Concept Map question type for Moodle

Question type for Moodle which uses a Concept Map editor for students to draw CMs as answers

Version: 1.4.0

Author: Jorge Villalon (villalon@gmail.com)

Release notes

1.4.0: Fixed bug showing concepts and relationships in random places when locale for integers included decimals. Tested on Moodle 2.5. 1.3.2: Added hack to fix Moodle's $USER->lang representation (all in lowercase) to support country specific languages (es_CL, us_GB, pt_BR, etc.). 1.3.1: Added support for brazilian portuguese (pt_BR). 1.3: Changed language files and form for compliance in Moodle 2.4.

NOTE

This question type release has been developed and tested for Moodle 2.7 and 2.8 in MySql. It is based on the essay question type by The Open Univeristy.

Introduction

Concept Maps (CMs) are widely used in education as a way to visualize a person's knowledge (typically a student). CMs are usually drawn by students on paper, or using a software tool like CmapTools or MindMap.

However, there was a need for a web based Concept Map editor, that allows students to create their maps with no software installations required.

As part of my doctoral work on technology applied to education, I wrote the code for a web based Concept Map editor called 'CmapWeb', that implements a very simple interface to work with CMs.

I have integrated CmapWeb with Moodle 2.1 so it is easier for teachers to create Concept Mapping activities for their students. It was integrated as a question type, so you can just add a quiz, and create a Concept Map question and add it to the quiz. That will give you all the useful features in Moodle quizzes (start and end dates, time frames, grading, etc.)

Installation

I guess you already unzipped the conceptmap.zip file so you are reading this document. If that is the case, simply copy and paste the folder in your moodle question type folder (e.g: moodle/question/type/). You will recognize the folder because it contains several other folders for question types like 'essay' and 'multichoice'.

Once you copied the file, simply login as administrator in Moodle and browse to Site administration->Notifications

Acnkowledgments, suggestions, complaints and bug reporting

I'll be happy to get any useful feedback from you. Please feel free to email me, my name and email address are in the top of this document.