Using concept maps#

Concept maps are flexible: you choose the format to fit the material and the task, not the other way around. A branching argument wants a different layout from a process or a set of causes, and part of the skill is matching the map to what you’re trying to do with it. In this module I provide you with some general guidance and tips for using concept maps, including:

• Creating concept maps. General guidance for creating and revising concept maps.

• Using concept maps for learning and memorizing. How to make the most of your concept maps for learning and memorizing new information.

• Using concept maps while studying. Some ideas for using concept maps to improve study habits.

• Using concept maps as a teaching tool. Some tips for teachers using concept maps.

• Keeping limitations in mind. Concept maps are just one way to improve learning. There are many others.

 Creating concept maps#

Study and practice will make constructing concept maps second nature for you. Below are some guidelines that will help you construct any kind of concept map with a minimum of difficulty.

Gather concept map-making materials#

Unless you have the appropriate software for making concept maps, the first step you’ll need to take is to gather all your materials. This will avoid the nuisance of having to find a pencil or other item once you get started on the project, resulting in a break in concentration. So, have on hand paper, a ruler, colored markers, and any other items necessary to complete a concept map.

Gather research materials#

Research materials can include notes, books, articles, photographs, diagrams—whatever is required to give you the raw information needed to construct a concept map.

Choose your concept map format#

Choose the concept map format to fit the material and the task in front of you, then confirm the choice by taking a few formats out for a “test drive”. Branching arguments suit a spider map; processes suit a flowchart; causes and effects suit a fishbone or a systems map; a body of related concepts with named relationships suits an IHMC-style concept map. Try doing quick sketches in two or three formats and see which one carries this material with the least strain. The test drives will show you how different formats are appropriate for different kinds of information.

Make your first map#

As with any activity, practice makes you better at concept mapping. A good first step is to relax and let your mind “free associate.” Let whatever thoughts regarding the subject rise in your thoughts. This is a good way to get the creative juices flowing. Then, draw rough drafts or “thumbnail” sketches of your visual impressions. For example, let’s assume you have an assignment that asks the question “Should there be a ban on commercial fishing in the XYZ area?” There are many thoughts that might float to the surface of your mind on this topic—fishery depletion, loss of employment, damage to the economy, etc. After you’ve written down several of these thoughts, you might decide to use a spider map format to show the pros and cons of this issue. On one side of this issue, there are topics such as depletion of fisheries and biodiversity, and you should depict those ideas on the map. On the other side of the issue, you should also depict topics related to the towns and families that rely on fishing income. There are also issues of fishing and international treaties, commercial fishing vs. recreational fishing, etc. In other words, you should try to come up with a map that represents the whole issue.

One tip is to lay out all the concepts you need to link together on Post-It notes or pieces of paper. If you are using a computer, lay them out on the screen without linking them together. Stick the Post-It notes to the wall, move the paper around on the floor, or rearrange the concepts on-screen until you have a basic structure working for you. You can then make changes easily until its close. Once you are happy with the layout of concepts, add in the links and relationships.

I suggest you don’t attempt to get it “exactly right” first time. Be prepared to scribble out, move concepts and branches around, and make corrections as you go. If you are able to use a white board or computer, these can help you make changes more easily.

Revise and try alternatives#

Revise as often as necessary to get the visual picture of the concept complete. If it’s a complex idea that you’re trying to explain, it may take several drafts until you’re satisfied with your work. As you work through the drafts, ask yourself if your visual presentation is working for you. Perhaps look at it from someone else’s point of view. Will it convince the viewer that your work is interesting? Does it help convince the viewer that the subject matter is important and inviting? To make the concept map interesting, perhaps add different colors and shapes to emphasize key ideas.

Try using various alternative map formats, even if you’ve spent some time on one format already. If you feel you are not getting anywhere with one map format, even sketching out ideas in another format can help you see information in a new way, and help you get past your block. Do quick sketches to see if your ideas might work better in a new format.

