Generating and Analyzing Collective Concept Maps

Title: Generating and Analyzing Collective Concept Maps Mentor: Dr. Debbie Perouli

Summary: Concept maps are visual representations of the knowledge pertaining to a topic. They are commonly used in education to evaluate and enhance one’s understanding of a concept. Apart from the established value of individual concept maps, the mentor has designed a methodology to create collective concept maps, which are maps that capture a group’s understanding on a topic. In this project, the REU fellow will develop an automatic process that generates a collective map out of individual concept maps. The fellow will then evaluate the effectiveness of collective maps by analyzing maps created by K12 students and teachers on the topic of cybersecurity.

Student Research Activities: - Survey graph tools and identify appropriate platforms for the development of the collective concept map creator. - Perform data cleaning and visualization on the K12 supplied concept maps. - Analyze individual concept maps manually, compare the results to the collective map output and reevaluate the collective map design process. - Draw conclusions on the K12 group understanding of cybersecurity (e.g. students vs. teachers).

Student Background: Students need to have basic computing knowledge and introductory programming skills.