Concept Mapping

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Concept Mapping

• Making Sense of Relationships

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Overview

• Is a way of representing or organizing knowledge
• Show relationships between concepts, including
  bi-directional relationships
• Divided into nodes and links
• Nodes (often circles) represent various concepts
  
• Links (lines) represent the relationships between
  concepts
• Words are used to label the links in order to
  explain the relationships

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Overview (Cont.)

• Is a visual graphic that represents how the
  creator thinks about a subject, topic, etc.
• It illustrates how knowledge is organized for the
  individual
• Identify the way we think
• Illuminate faulty views
• The teacher who constructs concept maps is
  interested in students understanding the
  relationships between facts, not just "knowing"
  the facts

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Implications in Teaching

• Excellent planning devices for instruction
• Helps teachers to know what it is that they want
  students to be able to learn
• Instead of asking, "What do I want to teach," the
  emphasis is on, "what do I want students to
  learn?"

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Advantages in Teaching

• See areas that appear trivial
• Discover the themes you want to emphasize
• Understand how students may see or organize
  knowledge differently from the you
• Helps you identify concepts that are key to more
  than one discipline

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Advantages in Teaching (Cont.)

• Helps you select appropriate instructional
  materials
• Visually explain the conceptual relationships
  used for the objectives in any course
• Provide a basis for discussion among students and
  to summarize general course concepts
• Concept maps support a holistic style of learning

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Advantages in Teaching (Cont.)

• Mapping concepts can increase your ability to
  provide meaningfulness to students by integrating
  concepts
• Mapping the concepts can help you develop courses
  that are well-integrated, logically sequenced,
  and have continuity

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Steps in Making Maps

• Write down major terms or concepts about a topic
• Identify the most general, intermediate, and
  specific concepts
• Begin drawing the concept map
• Concepts are circled
• Place the most general concepts at the top
• Place intermediate concepts below general
  concepts
• Put specific concepts on bottom
• Draw lines between related concepts
• Label the lines with "linking words" to indicate
  how the concepts are related
• Revise the map

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Suggestions

• Use a top down approach, working from general to
  specific or use a free association approach by
  brainstorming nodes and then develop links and
  relationships
• Use different colors/shapes for nodes links to
  identify different types of information
• Use different colored nodes to identify prior and
  new information
• Use a cloud node to identify a question
• Gather information to a question in the question
  node

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Relationship to Constructivist Learning

• Knowledge does not exist "out there" in an
  objective reality
• Knowledge is actively constructed from within the
  learner
• Learner comes into a new situation with prior
  knowledge (Schema). New knowledge is learned
  through the integration with prior knowledge.

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Principles

• Learning is a constructive activity that students
  have to carry out
• Students are active learners
• Teachers task is to provide students with
  opportunities to construct knowledge
• Provide meaningful, authentic activities to help
  students construct understanding relevant to
  solving problems
• Collaborative groups should be used so that
  students can test their understandings and expand
  understanding of particular issues

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Principles (Cont.)

• Teachers need to "establish explicit linkages for
  students between new information taught in class
  and students' past and future experiences....Teach
  ers summarize, review, and link main concepts at
  critical points throughout and at the conclusion
  of units and lessons"
• Teachers must challenge the learner's thinking
  (alternative frameworks, preconceptions)

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Advantages in Teaching (Cont.)

• Concept maps help "teachers design units of study
  that are meaningful, relevant, pedagogically
  sound, and interesting to students"
• Concept maps help "the teacher to explain why a
  particular concept is worth knowing and how it
  relates to theoretical and practical issues both
  within the discipline and without"

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How Concept Mapping Fits?

• Learners construct their own understanding of
  concepts
• Learners illustrate their own thought-processes
  based upon their prior experience with the
  subject matter
• Teacher can use maps to challenge student
  assumptions about relationships

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Examples
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Examples
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Examples
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Examples
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Resources

• Concept Mapping http//www.cotf.edu/ete/pbl2.html
• The Concept Mapping Homepage http//users.edte.utw
  ente.nl/lanzing/cm_home.htm