Keep a record of your concept maps#

This won’t be hard if you work on software. You can simply store the files on your computer. But, if you work with pen/pencil and paper, be sure to keep copies. It can save you time in the future because a concept map on one subject might just fit for another topic! Keep the copies in a folder or binder. Be sure to place a “master concept map” on the cover or in the front of the binder. This will give an easy and instant reference to the contents so you won’t have to waste time by searching through all your folders.

Using concept maps for learning and memorizing#

A concept map is a delivery vehicle for the proven learning methods , not a memory engine in its own right. The map doesn’t do the learning — what you do while building it does. So before anything else, get clear on which of the four methods a map is serving. Laying concepts out and naming the links between them is elaboration made visible: you encode how ideas relate, not just the items. That’s genuinely useful. But on its own it’s also where mapping flatters you. A neat, colourful map feels like mastery, and that warm glow of familiarity is exactly the illusion of competence that fools learners into stopping too early. The fix is to put the map to work as a retrieval tool, not just a drawing exercise.

Retrieval mapping: draw it from memory first#

The single most valuable way to use a concept map for memory is to build it from memory, then check it against the source. Close the book, the notes, the original map — and redraw it from your own head. Lay out the concepts you can recall, name the links you can remember, and only then open the source and compare. Every blank you couldn’t fill and every link you got wrong is a gap you’ve just found — the kind you’d never notice by rereading, because rereading the source feels smooth and complete whether or not you could reproduce any of it.

This is the same predict-then-test habit the manual teaches elsewhere. Before you reopen the source, say what you expect to have missed; the gap between that prediction and what you actually left blank is your calibration made visible, and noticing it trains your judgement to be sharper next time. A wrong guess is never wasted — the attempt to retrieve is what does the work, whether or not you get it right.

Two practical forms:

• Redraw-and-check. Study a map (yours or a source’s), put it away, redraw it from memory, then lay the two side by side. Repeat, spaced across days, and you’re running retrieval and spacing on the same material.

• Skeleton self-test. Take a finished map and blank out the link phrases, or some of the concept nodes, leaving just the skeleton. Filling the blanks back in is a low-effort retrieval test you can set yourself in seconds and reuse on every Refresh Review.

A word of honesty about where mapping sits. Constructing a map beats studying a ready-made one, and a map you build from memory beats one you copy with the source open in front of you. But against other active, effortful methods — writing a summary from memory, self-testing with questions — a concept map’s edge is modest. So treat it as one good retrieval format among several, lean on it where the relationships between ideas are what you need to hold onto, and don’t mistake a tidy diagram for a tested memory.

Match the map to your expertise#

Start simple and let the maps grow with you. A dense, fully-linked expert map can overload a novice — there’s too much on the page to take in at once, and the cognitive load goes into reading the diagram rather than learning the content. When a topic is new to you, work from skeleton or fill-in maps (a partial structure you complete) and move toward free construction (a blank page you build from scratch) as your knowledge grows. The map that helps a beginner is not the one that helps an expert, so let the support fade as you need it less.

Turn maps into assertions and questions#

Constructing a map helps you extract the central meaning of what you’re studying — and those meanings convert directly into two things you can practise with. You can turn each concept and its links into assertions (clear statements of what’s true) and into questions (the same content phrased as a cue you have to answer). The questions are the more powerful of the two, because a question is a retrieval cue: every link in your map is a “what connects to what, and why?” you can ask yourself with the map hidden. This is the natural bridge from drawing a map to actively testing yourself on it — and a ready-made supply of self-test items you can carry into a spaced-practice tool (Anki, MemGym, and the like) and drill over time. The assertions still earn their keep for the output side: use them to outline and write presentations, reports, or papers, and use the maps themselves as graphics to illustrate main points in academic, business, or scientific work.

Map at the start, too#

Before you start a new topic, try drawing a map that shows your current understanding of the subject. Keep it and compare it later with the maps you create once you’ve studied — the difference shows the understanding you’ve gained, and the initial attempt is itself a retrieval check on what you already knew (or only thought you knew). You can also ask others (children, students, clients) to draw an initial map, which surfaces their current knowledge — and any misconceptions — before you teach.

