Concept mapping: a strategy for promoting meaningful learning in medical education

Concept mapping is an educational tool that encourages meaningful learning. Fostering meaningful and self-directed learning among medical students is now recognized as a major goal of medical educators (ACME-TRI Report, 1992). Meaningful learning (learning with understanding) is much stronger and longer-lasting than rote learning (learning by memorization) because students address the conceptual meaning of the knowledge being learned, and link this new information with previous knowledge.Concept mapping is an active, creative, visual and spatial learning activity in which concepts are organized according to their hierarchical relationships. Linking words are used to describe the relationships among the concepts. To create a concept map, students must understand the information that will appear in the map. Students must also relate and integrate the concepts that will be recorded in the map. As a result students replace unidirectional linear organization with thinking which proceeds in multiple directions....