Concept mapping applied to design

This paper covers an overview of the uses of concept mapping in a senior design course at Vanderbilt University. Concept maps have been used as a semi-quantitative measurement tool for evaluation of student understanding of the information content and interrelationships at three different points during a year long course. These maps may be compared with those generated by graduate students and the course instructor. Concept maps have also been used to assist students in the generation of contradiction maps for project design solution search methods. Concept maps are also being used to introduce chapter topics to classes, using and overview map to introduce the topic and a complete map at the end of the chapter to completely describe the contents and concepts of a given chapter. The effects of this mode of introduction and summarizing will be the topic of several years of classroom investigation.