Understanding Science with Concept Maps

Abstract

“Entendiendo las Ciencias con Mapas Conceptuales” (Understanding Science with Concept Maps) is a project that tried to develop a methodology outline to represent the knowledge that experts have in the sciences field, using CommonKADS knowledge representation methodology and CmapTools, a software tool that supports digital construction of conceptual maps, with the purpose of constructing a knowledge system as support for science learning processes, in the basic, medium, and higher education levels.
The development of this research project is framed in a Cooperation agreement between Universidad EAFIT – Línea I+D en Informática Educativa (Education Informatics) and the University of West Florida - Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), which allows the entailment of experts, such as Joseph Novak, Alberto Cañas, and Carmen Collado to the development of the project and some concept maps for specific topics.
As a result of the interaction between the research groups at EAFIT and IHMC, and the combined research process, a Science Knowledge System was developed, which contains the first collection of concept maps and a proposal for an atlas for contents indexing, these will be stored in a web server at Universidad EAFIT, and based on this the first answers to the research questions of the projects will be settled down.