Easymap was designed to support concept map exams.

Easymap for Students

Years of research went into creating a student interface that easy to use for almost all students. First, you create an account (all that is really needed is your name, email address, and password). Then you will go through a brief, online guide on how to use Easymap. Once done with the guide, you'll have a practice area you can use to familiarize yourself with the software and its various options and controls. For exams, faculty can give you a password to access their course(s) and a different password to access each exam.

Once you open the practice area or an exam, your interface will have three tabs: concept map, outline, and list of sentences. You can move between these at any time. Some options and editing controls are only available in one of these views.

Because different browsers follow different rules, we recommend using Chrome.

Easymap for Researchers and Faculty

Easymap facilitates grading concept maps in a number of ways:

1. Easymap will count the number of sentences students have entered. We recommend that each prompt you use for a concept map indicate your expectations for how many sentences should be included.
2. There is a grading area where you can judge whether the sentences are correct, incorrect, vague, irrelevant, etc. btw, want to use graders? You can and the software will calculate to the degree of similarity of judgments and use consensus to determine correctness.
3. Before grading, you can create a list of concepts (single words or phrases) that should be included in the map. Easymap will count how many each student includes.
4. Easymap also uses the mathematics of graph theory to calculate the number of trees in each map. If the entire map is made up of connected, true sentences, then the number of trees is 1. If the student does not connect ideas well or non-correct sentences break up their map, the number of trees will increase.
5. You can download a table of students and their measures and use it in weighing and determining grades.

Creating an Easymap exam can be as easy as creating an esssay exam and much easier than creating a multiple choice exam. Easymap scoring is much, much faster than grading essay exams and most students agree that the grades are much more objective than grades of essay exams. Unfortunately, the current version cannot machine grade correctness and appropriateness of sentences so you will need to spend some time scoring and deciding what weight to give various variables as you grade.