Concept Maps as Knowledge Assessment Tool: Results of Practical Use of Intellligent Knowledge Assessment System

Concept maps as a pedagogical tool have stable positions in education being used for teaching, learning and knowledge assessment. The paper gives an insight into essence of concept maps and their usage for knowledge assessment. The concept map based adaptive intelligent knowledge assessment system (IKAS) is described. The kernel of IKAS is the intelligent knowledge assessment agent which is implemented as a multiagent system consisting from the agent-expert, the communication agent, the knowledge evaluation agent and the interaction registering agent. The knowledge evaluation agent compares a teacher’s and a learner’s concept maps on the basis of graph patterns and assigns score for submitted solution. Four years long experimental use of IKAS allowed gathering student opinion about concept maps as knowledge assessment tool and the functionality of IKAS. The paper presents the summary of evaluation results of both aspects collected from students’ questionnaires.