What about larger spaces, such as Buffalo? I'll bet that your mental map of Buffalo is different from mine, which looks south and is centered around the mile-long street between my house and my office.

What about ideas?

How do you organize historical events?
How do you visualize the sides of an argument?
How do you remember the points in a lecture?

More to the point, how are you going to visualize your digital project for this course? Start with the Concept Mapping Workshop developed by Douglas McCabe at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His concept mapping page has other resources worth your while, especially those at the University of Twente.

Although McCabe concentrates on hierarchical maps, many other kinds are possible. The AIM Lab at the University of Illinois has a page called Kinds of Concept Maps showing a half-dozen others. The next page up has more resources.

Much of the material focuses on using concept maps for brain- storming your own projects. You can also use them to analyze and describe the structure of other people's Web sites and hypertexts.

What Is a Concept Map?

A purposeful arrangement of nodes and links.

parts nodes links attributes shape size color position

If you want to pursue the ideas behind mapping, a good place to start is Concept Mapping and Other Formalisms as Mindtools for Representing Knowledge, an article by David Johassen of Penn State and Rose Marra of AT&T.

For an introduction to an academic application, try the article WebMap: Concept Mapping on the Web by Brian Gaines and Mildred Shaw at the University of Calgary.

The Mindtools and WebMap sites, you'll note, are a couple of years old and are examples of first-generation sites. Compare them to the second-generation pages showing off the leading commercial mapping software, Inspiration, published by Inspiration Software Inc. You can download a demo of their latest version or samples like this one.

This map may well help a student connect the course's concepts. It may also indicate to Professor Baker places where he could simplify and clarify. At a quick glance, it indicates to me that he could do more with color, box shapes, and line thickness to help simplify and clarify. What do you think? Write to me at dougand@aol.com. If you download and use the demo, I'd be happy to put your map on this page, too.

For some basic step-by-step instructions on making concept maps, try the Exploring the Environment page. Note also the links to other problem-solving techniques on that site: Classroom of the Future.

What about Nodes and Links?

On this concept map of the HUM 298 course disclosure, the sizes of the blue oval shapes reveal my idea about the relative importance of content, structure, language, and mechanics. The squares show, in chronological order, the written (red), tests (gold), and oral (green) assignments that we will evaluate. I made all the squares the same size because they all count the same 10%. What other relationships of shape, size, color, and position do you see?

HUM 298 Course Disclosure

That takes care of the nodes. Why bother with links? Because if the nodes are like the nouns in a sentence, if the attributes are like the adjectives, then links are like the verbs. And verbs are where the action is.

This line-drawing exercise process might enlighten all of us:

before the course, I draw the lines between the squares (assignments) and ovals (objectives) representing what I intend to teach

after the course, I draw the lines -- thick, thin, broken, solid -- between the squares and ovals according to what I think I ended up teaching

after the course, you draw the lines according to what you think you learned

finally, we compare our concept maps of the course

Question: do grades tend to be higher when the the students' and teachers' concept maps are more similar?

Metaphors for Shape

Collins, D. (1995). Designing Object-Oriented User Interfaces. Redwood City, CA, Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, Inc.

Section 8.4: A Catalog of Metaphors (page 195-209)
lists (among others) the following metaphors:

* Command Language
- Position, size, orientation or motion of objects in space (back, exit, ...
- Direct manipulation of objects (append, push ..
- Body parts, biological objects and functions ( sleep, tail,

* 2D Spatial Metaphors
- Pieces of paper
- Forms
- Spreadsheets
- Pages
- Drafting tables
- Light tables

* 2 1/2 D Spatial Metaphors
- Desktops and briefcases
- Books
- Notebooks
- Index card files
- Doors and rooms

* 3 D Spatial Metaphors
- Doorways
- Buildings
- Earth surface and atmosphere, outer space

* Machines
- Instrument and control panels
- Pens, pencils
- Typewriter, keyboards
- Rolodex
- TV

* Magic and superstition

history || theories || hot topics || audience || info viz
navigation || models || language || toolkit || resources