Concept Maps and mind Maps

Concept-Mapping
Postscript
Portable Document Format

The term ``mind map'' and ``concept map'' are used interchangeably. However there are differences:

The difference between concept and mind maps is that a mind map has only one main concept, whilst a concept map may have several. Moreover, the primary role of the mind map is as a note taking technique whereas the concept map is an educational tool used to:

• explore prior knowledge and misconceptions,
• encourage meaningful learning to improve students' achievement,
• measure concept understanding

Mind Mapping©, developed (and copyrighted) by Tony Buzan, describes mind maps as consisting `` of a central word or concept, around the central word you draw the 5 to 10 main ideas (child words) that relate to that word. You then take each of those child words and again draw the 5 to 10 main ideas that relate to each of those words.''

Buzan 89

Buzan, T., Use Your Head. London: BBC Books, 1989.

This revised edition provides all you need to know about mind maps.

Novak and Gowin 1984

Novak, J.D and Gowin, D. B., Learning How to Learn. Cambridge University Press, 1984.

The concept mapping technique, developed by Prof. Joseph D. Novak, is based on the theories of David Ausubel, who stressed the role of prior knowledge in the learning of new concepts.

Following an introduction on meaningful learning, the authors present a comprehensive description of concept and V maps. The final chapter presents their ideas on improving educational research.

Articles on Concept maps

Stuart 1985

Stuart, H. A, Should Concept Maps Be Scored Numerically?. European Journal of Science Education, 7(1), 73-81, 1985.

Reviews the use of concept maps in research, instruction and assessment. Presents a variant of (Novak Gowin and Johansen 1983)'s system of scoring concept maps. Acknowledges the deficiencies of current scoring schemes, concluding that a more holistic and qualitative scoring technique needs to be developed.

Pendley et. al. 1994

Pendley, B. D., Bretz, R. L. and Novak, J. D., Concept Maps as a Tool to Assess Learning in Chemistry. Journal of Chemistry Education, 71(1), 9-15, 1994.

In this paper the authors describe their use of concept maps, derived from student interviews, in the investigation of concept understanding pre and post instruction.

Adamczyk and Wilson 1996

Adamczyk, P and Wilson, M, Using Concept Maps With Trainee Physics Teachers. Physics Education, 31(6), 374-381, 1996.

In this paper the authors report their use of concepts maps, to identify knowledge gaps, in the physics understanding of trainee teachers.

Zieneddine and Abd-El-Khalick 2001

Zieneddine, A. and Abd-El-Khalick, F., Doing the Right Thing Versus Doing the Right Thing Right: Concept Mapping in Freshman Physics Laboratory. European Journal of Physics, 22(5), 501-511, 2001.

In this paper the authors report that the use of concept maps serve, ``as a crucial step in promoting concept understanding through revealing students' naive conceptions''. However, to be useful, they need to be ``coupled with teaching strategies that aim at inducing conceptual change''. In addition, the authors report that those students who used, pre and post laboratory, concept maps scored higher in concept tests. However the difference, over the control, was not statistically significant.

Nicoll et. al. 2001

Nicoll, G., Francisco, J. and Nakhleh, M., A Three-Tier System for Assessing Concept Map Links: A methodological Study. International Journal of Science Education, 23(8), 863-875, 2001.

This paper presents a novel approach to coding and assessing concept maps. The analysis of a map consists of three levels:

Utility

Here links are classified as incorrect, incomplete or useful

Stability

This represents students confidence in their information

Complexity

is a measure of the predictive ability of a link (not the number of links).

The authors believe that this method, of coding concept maps, yields more information about students' knowledge structures and how they learn information.

Novak Gowin and Johansen 1983

Novak, J. D., Gowin, D. B. and Johansen, G. T., The Use of Concept Mapping and Knowledge Vee Mapping with Junior High School Science Students. Science Education, 67(5), 625-645, 1983.

Discusses and evaluates the use of concept and vee mappings as teaching/learning strategies and as evaluation measures for these strategies.

Otis 2001

Otis, K. H., Metacognition: A Valuable Aid To Understanding For Medical Students In Problem Based Learning. Ph.D Thesis. University of Glasgow, 2001.

In this study, medical students were taught how to develop concept maps as an aid to learning. The work explored and demonstrated the use of concept maps as a tool to aid meaningful learning. The author found that, for a given student, the structure of their concept maps was, in general, constant between subject areas. He also reports that concept maps are not appropriate for assessment purposes, because the complexity of a map does not appear to be correlated with concept understanding: Some of the simplest concept maps were produced by the most able students.

.

Additional references relating to both concept maps and mind maps can be found here.