The burgeoning field of nanotechnology is an increasingly
popular topic for undergraduate coursework. The
predominance of nanotechnology in the media, which has
associated the term “nano” with sleek, lightweight, and
technologically advanced consumer products, fuels an almost
unprecedented level of student interest for any proposed
course syllabus in the nanoscience area. Central Michigan
University has recently offered Introduction to Nanotechnology,
a 4-week short course, as part of a series of first-yearlevel
courses covering a variety of current topics. Whereas
students enrolled in semester-long courses are able to cover
nomenclature, synthesis, and characterization of nanostructures,
offering a short course in a broad field such as nanotechnology
is an ambitious proposition. Such a course has the
strong potential to result in a high degree of frustration and
low degree of learning as students are inundated with an
overwhelming number of new concepts and terms. Indeed, the
problem of where to begin and where to end is paramount in
any short course; this is perhaps an even greater problem for a
topic in which students have no prior related coursework
experience. To continue evolving the course in a way that best
promotes students' learning, it would be instructive to have a
simple means of evaluation to determine how much is too
much. Here we describe the use of student-generated concept
maps to gauge the level of conceptual understanding for each
topic covered in the course.