Lunchtime workshop today on concept mapping. Not mindmapping. Definitely two different things.

The visiting academic had previously sent us one of his papers to read on the subject and to be honest it was as dull as ditchwater and quite dense. So we feared the worst.

But in person, he was much more engaging and had a really interesting session for us.

It was my mindmapping interests that drew me (and others) but we learned that one of the primary differences was that a concept map labels the links as well as the concepts to show the relationships between concepts. An example is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map

His thesis was that too often our teaching concentrates on one particular part of a map (say a lecture on one concept of an overall structure), but that we never make explicit to students what the overall plan is. We assume they know or can work out and his contention was that this is rarely the case.

Better yet, by getting the students themselves to consider what they think they know on a subject; to generate concept maps for themselves; to swap notes with each other on what they've produced; and to revisit it after a course of study, can pay off tremendously in terms of their learning.