Assimilative Learning with the Aid of Cognitive Maps

Assimilative learning is understood as integrating new information into existing knowledge or cognitive structures without restructuring the current schema. If new information causes inconsistencies, cognitive efforts are necessary to reorganize or to accommodate the old knowledge. Thus, assimilative learning is more efficient and economic. Nonetheless a stable and most notably a correct memory representation which “spans” the knowledge space is essential. The current article highlights the logic of assimilative learning and shows how building elaborately a basic structure as well as the assimilative integration of new information can be eased with the aid of cognitive maps. Such a didactical scenario can be easily implemented in the field of eLearning and thus, is adaptively and automatically supporting the learning