ideas, while the links convey interrelationships among the ideas. Structurally, knowledge maps are similar to concept maps or semantic maps , but knowledge maps differ from these other graphic devices in their explicit and systematic use of a well-defined set of link types for specifying the relationship