What Is Concept Mapping In Education?
What are concept maps? – Concept maps are visual representations of information. They can take the form of charts, graphic organizers, tables, flowcharts, Venn Diagrams, timelines, or T-charts. Concept maps are especially useful for students who learn better visually, although they can benefit any type of learner.
- They are a powerful study strategy because they help you see the big picture: by starting with higher-level concepts, concept maps help you chunk information based on meaningful connections.
- In other words, knowing the big picture makes details more significant and easier to remember.
- Concept maps work very well for classes or content that have visual elements or in times when it is important to see and understand relationships between different things.
They can also be used to analyze information and compare and contrast.
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What is purpose of concept mapping?
What is the purpose of a concept map? – A concept map is a way to convey concepts, ideas, and pieces of information visually. Concept maps help you understand the relationships between various ideas, see how concepts are connected, discover related concepts, and organize your findings logically and visually.
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How is concept mapping used in teaching and learning?
concept mapping
Concept Maps and Curriculum Design – Concept maps can be used as excellent planning devices for instruction. Edmondson, 1993, describes the importance of using concept maps to develop the curriculum for a veterinarian program: “Concept maps are effective tools for making the structure of knowledge explicit, and our hope is that by using them in our planning.the material will be more accessible and more easily integrated by students” (p.4).
- The type of curriculum described by Edmondson is based on constructivist principles.
- It is both problem-centered and student-centered.
- Instead of asking, “what do I want to teach,” the emphasis is on, “what do I want students to learn?” Martin, 1994, conducted a study in which he taught education majors to use concept maps to make lesson plans.
The teachers in the study found the maps quite useful for the development of course plans. “Our students view concept mapping as giving teachers a more comprehensive understanding of what they are preparing to teach, eliminating sequencing errors, and enabling teachers to develop lessons that are truly interdisciplinary” (p.27).
By constructing a concept map, you can see areas that appear trivial, that you may want to drop from the course. You can discover the themes you want to emphasize. You can understand how students may see or organize knowledge differently from you, which will help you better relate to the students and to challenge their ways of thinking. The mapping process can help you identify concepts that are key to more than one discipline, which helps you move beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. Concept maps help you select appropriate instructional materials. You can construct a map that incorporates teaching strategies as well as time and task allocations for various parts of the course. You can visually explain the conceptual relationships used for your objectives in any course. You can facilitate efforts to reconceptualize course content. Rather than being a traditional course plan that assumes students will integrate learning, concept maps depict the intentions of faculty – the integration you expect to occur. You can use concept maps to provide a basis for discussion among students and to summarize general course concepts. Concept maps support a holistic style of learning. Mapping concepts can increase your ability to provide meaningfulness to students by integrating concepts. Concept maps can increase your potential to see multiple ways of constructing meaning for students. Mapping the concepts can help you develop courses that are well-integrated, logically sequenced, and have continuity. Concept maps help “teachers design units of study that are meaningful, relevant, pedagogically sound, and interesting to students” ( Martin, p.28). 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” (Allen, et al).
What is concept mapping strategy?
Concept maps are a powerful tool for identifying relationships among ideas you learn in class. Understanding these relationships and depicting them visually can help you learn course material at a much deeper level and retain it better, too. Concept maps are highly personalized and provide an opportunity to organize course material in a way that makes most sense to you, There are many ways to make concept maps, find an approach that works for you. Here’s the general idea: 1. Start by brainstorming the main big-picture ideas you want to study.
This is not a list where the order matters, it’s just a brain-dump list. Look through chapter headings, lecture notes, and other class material to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything major. You can make your list digitally, with pencil and paper, on note cards, or even on small scraps of paper.
2. Choose an idea from your brain-dump list. It can be an idea that:
you think is important (the title of the chapter or lecture, for example), was covered in class most recently, you feel most confident about, or even just a random one.
3. Put that idea down on paper or on a whiteboard or chalkboard, sort of in the middle. People usually like to but a box or circle around each term—it helps the terms stand out, and it’s oddly satisfying.4. Now, go through your list of terms.
What other terms are connected in some way to the one you just used? What sorts of relationships do you see?
The relationship could be a hierarchy, a timeline, small things going to large things, or something else. You might not know what relationship you’re going to identify until you look at your list of terms! If you’re feeling stuck this is a great time to work with peers or go to office hours, You might identify different relationships than people you’re studying with, that’s ok. It can be useful to try to understand why your study partners are thinking differently than you. You don’t necessarily need to agree, but do check to make sure you’re not operating with misconceptions or misunderstandings of the material.
5. Come up with “linking terms” that explain how you see the ideas being related to each other.
Linking terms are important for seeing relationships and connections. If you can’t come up with a linking term for an idea, try moving the idea around to different spots until you can.
6. Arrange and re-arrange all of the ideas you identified on your brain-dump list until the way you have them organized makes sense to you.
You may find you want to hold off using some ideas for a different concept map, and/or you may find you want to add some you hadn’t thought of initially.
7. When you are studying for exams it can be effective (and for some people also super fun) to geek out and make giant concept maps that put together smaller concept maps you’ve made throughout the semester. References: Holschuh, J. and Nist, S. (2000). Active learning: Strategies for college success.
Use of Concept Mapping to Improve Problem Solving Concept Mapping: An Effective, Active Teaching-Learning Method The Effect of Concept Mapping to Enhance Text Comprehension and Summarization The Effect of Concept Mapping on Students’ Learning Achievements and Interests Linking Phrases for Concept Mapping in Introductory College Biology
