Concept mapping is a visual tool to organize and represent knowledge. It involves identifying key concepts and linking them with relationships. The document outlines steps for a group workshop activity where participants will collaboratively identify important contemporary research trends, map the relationships between concepts, and create a shared concept map. Groups will discuss their individual assignments, identify overlapping concepts, fill out a concept relationship matrix, and negotiate relationships. They will then use CMapTools software to build a concept map with the main concepts as the structure, adding other concepts and linking them with verbs to represent the system and its elements.

1. [M1]
contemporary trends

3. - workshop -
Concept mapping
the contemporary trends

4. Concept mapping

5. A map is...
A representation of a system intended to
someone to help find their way

7. A Concept Map is a representation
of a system
All concept maps:
● Sacrifice accuracy for comprehensibility
● Try to answer a question
● Rarely has a “beginning” and an “end”
● Force selectivity, abstraction, prioritization and
hierarchy
● Are visual - a tool for perception
● Are semantic - a tool for cognition
● It is a way to organise and represent knowledge

8. Nodes (nouns) are concepts

9. Arcs (verbs) link the concepts

10. Identifying relations
- matrix discussion -
1. Lets form groups of three people
2. Introduce your individual assignment output to fellow
group members (the 20 most important concepts, that in
your opinion represent the current research trends)
3. Collaboratively eliminate the overlapping and less
important concepts between yourselves and try to come
up with only 30 concepts per each group
4. Fill the empty matrix template with these 30 concepts,
plotting them against each other
5. Identify relationships between the concepts - these are
qualitative and require interpretation.
6. It’s a negotiation process!

16. Creating the concept map
1. Use CMapTools
2. Decide on main concepts of the map based on
frequency of connections as well as common sense.
The most frequent concepts should build the skeleton of
the map.
3. Fill in the rest of the structure (with leftover concepts -
let yourself be guided by the matrix), in order to
represent all the elements in the system.
4. As you add concepts to the map, connect them with
arcs (usually verbs) to formulate meaningful sentences.
5. Export your concept map as a picture to the shared
folder and present the result by the end of this session
(3-5 min).