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[Diagrams, concept- and mind-maps]

Concept- and Mind-mapping

Click on the branches for the commentary

What are they?

They are simply kinds of diagrams or maps of conceptual rather than physical fields.

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May have more than one central point and show how topics relate to each other in multiple ways. They are more flexible and less hierarchical than mind-maps, perhaps more suited to diagramming networks of connections. (But who cares about the labels? In many cases this is a distinction without a difference.)

"Strict" concept-mapping (as developed by Novak—see link on the right) has two main features;

hierarchical differentiation runs from top to bottom (like organisation charts and family trees)
and the links between concepts are labelled (e.g. "includes", "is affected by")

Labelling the links makes quite a lot of difference, and changes the way in which concept maps are likely to be used, in comparison with mind-maps. They have to be built up more thoughtfully, and are more suited to occasions of "thinking through", and "trying to get a handle on" a topic, than to quick mapping of a lecture, for example.

Try using them as an exercise; get the topics and sub-topics written on post-it notes (I'm sure that's someone's trademark) and then arrange them and re-arrange them (better, get students to do it) on a white-board, and when the arrangement makes "sense", label the connections. It's a great revision exercise.
Need to keep them? Use a digital camera or even a mobile (cell) phone to photograph them, and make them available to students on a Virtual Learning Environment, blog, or web-page.

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Mind-maps

As appropriated by Tony Buzan (who seems to think he invented them; "mind mapping" is apparently a registered trademark of the Buzan organisation), are concept maps branching from a single central node; they are not as flexible as concept maps, but may be easier to manage by students in lectures, which notionally start from a single topic.

Note that much of the popular advocacy for mind-mapping makes a meal of pseudo-neuro-scientific mumbo-jumbo about the left and right brain, etc. While the research referred to may have been undertaken, it does not necessarily demonstrate the claims made for it, and in any case it is unnecessary. (Concept-mapping deploys similar arguments, but more moderately and plausibly.)

Mind-mapping is structured, task-related doodling, that's all. Psychologically, it requires you to think about where to put new branches, as well as what to note, and thus assists you semantically to relate topics to each other. Reading it back, the positioning helps recall the connections. There's no need to claim anything else.

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How can I use them?

How can you not? The main point is their capacity to reflect how we think. Few of us are totally linear and serial thinkers. If I look at any page of my note-books, I find I have naturally drawn connecting lines between ideas and topics; a concept map is simply an extension of this to lay out points visually. [Back]

Get students to use them

Many students will have been introduced to them at school, but may feel that they are not appropriate in the rarefied academic atmosphere of a university. Not so. They are a great way of organising lecture notes, particularly in the way in which they reflect the priorities of the subject.

Everyone's concept map of a topic will be different, and that's desirable. While there is quite a lot to be said for lecturers using them, it is the act of creating them which is more important than having a definitive "authorised" version. [Back]

To keep track

You can use developing and evolving concept-maps throughout a lecture (or a sequence of lectures) to show which topics have been covered (here in green) and which are current (here in yellow). They can of course start in a very basic form and be elaborated with new branches and connections as you go along. [Back]

Promoting relational thinking

Creating your own mind-map requires decisions about how topics relate to each other, and the nature of the connections between issues at the same hierarchical level, which encourage work at least at the multi-dimensional level of the SOLO taxonomy, and probably at the relational level as well.

Presentation packages tend to encourage us to reduce material to an unremitting barrage of bullet-points, gobbets of information related only by the order of their introduction (which is often not that important anyway), and it can be argued that this fragmentation of knowledge discourages making connections. Anything which re-connects material into a coherent body of knowledge is to be welcomed. [Back]

Stuff on concept mapping can be found here

and go here for free concept-mapping software

Edward Tufte on why "PowerPoint is evil"

Pedigree

Pace Tony Buzan, look at a mediaeval "mappa mundi"; we tend to regard such maps as geographically naive, but they are as much about world-views as views of the world. They are firmly in the tradition of concept- and mind-mapping. Another source credits Leonardo da Vinci with inventing them. Concept maps, as diagrams, have been around for hundreds of years; Comenius' Orbis Pictus (1658) was probably the first to introduce labelled pictures into an educational text. David Ausubel's (1968) idea of the "Advance Organizer" was elaborated into concept mapping by Novak and Gowin in 1984 for what it's worth (sorry, my academic side's getting a bit out of hand here.) [Back]

On mappa mundi

Technical issues

There is a great deal to be said for drawing such maps by hand; hand-drawn versions are far less constrained by the technical limitations of software, and are easy to annotate and expand (and rub out if done in pencil or on the whiteboard).

If you are doing one yourself, why not build it up on a whiteboard or flip-chart as a live parallel to pre-prepared material on the projector? (Or, of course, you can use an interactive whiteboard, if you have the facilities and the skill)

When taking reporting-back from small groups for an exercise where you know roughly what to expect, use a concept-map to organise the reports; it structures the material very effectively.
But keep them as simple as possible, for these purposes.

Dyslexic learners often find mind-maps friendly, because the location of the text on the page provides an additional clue to its meaning. [Back]

Cautions

Some people can make neither head nor tail of them; respect that. There's no obligation to use them.
It is easy to overload them, both in content and connections; if using them in a presentation, and they are going to get complex, always start with a simple version and build it up. Apart from anything else, the text can get too small to read in a lecture.
They are cryptic; don't rely on them exclusively
Colour is an important feature of many maps; but show consideration to students who may have a degree of colour-blindness.
Much of the literature about mind-mapping in particular is tied up with "accelerated learning" (in the UK/European rather than US sense), which is an idea which has many enthusiastic advocates but so far not much of a rigorous and dispassionate research base, particularly in higher education. Since it involves a lot of effort on your part, don't be seduced at the moment! [Back]

See "What works..."

and "Innovations"

Software

There is a lot of mind-mapping software available if you need to prepare maps on a machine, although simple concept maps in particular can readily be prepared in a simple drawing package, including those available in presentation applications within office suites.

The maps on this site were prepared with MindManager. Other similar commercial packages are available, but note:

FreeMind is a free, open-source package (which requires Java on your machine—but don't worry, it's easy to install). It is not as visually flexible as some other packages, but it's great for starters.
BrainBox from Peter Smee is now a suite of programs in the same area, and still free. (The site is a frame, so use the left-hand column to navigate.) He also promotes "accelerated learning".

Incidentally;

How come mind-mapping and free-form concept-mapping has only been around for about 20 years? Particularly in the light of the point above about the "Mappa Mundi"? A correspondent suggested in passing that it has a lot to do with graphics and printing technology.

"I have always thought that the shape of theoretical models has been limited/determined by the 'graphics packages' that happened to be available to the author/publisher at the time [including simple rulers, compasses, stencils and pens—remember them?]. It's not that people in the 1950's thought only in triangles and circles - it was just that it would cost a lot more to produce books or articles with more elaborate diagrams."

I can relate to that. I remember a publisher's editor, as late as the mid-'80s, asking me whether vertical lines were really necessary in some tables, because typesetting them was such a hassle.

The correspondent is Roger Greenaway, whose excellent site on experiential learning is here.

To reference this page
copy and paste the text below:
(Note that if you are using Internet Explorer, and it is doing its "nanny" thing, the full reference will not display. There will be a bar across the top of the screen advising you of "blocked content". Click on it and select "Allow blocked content" and confirm in the pop-up box. I know it's a pain, but we're stuck with it.)

ATHERTON J S (2005) Teaching and Learning: [On-line] UK: Available: Accessed:

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