CONCEPT MAPS
Concept maps seem to come in a great many variations. The most traditional
sort has 'concepts' (which are presumed to be nouns) joined together by
arrows that are labeled with actions (verbs). An example is shown below
I find there are several difficulties with this style. First,
often the concept you wish to describe is a verb, not a noun (in fact,
if you don't mind an outrageous generalization, physiological concepts
are mostly 'verbs' while anatomical ones are mostly 'nouns'). Second, from a
pedagogical standpoint -- certainly from our standpoint -- the important
relation between concepts is which depends on which; in other words which
concept needs to be understood first. Finally, there's the question of
level of detail; do you show the forest or the trees.
After wrestling with these problems and several abortive attempts, I
have come up with the following variation:
- All concepts, be they nouns or verbs, go in a box.
- Unlabeled arrows represent the order in which they must be understood.
In other words, the arrow goes from the more fundamental concept to the
one which is built upon it.
- A 'view from 50,000 feet' diagram represents only the major concepts
(corresponding roughly to sections in the overall organization
of materials). Each of these is represented by a 3-dimensional box
to indicate that it has a more detailed map associated with it.
- The detailed view explains the lower-level concepts that relate to
that topic.
Here is an example of such a high-level concept map. I found that a business
flowcharting program (such as Visio or ABC FlowCharter) is very helpful
for producing such diagrams.
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This page last updated 16.VIII.98 by Robert Stephenson.