Learning with concept maps: a study to measure change in learning in undergraduate Chinese marketing students

This paper explains the use of a novel method for assessing the extent to which student learning occurred during instruction. Concept maps were used to measure the change in learning following a two-week intensive undergraduate Marketing Principles course delivered to 162 Chinese students undertaking a Bachelor of Business Administration program in China in 2010. Using four scoring procedures (breadth of knowledge, relational quality, structural quality and holistic quality), student learning is assessed in terms of prior and new knowledge, as well as improvement in knowledge structure. Further, concept map scores are correlated with traditional measures of overall student performance. The results provide strong evidence for improvement in students’ ability to externalise new learned concepts resulting from intensive instruction.