Effekte metakognitiver Prompts auf den Wissenserwerb beim Concept Mapping und Notizen Erstellen

On the one hand, students take notes in most courses of university studies to foster their learning. On the other hand, many scientific papers suggest that concept maps facilitate learning more effectively than notes. However, this conclusion has not been confirmed by empirical studies yet, as a strict comparison between concept mapping and note taking - as a typical learning strategy in university studies - has not been carried out so far. Moreover, research shows that students have problems controlling their learning process during concept mapping. 129 biology students participated in an experimental intervention study. Using a 2 x 2-factorial design, we investigate whether the availability of metacognitive prompts (prompting vs. no prompting) has an effect on students' conceptual knowledge structures when learning by concept mapping vs. by taking notes. Our results show that taking notes improved students' conceptual knowledge structures more efficiently than concept mapping. Metacognitive prompts influenced learning in particular when concept mapping was used, whereas they influenced learning only marginally when taking notes. Finally, we derive recommendations for concept mapping training from our results.