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Effects of Concept Map Approach on Students' Attitude and Motivation
towards Documenting Computing Capstone Projects
Article in International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning · May 2017
DOI: 10.1504/IJTEL.2017.10004865
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Int. J. Technology Enhanced Learning, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2017
Effects of concept map approach on students’
attitude and motivation towards documenting
computing capstone projects
Ayman Al-Dmour*
Department of Computer Information Systems,
Al-Hussein Bin Talal University,
Ma’an Governorate, Zip code 71111, Jordan
Email: ayman70jo@yahoo.com
*Corresponding author
Al-Mothana Gasaymeh
Department of Curriculum and Teaching,
Al-Hussein Bin Talal University,
Ma’an Governorate, Zip code 71111, Jordan
Email: mothana777@yahoo.com
Mohammed Abuhelaleh
Department of Software Engineering,
Al-Hussein Bin Talal University,
Ma’an Governorate, Zip code 71111, Jordan
Email: mkroben2002@gmail.com
Muder Almi’ani
Department of Computer Information Systems,
Al-Hussein Bin Talal University,
Ma’an Governorate, Zip code 71111, Jordan
Email: malmiani@my.bridgeport.edu
Abstract: Given their importance in assessing the objectives of computing
programs, capstone projects have been included in the present curriculum.
Through these projects, the issues in software development practice are directly
experienced by the students. This paper provided students with a full picture
of these issues by using concept maps. To present a comprehensive rubricbased documentation of this project, this paper employs a conceptual
map instructional approach and finds a significant overlap between the
management issues associated with the project management life cycle and the
technical issues associated with the software development life cycle. Although
these issues must be treated separately, they must be related with each other in
software project reporting. A questionnaire survey is employed to measure the
students’ attitude and motivation (i.e., drivers of teaching) towards using
proposed concept map to support project documentation. The survey findings
indicate that the learning motivation and attitude of students can be improved
by employing the proposed teaching approach.
Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
Effects of concept map approach on students’ attitude
71
Keywords: capstone project; concept maps; technical reporting.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Al-Dmour, A.,
Gasaymeh, A-M., Abuhelaleh, M. and Almi’ani, M. (2017) ‘Effects of concept
map approach on students’ attitude and motivation towards documenting
computing capstone projects’, Int. J. Technology Enhanced Learning, Vol. 9,
No. 1, pp.70–79.
Biographical notes: Ayman Al-Dmour received BSc in Electronic and
Communication Engineering in 1994 from Jordan University of Science and
Technology, Irbid, Jordan. He pursued MSc and PhD in 2003 and 2006,
respectively, both in Computer Information Systems in the Arab Academy for
Banking and Financial Sciences, Amman, Jordan. At Al-Hussein Bin Talal
University (AHU), he has led the Department of Computer Information
Systems, the Computer and Information Technology Center and the College of
Information Technology. His research interests are in Arabic language
processing, data compression and computer education.
Al-Mothana Mustafa Gasaymeh is an Associate Professor at the College of
Education at Al-Hussein Bin Talal University. He received a bachelor degree in
Electrical Engineering from Mutah University, a master degree in Instructional
Technology from San Jose State University, and a PhD in Instructional
Technology from Ohio University. He is interested in research in relation to
technology integration in higher education and engineering education.
Mohammed Abuhelaleh received BSc in Computer Science from Philadelphia
University/Jordan in 1999, an MS and PhD in Computer Science and
Engineering from University of Bridgeport/USA in 2007 and 2011,
respectively. In March 2011, he has joined the Department of Computer
Science in Alhussein Bin Talal University as an Assistant Professor. In
September 2012, he was appointed as the Chairman of Computer Science
Department for 2 years, and then he was appointed as the Chairman of
Computer Information System Department in addition to his position. In
September 2014, he was appointed as an Associate Dean for the School of
Information Technology at Alhussein Bin Talal University. In September 2015,
he was appointed as the Chairman of Software Engineering Department in
addition to his current position as an Associated Dean.
