The purpose of this paper is to investigate students' perception of concept maps as a learning tool where knowledge transfer is the goal. This article includes an evaluation of the learning performance of 42 undergraduate students enrolled in a nanotech course at a university in Taiwan. Canonical correlation and MANOVA analyses were employed to examine if students' perceptions toward concept mapping have a positive relationship with knowledge transfer; that is, students who perceive concept mapping more positively tend to perform knowledge transfer better than those who perceive concept mapping less positively. The results revealed that positive concept-mapping perception is helpful for knowledge transfer in five learning stages: acquisition, communication, application, acceptance, and assimilation. (Contains 7 tables and 3 figures.)