Abstract:

In last 18 years, we have been using the Concept Mapping method in the design of all our schools and courses. Here I will present the development of a Transdisciplinary Doctoral School, where it took forty-one iterations of the Concept Map to finally say, “It's doable”. The versions of the Concept Maps went through the following phases:
1) Distinguishing of great thinkers,
2) describing the new key concepts, and
3) signing up of accessible knowledge and verification at workshop.

The results indicated that the curriculum based on Concept Maps is built from the ideas of:
(1) a Quasi-Algorithmic Process,
(2) Quasi-Heuristic Steps
(3) and a Big Picture arrived at by means of abductive reasoning.

The first results of this two-year work suggest that designers need deep knowledge, but even then it will be limited, for no one will be able to comprehend more than a dozen different contents. Even the "big picture" must not be too big. The second result is that teachers get used to writing topics with three key concepts and finding the connections to the key concepts of other topics.

Keywords:

Accessible Knowledge, Doctoral School, Quasi-Algorithmic Process