Using Concept System Help

If you are having difficulty operating the program or you just want more information about how the concept mapping process works, this help file should be the first place you look.

Licensing and Installing

If you have questions about licensing or installing the program, obtaining new projects, concept mapping facilitator training, or technical assistance contracts, please contact Concept Systems Incorporated directly.

Structure of the Help System

To make the most effective use of Concept System Help, you should understand the following features:

The Concept System Core Program Help file integrates three major online guides:

a Process Guide that explains the group process and how to manage it

a Software Guide that describes how to use The Concept System Core Program program

a Guide that describes how to use the for qualitative analysis and text abstraction, and for generating reports

Keeping the Roles Straight

Because a concept mapping process involves many different people, it is important that we have a language for describing the key roles. In this Help system we are primarily concerned with how to describe the people who are most directly involved. We’ll use the following language conventions here:

A Facilitator is the person responsible for seeing that the group process gets accomplished. The Facilitator is not necessarily the person who runs the computer program, but is certainly the person who runs the group sessions.

An Administrator is the person who manages the software for a concept mapping project. The Administrator does not necessarily interact directly with the participants in the group process.

In some projects the Facilitator and Administrator are the same person. in most, it is desirable to have one person responsible for minding the group process (facilitator) and another who tends to the technology (administrator).

A Participant is someone who takes part in the group process of brainstorming, sorting, rating, interpreting or utilizing.

A User is a participant who is using The Concept System Core Program software.

The reason for these different terms is to cue you into whether we are discussing the group process involved in concept mapping or whether we are referring to using The Concept System Core Program software. If we are using the terms ‘facilitator’ and ‘participant’ we are generally talking about the group process. If we are using ‘administrator’ and ‘user’ we are referring to the software.

General Conventions

Throughout this help system there are a number of conventions that have been followed:

Standard Windows Help Features: To understand features that are standard to Windows Help, select How To Use Help from the Help menu. These features include Topic Search, Jumps to Topics, Glossary, History, and many more.

Navigation buttons: In addition to the standard Windows Help buttons, such as Contents, Search, Back, Glossary, and Browse (<< >>), buttons are provided below each topic heading for quick navigation to related topics. For example:

The See Also button shows a pop-up box of related topics, while the other buttons provide quick access to high-level topics.

Alternative Navigation Strategies: To allow for different preferred ways of navigating through the Process Guide, you can use the Process Map or the Process Outline. You can return to the Map or the Outline at any time by clicking on one of the Navigation buttons:

Administrator vs. User vs. Browser Help: The Concept System Core Program software has many capabilities that are exclusively for project. For this reason, step-by-step software topics include a system of color codes and notations to let the user know what steps apply to users or browsers and what steps apply to administrators only. Software topics which apply to users are coded in blue. The topic title is blue and any references to the topic include either a blue * or, if the topic is referenced in a table, it is shaded in blue. Each software topic also includes a diagram in the upper right hand corner of the screen that has a check next to each of the roles that can perform that step. An administrator can do anything; a user can only do what is coded for users (and indicated in blue).

Where Am I Graphics: Step-by-step software topics include a graphic showing the associated step or steps of the Concept Mapping process: