Assessing College Students’ Spatial Concept Knowledge in Complexity Levels

This study probes undergraduate students’ spatial concept knowledge and their comprehension. The researcher scored undergraduate students’ concept maps by evaluating the quality of interrelationships between concept nodes. The results of statistical analyses indicate that map scores are significantly different between the three complexity levels of spatial concepts, and the hierarchy of students’ comprehension matches Golledge's ontological lexicon. These results imply that the scores of concept maps decrease as the complexity of spatial concept increases.