Evaluation and acceptability of concept maps as a learning tool in medical studies

the use of concept maps (CM) in medical studies has been largely reported in the literature. In our context, we used to promote case-based-teaching methods but students aren't used to construct CM.

To evaluate the acceptability of using CM by the students and the reproducibility of 2 methods of scoring, a holistic and an analytic one, associated to a master map in order to assess them.

the authors supervised a 2-session-case-based-learning performed in a department of pathology. One case dealing with a real story about a colon cancer diagnosed in the musician Debussy (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debussy) was adapted and presented to the students. At the end of the first session, the students were encouraged to construct collectively a concept map. At the end of the second session, the students were asked to fulfill a questionnaire about their acceptability of the learning process. Besides, two raters scored all the concept maps using 2 different scoring methods associated to a master map. The reproducibility of both scoring systems was evaluated using the kappa coefficient.

31 students were enrolled in this study with a mean age of 21 years. The raters evaluated 8 CM. The kappa coefficient reached a value of 1 in the holistic scoring and a value of 0.46 in the hierarchical scoring indicating respectively a very strong and a moderate agreement between evaluators. 15 students reported their satisfaction about the use of CM collectively. 10 students expressed their will to use CM individually, 17 students felt that using the CM collectively made them feel to belong to a group but without expressing their own knowledge and reflecting their progress.

our study highlighted the acceptability of using concept maps in medical studies and the possibility of reaching valid and reproducible scoring methods especially when associating a master map.