Muder Almiani received PhD in Computer Science and Engineering,
University of Bridgeport, USA in 2013. In 2014, he was appointed as the Chair
of Computer Information Systems Department/College of Information
Technology. He is an Assistant Professor in Management Information Systems
Department/College of Business Administration and Economics. Currently, he
is the Vice Chair of Computer/Computational Intelligence Chapter, IEEE
Jordan Section 2015. His current research interests are in database management
systems, e-government, Industrial management, and wireless sensors network.
1
Introduction
Several academic disciplines, such as accounting, construction, electrical engineering,
general education, information technology (IT), and technology management, have
successfully incorporated capstone courses into their curricula for several reasons
(Livermore and Poulios, 2008). For instance, these courses can help students easily shift
from their educational environments into the workplace. Moreover, these courses allow
72
A. Al-Dmour et al.
students to integrate their accumulated knowledge from various courses (Rosenberry and
Vicker, 2006). When appropriately designed, capstone projects allow students to focus on
what they have learned from all their courses and not solely from a single course
(Fernandez, 2006). Accordingly, students must master all skills in their curricula to
complete these projects.
Capstone projects in the computing discipline usually take the form of ‘software
engineering’ exercises that test the technical, soft, and technical reporting skills of
students. These exercises have been named ‘capstone projects’ (Clear et al., 2001) by
both the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Institution of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers Computer Society (IEEE-CS) (ACM/IEEE-CS, 2001). Technical
skills help individuals navigate through the software development life cycle (SDLC),
which involves the specification, analysis, design, implementation, testing, and
maintenance stages. By contrast, soft skills help individuals navigate through the project
management life cycle (PMLC), which includes the initiation, planning, design,
execution, control, and closing stages. These skills also contribute to software project
documentation, which describes the software, its process, and achievements, as shown in
Figure 1.
Figure 1
Software capstone project (see online version for colours)
Following the above arguments, capstone projects must be incorporated into computing
courses, particularly in the final year (Fleming, 2005; Gehrke et al., 2002; Lynch, Goold
and Blain, 2004; Newman, Daniels and Faulkner, 2003). According to (Keogh, Kathleen,
Venables and Anne, 2009), project management documentation can incorporate a sense
of realism in capstone projects. In this way, capstone projects help students face the
challenges in project development while satisfying the requirements of their program.
Project management life cycle, SDLC, and development methodology in computing
capstone projects must be treated separately despite their tendency to overlap with one
another. These aspects of the project must also be related in project documentation.
Concept maps are pedagogical tools that can help students illustrate the relationships
among concepts (Novak and Cañas, 2006). These maps mostly adopt a hierarchical
structure in which subtopics or highly specific concepts are connected to a broad,
all-encompassing concept. Many studies have identified several applications of concept
maps, such as assessment devices (Wallace and Mintzes, 1990; Walker and King, 2002;
Besterfield-Sacre et al., 2003) and planning tools (Ruiz-Primo and Shavelson, 1996; Starr
and Krajcik, 1990; Posner and Rudnitsky, 2000). Moreover, concept maps are widely
Effects of concept map approach on students’ attitude
73
used by instructional designers, engineers, technical writers, and others to organise and
structure knowledge.
In this study, concept maps are used as tools for supporting student learning instead
of teaching. As an instructional approach, concept mapping helps students communicate
their ideas, understand capstone projects and their conceptual structure, and enhance their
motivation and attitude towards learning project documentation.
This paper is organised as follows. The second section presents our approach, in
which all capstone project issues are incorporated into a single concept map. The third
section presents the experimental design, which describes the participants and measuring
tools. The fourth section analyses and discusses the results from the preceding section.
The last section concludes the paper.
2
Proposed concept map
The capstone project presents several challenges to computing students. For instance, the
SDLC and PLMC stages, as well as project documentation, are taught by different
lecturers in separate courses. In this case, the conceptual structure and relationships of
these courses are difficult to discern. Concept mapping is then proposed as a solution to
these challenges.
