A New Model for Educational Program Assessments Using Automated Collective Concept Maps

This paper presents: Epistemological principles; the origins and theoretical foundations of concept maps; the current state of related works; the contributions, methods, results, and future road map of this research; and A New Model for Educational Program Assessments. An understanding that knowledge results from an evolution of cognitive structures enables a scientific approach to enhance the efficiency of learning. Building on prior works, this research provides a novel algorithm and tool to automatically create Collective Concept Maps from Individual Concept Maps by utilizing a dictionary, thesaurus, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence, and domain expertise. Abstraction Filters enable rapid and accurate analysis of learning effectiveness at both the group and individual level. This research serves as the foundation for Longitudinal Studies in A New Model for Educational Program Assessments.