The quality of first-year dental students' cognitive structures and the factors that influence it

In health professions education, it is widely recognised that concept mapping helps students organise their knowledge. This study aimed to investigate the quality of first-year dental students' cognitive structures and the factors that influence it. Two approaches (qualitative and descriptive) to analysing student concept maps are described in this article. The qualitative approach emphasises the distinct morphologies (structures) that are considered to indicate the level of understanding. The descriptive approach provides information on the content's richness in terms of concepts and key concepts.

A total of 31 first-year dental students participated in this study. In an introductory session, students drew their first concept map (CM) using Cmaptools software. Then, students created and submitted individualised CMs for four course topics. Qualitative and descriptive approaches to analysing concept maps are valuable because they highlight what students have learned and how they organise and structure knowledge through CMs. To determine students' cognitive structures and explore the evolution of their representations over the four course topics, two examiners analysed the CMs' morphology and content.

Students presented various cognitive structures for the same topic. The quality of concept maps seemed to be influenced by the topic, as well as by familiarisation with making CM.

Concept mapping revealed the organisation of students' knowledge. This study explored the structural (morphology) and content analyses of CMs. The quality of the CMs seems to be affected by the nature of the topic.