Week 1

9/30:  Introduction to concept mapping

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Concept mapping is a technique that helps to guide reflective and critical reading.
Apply this technique to your reading of Saracevic (1992) and Brookes (1980) next week.
Bring your concept map to the class session one week from today (10/7).

 Broad Guidelines 

	Read the article carefully. Do not attempt to write a summary or use a highlighter pen to mark ideas.  Immediately after reading the article, determine the central or focus concepts and issues that emerge. Use the abstract of the paper to confirm this.
	Re-read the paper; concentrate on extending your understanding of the central concept by identifying important subordinate concepts, words phrases, statements of relationships. Begin listing these.
	Once you have generated a list, rank the concepts from the most abstract and inclusive to the most concrete and specific.
	Begin to cluster your concepts. Make judgments about the closeness of association using two criteria At a similar level of abstraction Directly related, i.e. one concept is directly explained in terms of the other
	Arrange your concepts as a two dimensional array incorporating the hierarchies previously determined
	Link related concepts with lines and directional arrows, labeling each line clearly with brief explanatory notes. Work with one pair of concepts at a time.

For more information about concept mapping, see: 

Novak, J.D. and Gown, B. (1984). Learning how to learn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 2 – Concept mapping for meaningful learning.

One copy of this chapter is available to borrow from the reference area outside MGH 420.