Making Meaningful Connections with Automatically Generated, Dynamic, and Interactive Concept Maps

Abstract

In this four-article dissertation, I propose and examine the use of an educational technology, Dynamic and Interactive Mathematical Expressions (DIME) maps, to improve learning of physics. Receiving feedback from courses, conference and journal proposals, peers, and faculty helped me decide on methodological approaches for the articles in this dissertation. The coalescence of my professional and academic experiences guided my literature reviews and framed my interpretation of the various methodological analyses displayed in this dissertation. Each of the four articles have been published or submitted for publication in a journal prior to the defense of this dissertation.

Chapter one of this dissertation serves as an introduction, chapters two through five consist of the four journal articles, and in chapter six I reflect on the intellectual merit and broader impacts of this body of research. My intent with the first research article is to present a practitioner example of using DIME maps to teach physics. I also presented how DIME maps can fit together with the engineering design process and project-based learning to promote guided exploration of physics concepts. The second article focused on a randomized experimental study I conducted in 2018. In the second article, I used a multivariate analysis of variance and found that using DIME maps had a multivariate effect on the dependent variables: conceptual understanding and self-efficacy in physics. In the third article, which reported on a study conducted in 2019, I examined the correlations and determined that students who made greater use of the DIME maps generally had higher growth in self-efficacy in physics. In the fourth study, I meta-analytically examined the data from 2018–2020 and concluded that using DIME maps has a positive effect on students’ cognitive growth but not on affective growth, in terms of self-efficacy in physics. Further investigation is needed to examine whether differential effects would be experienced by specific populations or under differing conditions of implementation.