Use maps to retain: Refresh Reviews#

Concept maps are not only useful while you’re first learning — they also help you retain and remember key ideas over the long term, because they give you something compact to retrieve from during review. You can do this using Refresh Reviews. Refresh Reviews are a primary Memletics strategy for achieving long-term retention, and they are simply spacing applied after a course is over: regularly revisiting information so it stays in your mind. A Refresh Review may take a few minutes a week or a few hours a month, varying with how important the knowledge is and how often you use it. The most effective way to spend that time is not to reread the map but to redraw it from memory and then check — turning each review into a fresh retrieval attempt rather than another comfortable reread. Where you only need a quick refresher, glancing at the map to recover the overview and organisation of its key concepts is fine. Either way, the result is that you remember information longer and more reliably.

Using concept maps while studying#

Concept maps are a helpful tool for studying. They give you a way to organize material and see how a study session’s pieces fit together, which makes the structure of a subject easier to hold in mind — provided you keep testing yourself on that structure rather than just admiring it. They’re also good for communicating what you’ve learned to others: use them in papers, slides, and presentations to carry the relationships between ideas in a way prose struggles to. And don’t forget to use them during lectures to capture and organize notes; building the map as you listen forces you to decide how each new point connects, which is more active than transcribing. If the lecturer has concept maps of their own, ask for them — but use theirs as something to test yourself against, not a substitute for building your own.

Using concept maps as a teaching tool#

J.D. Novak of Cornell University developed the use of IHMC concept mapping as a teaching strategy in the early 1980s. He partly derived the strategy from David Ausubel’s learning theory. This theory places primary emphasis on the influence of students’ prior knowledge upon subsequent meaningful learning. According to Ausubel, “the most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows.” This means that meaningful learning results when a person ties new knowledge to concepts they already possess. Ausubel’s theory suggests that meaningful learning produces a series of changes within our minds. These changes modify existing concepts and form new linkages between concepts. This results in meaningful learning that’s lasting and powerful unlike rote learning. For your purposes, this means that concept mapping helps you and your students build upon your existing knowledge of a subject to understand it more completely. It also helps your students apply that knowledge more effectively in class, tests, jobs, and other areas of their life.

From a teaching perspective, concept mapping is useful in several ways:

• Teaching a topic. Through use of concept maps, you can clarify difficult concepts and arrange them in a systematic order. Concept mapping helps you communicate key concepts and relationships among those concepts. It also helps you convey a clear picture of the topics and their relationships to your students. This means that students are less likely to miss and misinterpret any important concepts.

• Reinforcing understanding. Use of concept maps reinforces student’s understanding and learning. This enables visualization of key concepts and summarizes relationships among them.

• Feedback on learning. Concept map usage assists teachers in evaluating student’s learning of a topic. They can assess student achievement by identifying misconceptions and missing concepts. They can then provide feedback to students on those areas.

• Evaluation. You can test student understanding by having them draw concept maps.

• Retrieval check and calibration. Having learners draw a map from memory — with the source closed — is a low-stakes way to surface what they can actually reproduce, not just what feels familiar to them. The blanks and wrong links show, at a glance, where understanding is thin, for both the teacher and the learner. Pair it with a quick prediction (“how much do you think you’ll get?”) and the gap between expected and actual becomes a calibration signal: it teaches students to trust a tested memory over the warm glow of having seen the material before. Because it’s drawn from memory rather than copied, the exercise does double duty — it measures learning and, as retrieval practice, it builds it.

One of the ways in which concept maps aid teachers and students is by allowing them to build and share concept maps in a collaborative effort. The CmapTools software (explained in a coming chapter) has features that allow much collaboration on concept maps, even over long distances.

Keep limitations in mind#

Concept maps are a useful tool for learning, but remember they’re only one tool of many — and a tactic, not the engine. What makes them work is the retrieval, spacing, interleaving and elaboration you run through them; a map that doesn’t get you retrieving is just a picture. So lean on the rest of the Memletic curriculum (the Accelerated Learning Manual and Speed Reading Course) alongside this course, and judge any mapping habit by the same test you’d apply to any technique: does it make me retrieve, space, interleave, or elaborate? If yes, it’s earning its place. Each of the modules within Memletics integrates with the others to provide an effective overall learning program.