The effects of Gowin's Vee heuristic diagramming and concept mapping on meaningful learning in the radiation science classroom and laboratory

The effects of Vee heuristic diagraming and concept mapping utilization during classroom and laboratory learning by college level nuclear medicine technology students were investigated in this study. Meaningful learning was evidenced by group performance gains, positive attitudinal preferences, and student misconception identification and remediation.;The effects of the learning intervention on group performance gains were calculated for two groups of 16 students each. The effect size was a moderate to large effect of 0.66. An ANCOVA was conducted for group performances using the student's SAT score as the covariate. The group differences were significant at the 0.05 level. There were no significant differences based on gender.;ANOVA analyses were conducted to test for SAT category efficacy. There were significant differences based on SAT category (p = 0.024), with the groups falling into the low and moderate SAT categories showing the greatest gains in using the learning intervention (effect sizes of 0.81 and 0.77, respectively).;Attitudinal preferences toward Vee diagraming and concept mapping were identified. After 21 weeks of using the learning intervention, 72% of the respondents could agree with, or did not oppose Vee diagraming and concept mapping as a learning modality.;A qualitative analysis of the learning intervention was conducted. The student Vee diagrams and concept maps were successfully utilized as interaction guides in order to identify student misconceptions, and to successfully facilitate remediation in the form of a cognitive congruence between the student and the instructor.;The convergence of the quantitative and qualitative analyses indicated that this learning intervention did encourage meaningful learning, as seen in group performance gains and remediative teacher-student interactions, and as such, confirms the Ausubel-Novak-Gowin theory of meaningful learning.