Hi and welcome to this first lecture in this lecture, I'm going to show you how researching cognitive
science explains how concept mapping and visualizing our concepts on maps helps us in acquiring knowledge
faster, being better communicators and improving our creative thinking.
Let's go.
But let's start with a simple example.
So let's say that I'm going to teach you about contracts and I have a very strong notion about what
I think is a contract, and I would like to combine that for you and I would like to communicate that
to you.
So if I didn't have any visual tool of doing it, I can be standing here talking about contracts and
the contract contract maybe for an hour.
How could we be sure that we are actually are sharing the same type of conceptualization of our contracts
after I've been tried to teach that to you.
So let's say instead that I just write up, say that we have this concept of a contract.
I say that a contract is regulating the use of a product, one or many products, actually, and a product
could be involved in multiple contracts.
Right.
So already here I have been giving you quite much information.
I've been saying that there are something that are called products and they is not piracy.
Part of a contract and contract is regulating the use of one or several products that I can start saying
that a contract is connected to multiple parties or one or multiple parties, I should say.
And it's in the context of that connection that the parties are getting its role.
So as party in this case could be, for example, a company, a corporation or a person, of course,
and they are not a client piracy.
They are a client in the context of a specific contract.
Because I could have another connection stating that a contract could also have multiple suppliers,
one or multiple suppliers supplying the product to the clients.
And what I've said here is as well that a party could be a supplier.
So one in the same party could actually be a supplier in one contract and a client in another contract
and vice versa.
And then finally, I can also say that contracts could be.
Connected to each other, so you could have subcontracts and mainframe agreements and you do call off
agreements against the mainframe agreements and so on.
So there are multiple contracts that could be connected to each other.
So already here in this very, very small set of graphical elements that I've shown you, I have conveyed
a lot of knowledge and if I use that as a foundation for my communication, then I probably will be
a little bit clearer and hopefully more consistent when I'm trying to teach you this.
So if that was a very simple example about what concept maps are about, my question is that now in
this lecture, why do we think they are intuitive?
I think they are into it.
Maybe you don't do that yet, but I hope you do that after this course.
But many people do think that.
And why is that?
And that actually is based in cognitive research.
So what I'm going to talk about here in this lecture is the kind of the cognitive proof behind this.
So how could we boast knowledge acquisition?
How could we make communication, visual communication much clearer?
And how could we actually improve creative thinking?