Concept maps have been around for many centuries: some prehistoric petroglyphs appear to be concept mapthe third century philosopher Porphyry of Tyre advocated their use as a means of visually representing knowledge; Carl Linnaeus used them in the eighteenth century as a basis for his taxonomy of plants and animals; and they came to be formally studied as a learning tool in the 1970s at Cornell University by Joseph Novak, who based his work on the learning theories of David Ausubel. Since then, software programs have come to facilitate the creation and sharing of concept maps; some programs also allow several users to collaborate on the same concept map.

Benefits

Concept mapping forces students to identify connections, and apprehend them more deeply, than traditional approaches such as reading or writing about a concept.

Additionally, concept mapping makes use of dual coding; that is, the students learn the material both from the text labels found on the concept map as well as the visual structure of the map.

For some students, concept mapping can ease their cognitive load by allowing them to focus on essential relationships, rather than on decoding a written text. 

Concept maps are a form of visual thinking. Most people are better able to remember a visual