Return to Library Home Page

Concept Mapping in
Research and Writing

Is it hard for you to find a topic for a paper?

Don’t know what information to search for?

Finding too much material and don’t know how to handle?

Don’t know how to organize your information and present it?

Concept mapping can help you throughout your research and writing process.

Definition of concept mapping

Concept mapping is a tool that was developed by Joseph Novack for organizing and representing knowledge. A concept map includes two parts — concepts and the relationships among the concepts. Concepts are usually enclosed in nodes. The relationships are usually indicated by a line, or a link, that connect two concepts. See some examples.

Concept mapping has been demonstrated to be a useful strategy throughout the writing process to brainstorm ideas, understand the relationship among the information, and organize the sources collected on a topic.

The major advantages of using concept mapping in the research and writing process include:

• It summarizes information on one page.
• It provides a visual representation of the relationships among the various ideas, themes, and concepts, while placing the main idea in an outstanding position on the page.

As such, concept mapping can assist the learner to

• Organize the information collected.
• See the information from a different perspective.
• See gaps, contradictions, or paradoxes in the material, which encourages questioning and critical thinking.Find directions for further research.
• Synthesize the research and generate an outline for the paper.

Go to next page

Created by USU Libraries Reference Services Department