In the proposed concept map, SDLC is incorporated into PMLC. The former focusses
on the management phases, processes, tools, and techniques in effective project
management, whereas the latter focusses on the software engineering phases, processes,
tools, and techniques in the construction and/or implementation of IT solutions, as shown
in Figure 2. Various industries and organisations adopt different SLDC methodologies.
Other standards, such as ISO/IEC 12207, discuss the processes in establishing software
life cycle and propose novel methods for software development, acquisition, and
configuration.
Figure 2
Proposed concept map (see online version for colours)
74
A. Al-Dmour et al.
This concept map shows explicitly the relationship between PMLC, SDLC, and technical
reporting (project documentation), it helps students to see the overall structure of the
project document, facilitate its building through time and help arranging the documents
into distinct chapters. The content of these chapters is shown in concept map as shown in
Figure 3.
Figure 3
Detailed concept map (see online version for colours)
Effects of concept map approach on students’ attitude
3
75
Experiment design
This study was conducted to obtain feedback from capstone project students. The
feedback scores collected should reflect the students’ attitude and motivation with regard
to learning capstone technical reporting with the use of the proposed concept map. A
questionnaire with two components (i.e., attitude and motivation) was used as a research
tool to achieve the study objective. Figure 4 illustrates the procedure for conducting the
experiment.
Figure 4
Procedure for conducting the experiment
3.1 Research questions
The research questions that guided the work presented in this paper are as follows:
1
Is the difference between pre- and post-questionnaire scores of students’ attitudes
towards using concept maps to learn project documentation, significant?
2
Is the difference between pre- and post-questionnaire scores of students’ motivation
to use concept maps to learn project documentation, significant?
3.2 Participants
The study group was composed of selected IT undergraduate students, who enrolled in
the capstone project course in their final year. We performed a pre-questionnaire survey
before the start of a concept map instructional approach activity. We then conducted a
post-questionnaire survey after the activity ended. We then compared the differences in
the questionnaires designed to analyse the effect of concept map instructional approach.
3.3 Study tools
A questionnaire was used as a research tool to measure the attitude and motivation of
students with regard to the use of concept maps in capstone project documentation. The
76
A. Al-Dmour et al.
measuring tools in this study, which include a concept map and a questionnaire for
evaluation of the learning situation, were developed by two experienced instructors.
3.4 Instruments
The primary method of inquiry used in this study was a questionnaire. The questionnaire
consisted of three sections: A, B, and C. Three items were used in Section A to collect
information on the students’ background.
Section B of the questionnaire was developed to elicit information on the students’
attitudes towards the proposed learning approach. The students were given 15 statements,
which were adapted from the works of Rabie (2007), Mohamed and Omar (2008),
Karakuyu (2010), and Wu et al. (2012). The questions represented two attitude
constructs: attitude towards learning and usefulness. For this section, the students were
requested to specify their responses by choosing any of the five alternatives provided,
namely 1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = do not know, 4 = disagree, and 5 = strongly
disagree.
Section C consisted of three constructs (i.e., ease of use, interest, and success), which
included questions related to the students’ motivation to learn capstone technical
reporting with the use of the proposed concept map. The researchers adapted the
questions using the MUSIC model of academic motivation (Jones, 2009). This model
consists of five primary components that have been derived from research and theory as
critical components to student engagement in academic settings: empowerment,
usefulness, success, interest, and care. The model has been used as a theoretical
framework to examine the impact of instruction on students’ motivation (e.g., Jones et al.,
2011; Matusovich et al., 2011). For Section C of the questionnaire, the students were
given 12 statements, they were requested to specify their responses by choosing any of
the six alternatives provided, namely 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = somewhat
disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, 5 = agree, and 6 = strongly agree.
The researchers chose three components out of five from the MUSIC model (i.e., ease
of use, interest, and success) because the proposed learning method focusses on a
particular activity within a class. They translated the questionnaire into Arabic and
submitted it to the university’s language centre to verify the accuracy of the translation.
