Graphic organizers are an effective method for both teacher and students to assess students’ understanding of a particular concept or fact. Students can organize the information as they understand it into several different form of graphic organizers, including concepts maps, diagrams, word webs, or idea balloons.

Students should be encouraged to use whatever method or organization they are most comfortable with.

Pros

The use of graphic organizers helps students to organize all of the information that they have learned into an easily referenced graphic form. It enables them to focus on and review the information that they have learned.

Graphic Organizers also allow lecturers to review student understandings in a relatively quick manner.

The lecturer can determine if a certain portion of a topic needs to be reviewed (say too many students are not making the connections the lecturer intended).

When students work in pairs to create these maps there is a dynamic interplay of their ideas as they construct these maps.

A concept map is a diagram of the concepts of a unit (usually shown in circles) and the interrelationships between them (usually drawn as lines connecting two or more concepts).

Purpose:

By examining students’ concept maps, lecturers discover their concept understandings and misconceptions.

Lecturers can assess students’ growth by having them complete a concepts map at the end of the lesson/unit for comparison with initial understanding of material. This is a powerful tool for showing progress. Concept maps can also be used for summative assessment when students are given a list of words and are required to show the relationships between the words through the use of arrows and connecting words.

Pros

Students organize materials better – focussing on how concepts relate to one another.

Students are more likely to observe how new concepts are related to their prior knowledge.

Learning the material becomes more meaningful and schema development is facilitated.