Teachers regularly hear that “concept maps help students learn.” While that advice gives us a useful starting place, it also lacks specifics. Just off the top of my head, I’d like to know:
- should students make concept maps on their own, or in pairs or groups?
- how scaffolded should the process be? Do I provide the outline and have students fill it in, or should they start with a blank piece of paper?
- do concept maps help students in all grades? In all subjects?
- does additional learning last more than a day or two?
And so forth.
I’ve found a study that answers most of those questions. The headlines:
- the form of the concept map matters and
- the timing of collaboration matters
In fact, the right combination of those variables produces striking gains in recall — compared to the less effective combinations. Here’s the story…
Formative Assessment, Instructional Design
In this study, led by Dr. Cristina Amante, 226 college students spent fifteen minutes reading two passages about educational theory. One passage covered “formative assessment”; the other, “instructional design and classroom activities.”
They then processed those readings in one of four ways:
- One group received a partially completed concept map, and had to fill in the rest.
- Another group received a complete concept map with ideas and links deliberately mislabeled. They had to move those ideas around to correct the map.
- The third group had to construct a concept map from scratch.
- The final group — as an active control condition — summarized the passages.
Each of these four groups contained three subgroups.
- Subgroup A did this process entirely by themselves. That is: they built their own concept maps, then answered questions about the passages.
- Subgroup B started working individually, and then collaborated. That is: they built their own maps, then met with others to discuss and rebuild and update their maps.
- Subgroup C started collaboratively, then worked individually. That is: they worked together to build the concept map, then answered reasoning questions on their own.
With twelve combinations in all, the researchers could compare both map format and collaboration timing. To do that, they first measured the students’ comprehension with a multiple-choice test. And then a week later, they asked students to come back and write down everything they could remember. (This step strikes me as extra impressive. Education research rarely measures results a week later.)
A Clear Winner
Rather than overwhelm you with data from twelve different groups — and two different tests! — I’ll cut to the chase:
These college students recalled the most when they built concept maps from scratch — first individually, and then in collaboration with others.
Depending on which measurement you’re tracking, this group scored up to twice as high as the lowest-scoring group: those who simply summarized.
In many ways, this finding aligns with consistent evidence from cognitive science. For instance, the “generation effect” tells us that students learn more when they create their own representations of ideas. They can generate by drawing, or acting out an idea, or explaining to someone else, or … yes … creating a concept map. (The Ensers have an excellent book on generation, by the way.) For this reason, I’m not surprised that creating a map from scratch results in more learning than completing a partial map.
The opportunity to compare maps collaboratively also makes sense. If my map and your map differ, we can debate the relative merits of our maps: a debate that should help us both learn more.
Before I sound too confident, I want to highlight one small — and one large — limitation in this study.
First: 226 students might sound like a lot. However, divided among twelve different groups and subgroups, that number rapidly dwindles. Teachers can certainly take note of studies with fewer than twenty students per group, but we shouldn’t translate their conclusions into iron rules.
10-Year-Olds and 20-Year-Olds
Beyond this procedural note, another of this study’s limitations ought to get our attention as well. Most research in psychology and education relies on college students as participants. We’re always happy to know how college students learn best, but we should remember that age and academic experience do matter. A study strategy that works well with college students might not work so well with younger students.
I’ve quickly reviewed the concept-map research field more broadly. We can use these conclusions to hone the advice given above.
First: yes, concept maps do help students learn. Our best evidence is in science classes, and for students in grades 6-12. Primary school students don’t seem to benefit as consistently.
Second: students need practice and guidance. That is: unlike these college students — who learned from concept maps even though they didn’t have much experience with them — grade 6-12 students need to be taught how to create them. And, they need practice with them.
Third: as with everything else in education, working memory load matters. If students don’t know much about a topic, they’re likely to experience overload. In these cases, using guided concept maps will be a useful scaffold until students gather background knowledge and mapping experience. Equally important, abstract topics create a higher working-memory load than concrete ones do. Such topics would also benefit from guided concept maps.
These caveats fit comfortably in the concept of “desirable difficulty.” We want our students to think hard; their concept mapping work should be cognitively challenging — that is, “difficult.” But if their hard thinking becomes too hard, we call that experience “working memory overload.” Of course, overload is “undesirable.”
Concept maps, then, are not a magic strategy that works universally. Used thoughtfully — with the right balance of independence, collaboration, and support — they can be a powerful way to help students organize and remember what they learn.
Amante, C., Lucero, M., & Montanero, M. (2026). Learning with concept maps: the effect of activity structure and the type of task. Instructional Science, 54(1), 12.
