Introducing and validating concept map - based tests for the assessment of students’ academic performance

The Use of concept maps as academic assessment tools has been in the focus of attention of researchers and educators for decades. The aim of this paper is introducing and validating the methods of concept maps as academic assessment tools. Techniques for drawing and completion of the concept maps (free and guided) were introduced here and indicators of content validity, criterion validity, discriminative validity and interrator reliability of these methods were investigated. The research sample consisted of 221 second grade high school students of Tabriz from 8 classes in 2008-2009. academic year. Findings generally showed that concept map-based tests have high content validity. These tests also have different values of correlation with the average value of .50 with a multiple test. All concept map-tests could distinguish correctly the differences between the grades of high achiever and low achiever students. Also the results showed that all concept map-tests have high interrator reliability. Comparing the four test methods showed that the guided completion method has the highest content validity and the interrator reliability. On the other hand, the free drawing method has the highest criterion validity and discriminative validity, comparing to other three methods.