The Use of Concept Mapping to Promote Meaningful Learning in a Real Estate Continuing Education Environment

This paper presents the results of a quasi-experimental research in Continuing Education in Real Estate, conducted in ! the MBA/USP-Facilities Management course, at the Real Estate Management discipline. The research objective was to verify the effectiveness of using concept maps as evidence for formation of subsumers, thereby leveraging a meaningful learning. The methodological procedure was to apply to MBA students, in three different times, activities that involved the drafting of concept maps about specific topics of Real Estate Management. The result is a clear trend between the concept maps produced at the time 01 (diagnostic evaluation) and at the time 02 (three months later) but, more importantly, is the fact that after more than six months the time 02, or 09 months of beginning of the investigation, when the same activity took place (time 03) in another context, students were able to develop concept maps as complex as the time 02. This finding supports the assertion, often found on adult education literature, that the use of concept maps that contributed to the knowledge acquired du! ring the course were actually anchored in the students' prior knowledge, consolidating itself as new subsumers then in his cognitive structure. Because of being a single experiment, and due the non-randomization of the elements, this research does not provide sufficient evidence for a generalization of the findings, but provides evidence that supports the didactic-pedagogic use of concept maps in Real Estate education, as a way to cope with the heterogeneity of MBA students.