Deriving Individual and Group Knowledge Structure from Network Diagrams and from Essays

This chapter focuses on two somewhat fundamentally related ways to elicit knowledge structure, network diagrams (usually as concept maps), and essays (see Chapter 4, this volume). Because of the utility of the proven Pathfinder Network approach and its well-established research base, we developed software to convert concept maps and essays into data representations that can be analyzed with Pathfinder software. Our initial research focused on computer-based methods for scoring concept maps (e.g., Clariana, 2002) and since concepts maps are frequently used in classrooms to replace outlining as an organizational aid for writing essays, we became interested in measuring the relationship between concept maps and the essays derived from these maps (Clariana & Koul, 2008; Koul, Clariana, & Salehi, 2005), and so it was a natural progression to develop software based on our concept map scoring approach to score essays (ALA-Reader, 2004). This chapter begins by describing Pathfinder network analysis and then describes the ALA-Mapper and ALA-Reader scoring approach. Next the investigations with these two tools are reviewed, and finally suggestions for future research are provided.