Concept maps are one way to take notes, or to make sense of the notes you’ve already taken. There’s more than one way to do them, which makes them kind of simultaneously more and less confusing.
Physically, a concept map just looks like brainstorming for an essay or project. It’s a map that has some kind of overarching or central theme, and then expands outward to show the details and how they relate to each other.
One way to do a concept map is simply to find out the central topic or overarching theme ahead of time and take notes that way. For instance, in a concept map about Medical Pluralism, that would be your center, and your branches could be subcategories like Plural Systems, Help-Seeking, Hierarchy of Resort, and Decision-Making. Or you might base your branches over certain parts of the readings, like chapter titles, subsections, article titles, etc. You can use concept maps this way to just straight up take notes, write as you read, connect things as they come to you. It’s improvisational, and it totally works for some people.
Another way (and the way I do concept maps) takes a little more time, but can also make it so you can give your brain the extra time that it needs to process of different bits information and how those bits relate to each other. I start by reading all my materials first, and in the class in which I use concept maps, we are only assigned articles and videos, so I take notes on each piece in my spiral notebook. One I’ve done that, I go over my notes (with the readings open on my computer close by) and I start drafting bare-bones concept maps in my notebook. Once I’ve got a design and an information flow that feels right, I pull out my markers and a piece of printer paper and get to it.
Here are some examples of my concept maps for my History/Theory of Medical Anthropology class (the white spots are just where I’ve blocked out my name):
Now, mine are incredibly detailed, probably because I take very detailed notes. Other people’s are less detailed, or at least less quote-filled, and different people interpret our weekly readings in different ways. I like using markers to represent levels of hierarchy (for lack of a better term) because it helps me follow the flow of the information. Solid lines and arrows are how things are directly connected, and dotted lines with arrows are how I see things as somehow related (though the nature of that relationship may not be quite clear to me).
If you have a text heavy class in which you need to be able to synthesize and analyze a lot of information, I definitely suggest trying out concept maps. And I also suggest not giving up after the first try, because it can take a few tries to get into the habit of thinking, well, conceptually.
If this version of note-taking/revising works for you already or you try it out and it works, let me know. If it doesn’t, then it’s just not the one for you. But concept maps are incredibly helpful in heavy reading classes, essays, and poster projects.
Good luck studying, my fellow bitches, and godspeed.
(also, no, I can’t really read my own handwriting. my brain is faster than my hands so you get mixed results, even when I try really hard)
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