This study uses Cronbach’s α values to verify the reliability standard of the questionnaire
and thereby confirm its validity. Carmines and Zeller (1979) considered a Cronbach’s α
value higher than 0.80 as an indicative of an excellent educational test. In the present
work, the questionnaire yielded a Cronbach’s α value of 0.95, which indicates that the
questionnaire is reliable. Table 1 lists the Cronbach’s α value of the questionnaire.
Table 1
Dimension
Attitude
Motivation
Cronbach’s α value of the questionnaire
Item
Number of item
Cronbach’s α
Cronbach’s α
Learning attitudes
7
0.89
0.95
Usefulness
8
0.91
Ease of use
4
0.81
Interest
4
0.80
Success
4
0.90
0.93
Effects of concept map approach on students’ attitude
4
77
Finding and results
To investigate the effects of the concept mapping approach on the students’ learning
attitudes and motivation towards using concept map to learn project documentation, a
paired-sample t-test was employed to compare their questionnaire scores before and after
the learning activity, as shown in Table 2.
Table 2
Dimension
Attitude
Motivation
The paired-sample t-test scores of the pre- and post-scale
Application
M
SD
t
pt
r
pr
Pre
3.245
0.6551
−9.001
0.000
0.067
0.721
−9.957
0.000
0.201
0.277
Post
4.483
0.4435
Pre
3.551
0.8094
Post
5.096
0.5062
Note: Df = 30; N = 31.
For the students’ attitude before and after the experiment, the difference between the preand post-questionnaire means, according to the paired t-test performed, is considered as
significant (Mpre = 3.245; Mpost = 4.483; t = −9.001; pt < 0.05). These results providing
evidence that the concept map instructional approach has improved students’ attitudes
towards learning project documentation. There was no significant correlation between the
pre and post results (r = 0.067, pr > 0.05).
For students’ motivation to use concept maps to learn project documentation, the
difference between the pre and post means according to the paired t-test performed was
significant (Mpre = 3.551; Mpost = 5.096; t = −9.957; pt < 0.05) indicating that the concept
map instructional approach has promoted students’ motivation for learning project
documentation. There was no significant correlation between the pre-test and post-test
results (r = 0.201, pr > 0.05).
The results of paired-sample t-test scores related to all the constructs contained in the
questionnaire are shown in Table 3.
Table 3
Dimension
Learning
attitudes
Usefulness
Ease of use
Interest
Success
The paired-sample t-test outcomes of the pre- and post-scale
Application
M
SD
t
pt
r
Pr
Pre
3.1323
0.73729
−8.430
0.000
−0.203
0.274
Post
4.5355
0.43170
Pre
3.3710
0.68225
−8.312
0.000
0.268
0.144
−9.073
0.000
−0.037
0.843
−8.914
0.000
0.097
0.602
−7.531
0.000
0.405
0.024
Post
4.4387
0.46524
Pre
2.9194
0.82560
Post
4.5000
0.47958
Pre
3.8161
0.85327
Post
5.3452
0.52015
Pre
3.9710
1.18186
Post
5.4452
0.62174
Note: Df = 30; N = 31.
78
A. Al-Dmour et al.
It can be noticed that the proposed concept map approach seems to be effective in
promoting the students’ learning attitude and motivation towards project documentation
in terms of all study dimensions.
5
Conclusions
Capstone projects have been included in most of the computing curriculum. This is due to
their importance in evaluating the outcomes from computing programs, and its
importance in providing students with realistic systems development experience that
facilitate skills in project management, systems development, and technical reporting.
Students face many difficulties in seeing the big picture for documenting their capstone
project (i.e., technical reporting). This study adopted a concept map instructional
approach, which shows relationships and overlaps between PMLC and SDLC. It was
found that the proposed concept map learning system showed that the new approach gave
significantly higher ratings in terms of the students’ learning attitudes and motivation to
use concept maps to learn capstone project documentation.
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