The concept map is graphical representation to allow people to present their conceptual knowledge. The concept map consists concept words, links, and link labels.
Concept map has been used to capture conceptual change for learners. It also has been used to compare expert knowledge structure with novices. We use Cmap to capture searchers’ knowledge structure on search topics.
This figure shows the concept map drawn by a participant for the environment topic. The node enclosed dotted line show the center node. The nodes enclosed red line with the same number show that the participant checked these nodes as having the same meaning..
We divided nodes into three types.
These graphs show the average number of common, lost and new nodes in each scenario of the two topics. Blue bar shows the divergent scenario and red bar shows the convergent scenario. We found significant differences among three types of node. The number of common nodes was less than the other two types of nodes. Regardless of the scenarios and topics, concept maps dynamically changed before and after searching. We also found significant differences between search topics. The number of lost and new nodes in travel topic was more than those in the environmental topic. These indicate that concept map in travel topic changed greater than those in environmental topic.
To analyze differences in the position of each node, we defined distance in each node. Distance in each node is measured by the number of links from the center node to each node. In this figure, "local government", "ministry of environment" nodes are distance 1 and "auto mobile", "home" nodes are distance 2 and "infections", "pollution" nodes are distance 3.
Moreover, to clear the differences between scenarios and topics, we calculated the amount of change for each distance from the pre to post-search concept maps by subtracting from the number of nodes at each distance in post-search map to those in pre-search map. If the number of nodes in distance n in the post-search map is more than those in the pre-search map, amount of change N is positive value. If the number of nodes in distance N in the post-search map is less than those in the pre-search map, amount of change N is negative value. In these maps, amount of change in each distance is as follows.
These graphs show amount of change at distances 1, 2, 3 and 4 or more for the two topics in each scenario. We found significant differences between two scenarios. The amount of change at distance 1 and 2 in the divergent scenario were greater than those in the convergent scenario. The amount of change at distance 4 or more in the convergent scenario was greater than those in the divergent scenario. Differences also found among distances in the convergent scenario. The amount of change at distance 4 or more was greater than the other distances.