Graphic organizers such as concept maps improve comprehension and retention with a medium average effect; that novices benefit more rests on a few small subgroups¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 2 studies · 2 quant-synthesis r2 · q4 · i2 medium
Currency · newest study 2018 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Graphic organizers — visual displays such as concept maps, advance organizers, and structured diagrams that depict relationships among ideas — are claimed to help novice learners comprehend and retain new material by making structure explicit and reducing the burden of building a mental model unaided.

Subclaims¶

q4 i2 Across 67 effect sizes from 55 experimental and quasi-experimental studies (Grade 4 to postsecondary), learning with concept maps was associated with better knowledge retention (g = 0.60), but studying a preconstructed map instead of text, lists or outlines gave a smaller benefit (g = 0.37), and effects were highly heterogeneous. → Nesbit & Adesope 2006

q4 i2 In the few studies that presented maps to learners split by a median on prior knowledge or verbal ability, low-ability learners benefited (g = 0.40, k = 5) and high-ability learners did not (g = −0.13). The subsets are small and underpowered, so this supports the novice framing only weakly. → Nesbit & Adesope 2006

q4 i2 A later meta-analysis of 142 effect sizes (n = 11,814) found a moderate overall benefit of concept and knowledge maps (g = 0.58). Creating maps (g = 0.72) helped more than studying them (g = 0.43), and the effect held in both STEM and non-STEM domains. → Schroeder et al. 2018

Evidence¶

Nesbit & Adesope 2006¶

Nesbit, J. C., & Adesope, O. O. (2006). Learning with concept and knowledge maps: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 76(3), 413–448. doi:10.3102/00346543076003413

q4 · meta-analysis · i2 · medium effect, g=0.60 overall (0.37 for studying maps) · n=55 studies (67 effect sizes, 5,818 participants) · quant-synthesis · r2

A meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies in which students from Grade 4 to postsecondary built, modified or viewed node-link diagrams (concept maps) in science, psychology, statistics, nursing and other domains, with recall and transfer posttests. The overall weighted mean effect was g = 0.604 (k = 67). It was 0.819 when learners constructed maps and 0.373 when they studied preconstructed maps against text passages, lists or outlines. Heterogeneity was significant in most subsets. For the few studies that split learners at the median on prior knowledge or verbal ability, the effect was g = 0.404 for low-ability students (k = 5, N = 188) and −0.133 for high-ability students (k = 5, N = 186). The authors caution that these comparisons are low-powered, and that the results cannot show that maps fail to help higher-ability students.

Schroeder et al. 2018¶

Schroeder, N. L., Nesbit, J. C., Anguiano, C. J., & Adesope, O. O. (2018). Studying and constructing concept maps: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 30(2), 431–455. doi:10.1007/s10648-017-9403-9

q4 · meta-analysis · i2 · medium effect, g=0.58 · n=142 effect sizes (11,814 participants) · quant-synthesis · r?

A random-effects meta-analysis of 142 independent effect sizes on learning with concept and knowledge maps. The overall effect was moderate and statistically significant (g = 0.58). Creating concept maps (g = 0.72) produced a larger benefit relative to comparison conditions than studying them (g = 0.43). Maps outperformed other instructional comparison conditions in both STEM and non-STEM domains. Read from the abstract only, so it gives no information on prior-knowledge moderators.

Studies bearing on this claim¶

Does studying a provided organizer improve comprehension and retention over the text alone, and for whom? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 4 narrower claims that bear on it: 9 distinct studies (4 quant-synthesis, 4 causal, 1 review), q1–q4, 4 of 9 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Discussion¶

The mechanism most often proposed is a reduction in extraneous and intrinsic load: novices lack the prior knowledge to infer how ideas relate, so an external visual structure supplies that scaffolding — consistent with cognitive load theory and with the function of advance organizers. Graphic organizers also exploit dual-channel processing, pairing verbal and visual codes as described in dual coding theory.

Several moderators are plausible from general reasoning about scope. Benefits should be largest for learners with low prior knowledge; for experts, an imposed organizer may be redundant and could interfere with a preferred, better-organized schema — the expertise reversal pattern documented for worked examples (see expertise reversal effect). Organizers that merely decorate rather than depict relational structure, or that are so dense they themselves overload working memory, would be expected to lose their advantage — the same coherence concerns captured in irrelevant material hurts learning. Finally, an organizer is likely most effective when learners actively engage with it (completing, revising, or generating it) rather than passively viewing it, paralleling findings on annotating and chunking.

Related Claims¶

• Advance organizers improve learning. — advance organizers are a canonical type of graphic organizer
• Chunking reduces working memory load. — organizers work partly by chunking related ideas into one visual structure
• Irrelevant material hurts learning. — decorative or overloaded organizers can backfire
• Cognitive overload degrades learning. — the load condition organizers are meant to relieve
• Dual coding theory — verbal-plus-visual coding is a proposed mechanism for organizer benefits
• Concept mapping improves learning over most comparison conditions by a moderate average amount, but not over time-matched retrieval practice — related
• Adding relevant pictures or graphics to text improves learning from it, with a small pooled effect on reading comprehension, though whether dual coding explains the benefit is disputed — related
• Learner-constructed graphic organizers are not shown to outperform provided ones: the one direct test, with college readers, favoured provided organizers on transfer — related
• Story Mapping Improves Comprehension — related
• Learning is an initiative construction of meanings completed by the interaction of learners' old and new knowledge — a broader claim this one bears on
• Building the concept map supported teachers' reflection, helping them synthesize what students should learn and iterate on their plans — related
• Basic DCT mechanisms can be used to model diverse educational phenomena — a broader claim this one bears on
• Well-organized texts following rhetorical schemata are better remembered than disorganized texts, and high-structure information is more likely to be recalled — related
• In the few studies that split by ability, learning techniques helped low-ability students and not high-ability students — related
• Triads with access to each other's concept maps were more efficient in collaborative problem solving — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Concept mapping has a moderate overall positive effect on science achievement for elementary and secondary students (g = 0.776) — related
• Self-generated concept mapping benefits learning from grade 4 onwards with similar effect sizes across grades 4–8, 9–12, and college — related