The impact of concept mapping in reducing cognitive load of students

Abstract

The study was conducted to show the impact concept mapping has as a teaching strategy in an attempt to reduce cognitive load of first year biology students of St. Dominic’s Senior High School. In the study, the students were taught how to construct concept maps on classification of plants. A convenience sampling technique was used to select a sample of sixty (60) in-tact class of form one biology students in the school. An observation was used by the Researcher to collect data and analysed them. The results showed that the students were able to construct concept maps correctly. In an attempt to reduce cognitive load of students, the concept maps drawn by the students help summarised information needed to be learned by students. It identified and corrected misconceptions. It presented concepts in an orderly manner that promoted easy recall of learned information. These showed that concept mapping was more effective in reducing cognitive loads of students and so improve student’s performance.