Assessing evolving conceptual knowledge in software engineering students

Is it more important to "collect more knowledge" or to gain an understanding of how concepts relate so that a sustainable learning structure is formed? Active learning proponents would suggest it is more important to create a durable conceptual foundation by which new experiences are assimilated to grow the personal knowledge base in an orderly, well-formed way. But how can one assess that this is happening? In our project-centric courses we have adopted concept maps as a technique for evaluating the evolution of student understanding of conceptual knowledge in software engineering. This paper motivates the application of this existing technique in software engineering education, and presents a concept mapping assessment protocol based on a unique expert ranking process. An instance of the protocol implementation with results is presented and preliminary conclusions drawn.