Graphic Organisers, Mind Maps and Concept Maps are a pictorial or graphical way to organise information and thoughts for understanding, remembering or writing.

Introduction to Concept Maps

Definition: Concept maps offer a method to represent information visually. There are a variety of such maps.

Purpose: Concept maps harness the power of our vision to understand complex information "at-a-glance." The primary function of the brain is to interpret incoming information to make meaning. It is easier for the brain to make meaning when information is presented in visual formats. This is why a picture is worth a thousand words. It is essential to your studies and career that you can handle complex information; concept maps offer one method to do this.

Practical applications in your courses:

• Handy way to take notes during lecture.
• Excellent aids to group brainstorming.
• Planning your studies and career.
• Providing graphics for your presentations and term papers
• A way to outline your term papers and presentations.
• Refine your creative and critical thinking.

Making Your Own Concept Maps:

• What is the topic or question to be brainstormed?
• Use just key words, or wherever possible images.
• Start from the center of the page and state the main idea, concept, topic or question
• Make the center a clear and strong visual image that depicts the general theme of the map.
• Expand your thoughts from the centre like branches on a web.
• Put key words on lines. This reinforces structure of notes.
• Print rather than write in script. It makes them more readable and memorable. Lower case is more visually distinctive (and better remembered) than upper case.
• Use color to depict themes, associations and to make things stand out.
• Anything that stands out on the page will stand out in your mind.
• Think three-dimensionally.
• Use arrows, icons or other visual aids to show links between different elements.
• Don't get stuck in one area. When one branch stops or an idea doesn’t fit, create a new branch.
• Put ideas down as they occur, wherever they fit. Don't judge or hold back.
• Be creative. Creativity aids memory.
• Get involved. Have fun.
  

Lets look at a completed example: Click here.

• Think about the relation of outside items to the centre item
• Erase, edit, and/or shorten words to key ideas
• Relocate important items closer to each other for better organization
• If possible, use color to organize information
• Link concepts with words to clarify their relationships

4. Continue working outward

• Freely and quickly add other key words and ideas (you can always erase!)
• Think weird: combine concepts to expand your map or; break boundaries
• Develop in directions the topic takes you—don’t be limited by how you are doing the map
• As you expand your map, try to become more specific or detailed.

5. Set the map aside. Later, continue development and revision.

• Stop and think about relationships you are developing
• Expand the map over time

6. This map is your personal learning document

• It combines what you knew with what you are learning and what you may need to complete your "picture"

The Graphic Organiser. “Brainstorming”. 2004
http://www.graphic.org/brainst.html (3 August 2004)

Landsberger, Joe. “Concept or Mind Mapping”. University of St Thomas – Minnesota, 30 July 2004.
http://www.studygs.net/mapping/ (3 August 2004)

College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. “Concept Maps”. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. August 2002. http://classes.aces.uiuc.edu/ACES100/Mind/CMap.html (3 August 2004)