Twelve tips for teaching with concept maps in medical education

Background: Concept maps have been used as a learning tool in a variety of educational setting and provide an opportunity to explore learners’ knowledge structures and promote critical thinking and understanding. Concept mapping is an instructional strategy for individual and group learning that involves integration of knowledge and creation of meaning by relating concepts. Aims: The following tips outline an approach to foster meaningful learning using concept maps. Methods: A total of 12 tips on the use and applications of concept mapping based on the authors’ experiences and the available literature. Results: The 12 tips provide an overview of the theoretical framework and structure of concept maps, suggesting specific uses, and applications in medical education. Conclusions: We describe different types of concept maps based on learners’ task, and how they can be utilized in different educational settings. We provide ideas for educators to integrate this novel educational resource in their teaching and educational practices. Medical educators can utilize concept maps to detect students’ misunderstandings of concepts and to identify knowledge gaps that need to be corrected. Finally, we outline the potential role of concept maps as an assessment tool.

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