This ERIC Digest is adapted from WWW documents prepared by Jan W.A. Lanzing, Department of Educational Instrumentation, Faculty of Educational Science and Technology, University of Twente, The Netherlands. The concepts, and sometimes the links, are labeled on the concept map. The concepts and the links may be categorized, and the concept map may show temporal or causal relationships between concepts. Purpose of Concept Mapping Concept mapping is a type of knowledge representation.
Structural knowledge provides the conceptual basis for why.
It describes how prior knowledge is interconnected. . . . Structural knowledge is most often depicted in terms of some sort of concept map that visually describes the relationships between ideas in a knowledge domain. Representing knowledge in the visual format of a concept map allows one to gain an overview of a domain of knowledge. Because the nodes contain only a keyword or a short sentence, more interpretation is required of the reader, but this may be positive. Applications of Concept Mapping Creativity Tool-Drawing a concept map can be compared to participating in a brainstorming session.