Active Learning Strategy: Concept Mapping

A concept map is a flowchart or diagram that shows the inter-relationships among concepts (ideas, images, or words). It is a graphical tool for representing and organizing knowledge. Concept mapping assists learners in understanding the relationships as they construct a visual map to illustrate the connections.

Concepts are usually enclosed in boxes, triangles, or circles. Links or connecting lines demonstrate relationships, with direction denoted by an arrow symbol. The connecting lines can be unidirectional, bidirectional, sideways, up and down, or oblique.

Concept mapping is a holistic approach to learning in that it utilizes both brain hemispheres – the right (creative) side as well as the left (analytical) side. The words, lines, colors, and images stimulate the brain, in visual, kinesthetic, and writing/ graphical pathways.

This innovative learning strategy allows students to visualize the connections between ideas, make new connections that they had not considered before, and construct a logical but not overly rigid conceptual framework that can easily incorporate more knowledge as it is acquired. It also helps students see the “big” picture – not just the minute details. Learners can visualize how the scattered ideas or concepts form the larger whole.

Concept mapping can accomplish several purposes:

• Generate ideas
• Communicate ideas
• Facilitate understanding
• Integrate new with old knowledge
• Create a structure for complex ideas
• Expose misunderstandings

Concept maps are multidimensional, not linear and unidimensional, like the traditional careplan. Assessment data, nursing diagnoses, patient goals, nursing interventions, and evaluatory criteria can be creatively integrated in multiple ways within the diagram. In the clinical setting, the patient is the central theme of the concept map. In our college of nursing, we have abandoned the traditional careplan for the clinical concept map, with positive results.

Because both sides of the brain are utilized, concept maps facilitate meaningful understanding of complex concepts and relationships, especially with visual and kinesthetic learners. New ideas are anchored in the mind to old material that the student has already mastered. These graphical representations promote critical thinking by engaging the student. Concept maps also serve as an excellent way for educators to evaluate learners’ critical thinking, because they visually represent students’ conceptualization of the content material.

Nursing students face great challenges to assimilate ever-increasing amounts of knowledge. Concept maps actively promote understanding, by helping learners connect relevant content in a meaningful way to long-term memory. They are extremely effective learning tools because they are fun, interactive, and flexible, and easily adaptable to many settings. They are also dynamic and mirror real-life clinical settings. Priorities can instantly be changed, as needed.

In summary, concept maps are innovative learning tools to prepare students for decision-making in our diverse and complex world. I have attached an example that we use in our college of nursing.

References

Online Instruction: Active Learning Strategies

Critical Thinking Strategies: Concept Mapping

The Concept Mapping Homepage

Kinds of Concept Maps

The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them