VARIETIES OF CONCEPT MAPPING

Åhlberg, Mauri. University of Helsinki, FINLAND.

Handout in the Poster session of The First International Conference on Concept Mapping, University Of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain,  September 14 – 17,  2004,

Email: mauri.ahlberg@helsinki.fi,

Homepage: http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/bg/people/ahlberg/kotisivu/default.htm

 

 

There are many versions of concept mapping. The elements of an improved method of concept mapping are as follows:

1) All concepts are main elements of thinking and learning, and they are always inside frames. 

2) Novak and Gowin (1984) and Novak (1998) prefer very short verbal labels for concepts. However, concepts sometimes require many words in order to be correctly labeled. There is no accurate limit on how many words may be included in a concept label. In an improved concept map as many words as are needed are used to name the concept accurately.

3) In order to have a meaningful proposition, all links between concepts have arrowheads to show in which direction the connection from one concept to another is to be read.

4) The expressions connected to links may be short or long, but they must accurately express the thinking of the person whose thoughts are concept mapped.  The essential point is that the link includes a verb expression and the resulting proposition is meaningful and more or less true, plausible, probable, et cetera.

5) You may connect pictures, videos, sounds, et cetera to concept maps.

6) Whatever learning theory is used, you may still use concept mapping because it is as general a method as is speaking or writing. Everything that is spoken or written may be transformed to concept maps, and all good concept maps may be easily transformed back to ordinary speaking or writing.

7) Good concept maps are often hierarchical.  This is often sound and economical, but not always. The same effect could be better achieved if the most important concept is sometimes in the center of the concept map but sometimes somewhere else, as long as that choice can be justified to be the best option. Then, we may imagine the center of the concept map as the top of a pyramid seen from above. It is good to remember that the world is a system, and therefore, sometimes the best presentation for the world and its part systems are conceptual systems, which are not always hierarchical. 

8) In a good concept map each concept is mentioned only once, similar to a good geographical map in which each place is named only once.

9) If each concept is only mentioned once on the concept map, then it is easy to count how many links each concept has to and from other concepts. The number of links with other concepts is a good estimate of centrality of that concept in the thinking of the person whose thoughts are concept mapped. 

10) Sometimes it is useful to be able to read a concept map only in the order that you intend it to be read.  It may not always be from top to bottom.  For example, it may be a transformed part of a textbook, and the order in which propositions are read is important. Then you may add to each link a number showing the order according to which the propositions should be read.


 

 

VARIETIES OF CONCEPT MAPPING

Åhlberg, Mauri. University of Helsinki, FINLAND.

Handout in the Poster session of The First International Conference on Concept Mapping, University Of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain,  September 14 – 17,  2004,

Email: mauri.ahlberg@helsinki.fi,

Homepage: http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/bg/people/ahlberg/kotisivu/default.htm

 

 


 

 

 

Figure 1.  What is shared and what is different in two creative varieties of concept mapping.  The most central concept in this concept map is ‘The improved method of concept mapping’, because it has more links (seven links) with other concepts than any other concept in this concept map.