Assessment

Concept-mapping: an instructional tool

Concept maps are visual images that help the learner to clarify links between new knowledge and prior knowledge. Concept maps help the students to organize scientific concepts and ideas to show their understanding of the relationships among the concepts. As an alternative assessment, the concept map produced by students allows the teacher to assess individual student achievement or small groups. Concept maps reveal the students' line of reasoning and whether or not students have any misconceptions about the topic they are studying.

Steps to build a concept map:

1. Identify the key concepts in a paragraph, research report, or chapter, or topic areas and list them. Limit the number of concepts to 8 to 12.

2. Place the most inclusive or main concept at the center or at the top of the map. Look for ways to classify the remaining key concepts.

3. Connect the concepts by lines.

4. Label the lines with one or a few linking words which define the relationship between the two concepts so that it reads as a true statement.

5. There is no one way to draw a concept map. Students' concepts maps indicate they way they relate the scientific concepts they are studying.

6. As the students' understanding of relationships between concepts changes, so will their maps.

Activity: Design a concept map to show your understanding of CO_{2 ,} a greenhouse gas, and its past and future effect on climate. Use the following concepts or and others that need to be included:

fossil fuels
deforestation
clouds
atmospheric water vapor
ocean
CO₂
Industrial Revolution
longwave solar radiation
shortwave solar infrared radiation
evaporation
transpiration
greenhouse gas concentrations
ice
albedo
photosynthesis
human activity
feedback loops (positive and negative)
global warming

See web site Concept Mapping: a learning theory-based instructional tool for instructions on How to Build Concept Maps.

Additional concept map activities:
See web site Part III - Learning Activities Supporting Students Understanding of Trace Gas Investigation

Sites to evaluate scientific process/experiments:

See web site Kansas Science Olympiad Experimental Design Evaluation Rubric to evaluate experiments.

See web site Sample Experimental Design Rubrics to evaluate experiments.

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