Augmenting Airworthiness Education via Concept Maps: An Exploratory Study among University Students

Aerospace engineering programmes typically cover airworthiness philosophies, principles, structures, processes, and procedures. The industry has recently recognized the need to enhance the graduate engineers’ skills around airworthiness. This has led to introduction of standards acting as guides for developing curricula and content for university airworthiness courses. Concept maps, a visual mapping of concepts in a hierarchical way, enjoy wide use in engineering education (teaching and assessment). Airworthiness courses are both technical and legalistic, presenting challenges to students when it comes to understanding complex and intertwined regulations. Schematic representations of concepts can foster the cognitive processes of learning. Concept maps can assess efficiently and comprehensively a multitude of airworthiness topics. This study examines the feasibility of applying concept maps in airworthiness education. Fill-in-a-map concept maps were developed as assessment tools for an airworthiness course, covering topics in aircraft type design, production organization approvals, and maintenance documentation. They were used in tests alongside multiple-choice questions. The results were analyzed via descriptive and inferential statistics, complemented by qualitative evaluation of the concept map results. The students gained experience in concept maps, while the multiple-choice questions were present to compensate the overall test grade. Prior exposure to concept maps can assist the students to familiarize with their structure and function. The gradual increase in the concept maps’ difficulty was consistent with the increasing complexity of the airworthiness material. When concept maps are not accompanied by lists of concept words they can be challenging to complete.