Hi, North Seattle College! This is the Library, here to help you with your research. In this video we'll talk about how to make a concept map to help you identify a research topic. Remember that you can pause this video at any time to help you follow along. Sometimes the hardest part of getting started on a research assignment is just choosing a topic. Start by thinking of a topic that interests you and is related to your class assignment. Research is always easier when you're researching something you're actually interested in. I've decided I'm interested in the topic of climate change. So I'll start my concept map by writing my topic down on a piece of paper. Next I'm going to brainstorm by writing down all the questions I have about this topic and all the things I might already know or have heard about it. These are the concepts I associate with this topic. I don't necessarily need to know what all these things mean-- that's what I'll discover as I do my research. Now this is quite a list. So what am I going to do with it? I'm going to organize it in a way that allows me to visually see the relationships between the different concepts. I'm going to write my central theme in the middle of a paper with a circle around it. Then I'm going to pick out some of the main ideas from my brainstorming list that are most interesting to me and place them in bubbles around my central topic of climate change. Then I'm going to draw arrows to show the relationships among the ideas. Notice that arrows can go one direction or both directions. And now with my major ideas defined, I can add in the other ideas from my brainstorm and see more connections. Now looking at all my ideas grouped together, I thought of a few more ideas that I want to add as well. Now if I want, I can keep adding ideas and building the map out even further. But my concept map is getting a little messy with so many ideas. I'm starting to get a sense of all the different directions I can take this topic, so now it's time for me to focus in on something. Looking at all these ideas, I'm going to pick an area that's most interesting to me. "Solutions to climate change" is the subtopic I'm choosing. So now I'm going to brainstorm a little more around this idea. What are some more questions or ideas I have about it? Now I have a lot of ideas, and I see one that I'd really like to research: "public pressure on companies to address climate change." This is a topic that focuses on one narrow aspect of the much larger topic of "climate change." And there's still plenty I can research on this topic. Remember to check your assignment again to make sure your topic fits within the guidelines of the assignment too. And that's how making a concept map helps me identify a topic that is just the right scope for my assignment. And now, I'm ready to start looking for information about it. If you have any questions about concept mapping, or about any other aspect of research, reach out to a librarian.