Dr. John W. Coffey holds a B.S. in Psychology from the College of William and Mary (1971), a B.S. in Systems Science (1989), an M.S. in Computer Science/Software Engineering (1992), and an Ed.D. with an emphasis in Computer Science (2000) from the University of West Florida (UWF). He was one of the first members of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) and he has worked with that organization for many years. He has been in the Department of Computer Science at the University of West Florida since 1992, starting as a Lecturer and working his way up to his current rank of Professor. He has published a total of more than 100 refereed journal articles, book chapters, technical reports, and conference proceedings. His research interests include knowledge elicitation and representation, web services, and Service Oriented Architecture, advanced technology for education, and computer science education.

Concept maps are useful in many disciplines for the representation and communication of structured knowledge. This article contains a description of concept mapping and knowledge modeling based upon concept maps that are used for a variety of purposes. It describes applications of concept mapping and knowledge modeling for education, for knowledge preservation and sharing, for knowledge creation, as an efficient means of creating documentation, and for the creation of knowledge formalisms from informal knowledge representations. Examples are drawn from several different knowledge domains.