Using Concept Maps to improve Scientific Communications

Abstract

Scientic talks, like scientic papers, are an important part of the scientic communication process. Good oral presentation skills, are vital to educational sciences, as well as to many other fields. In the engineering community, such presentations offer, a quick outline of project proposals and progress reports. In the academic community, the ability to clearly transmit scientic information, in an oral presentation, is critical to both teaching and research. Over the last years, it has become apparent, to many educational researchers, that representing knowledge, in a visual format, allows one to better recognize and understand, incoming information. Since Novak, placed concept mapping on the educational agenda, it has become an increasingly popular advanced teaching and learning tool. Due mainly to the innovation of visual design software like CmapTool, the production and modication of Concept Maps is straightforward. While there are no strict rules about how to give a motivating and compelling presentation, there are some guiding principles which are easy to grasp and apply. The modern scientist must be able to create well organized, well delivered scientic talks. In this context, Concept Maps harness the power of our vision to understand complex information. We propose some ideas and resources based, on the use of concept maps to make the process of preparing and organizing good talks easier. In essence, good scientic talks must satisfy the following three goals: to connect with the audience, to direct and hold attention, and to promote understanding and memory. To accomplish these goals talk material must be elaborated carefully and logically. The plan to achieve them should have four parts: preparation, structure, design, and exposition. We focus our work on the first two parts of the plan, and supply some helpful guidelines on efective ways to prepare the scientic information, using conceptual maps with the software CmapTool.