Jinshan Wu, a physicist and an educator at Beijing Normal University (BNU) and his colleagues at BNU, together with educators all over the world, are running a series of workshops and mini courses to provide skill training to faculty members and students at and beyond BNU. More importantly, besides improving concept mapping skills of participants, the program is designed to help the participants think in a more organized fashion and think about what to teach/learn. The goal is that once people knows how to think more efficiently and more deeply, and also knows better what to teach/learn, they can teach/learn better with less amount of time. Teaching/Learning should be more concentrated on basics, such as fundamental concepts and the main logic framework, instead of all the glory details. In this way, teachers can teach less and at the same time students can learn more while study less.
The BNU team also working on demonstrative courses which integrate concept mapping closely with subject matters following the principle of learning only the basics.
For more information, visit http://systemsci.org/cmap