20. Summary
• Express and record thoughts in a visual, non-
linear format.
• Brainstorm, organize, associate, collaborate,
visualize
• See the forest, and the trees
• Find the mind mapping tool to fit your
thinking style, needs, purposes, and budget
0:20Hi, I’m Larry Jansen with the University of Wyoming Outreach School, where I am coordinator of online learning, and an instructional designer. This peCHU-ka presentation will introduce you to mind mapping. I’ve never done one of these presentation sprints, so let’s see where we end up in 6 minutes.
0:40“A mind map is a thinking tool that reflects externally what goes on inside your head.”
1:00Expressing visually what goes on in our heads is not new. We’ve been doing it since pre-history. Do you doodle? That’s visually expressing thoughts. Often, the visual expression is essential, as in blueprints or wiring schematics. Imagine trying to narratively explain how to erect a building.
1:20But, to mind maps. How does a mind map work, or look? Begin with the central subject, and create branches, or subcategories of the subject. This presentation began as a mind map, to help me organize thoughts and materials.
1:40If you accept mind mapping as a process of thinking, it never ends. The subject of the mind map – a project or assignment or a plan – may complete, but during that entire time from first thoughts to final actions, changes are constantly being made to the mind map as you progress.
2:00Listing purposes for employing mind maps limits the endless possibilities. Here are just a few purposes to get you thinking about how you might make use of mind mapping.Let’s take a look at a few examples. The first is a mind map for project planning.
2:20The instructional support group in the Outreach Schoolrecognized that we were not effectively informing faculty of the support and services we provided. We needed to completely rebuild our instructional support web site, which we knew was going to be a monstrous undertaking. Where would we even begin?
2:40We began by unloading the impossible-to-lift project, separating it into smaller, achievable tasks. The project planning involved 5 of us all had access to the same online mind map, to facilitate our project collaboration. +5
3:00As you build and expand your mind map, it cascades down to more and more specific tasks, thoughts, assignments, questions, notes, whatever. You can collapse and expand branches as you need, letting you keep an eye on the overall project, as well as the specific details when you need.
3:20Developing a new course, especially a necessarily highly organized online class, gives another example of using mind mapping to plan the course development. My thanks to Connie Diaz-Swearingen for allowing me to demonstrate her Introduction to Higher Education in Nursing, which is not a new course, but has refined over many years.
3:40Instructional Design in 20 seconds: What will students learn? These are the Outcomes, or Learning Objectives?How will they learn it? Through content and instruction.And, How will they demonstrate they learned it? AssessmentsInstruction and assessments must associate to learning outcomes.
4:00Mind mapping allows you to literally draw associations of different pieces of the mind map. How does something in one category relate or connect to something else in another category? In this segment of the larger mind map, the prepared rubrics are associated with specific assessments, informing students of the expectations from the assessments.
4:20Going a step further, each unit of content and instruction, along the right, is associated with one or more learning outcomes on the left. Different colors provide clarity and organization. This illustration confirms that each outcome is supported by one or another unit of instruction.
4:40Finally, we can visualize and confirm the connections of the assessments to outcomes, and track the placement of assessments into the sequence of instruction. Everything is connected and nothing extraneous is unnecessarily included. A nicely designed course structure.
5:00Final example: Students might use a mind map as a study guide or organizer. In this example, a mind map reflects the preparation of a major term paper on the internment of Japanese Americans during World War 2. A mind map can also be an aide to prepare and review for an exam.
5:20Mind maps can also be helpful understanding complex subjects, lining out trails of study.In addition to organizing content, a mind map can include task management notes, such as collected resources or a to do list, as displayed on the left here. No rules for what can be added to a mind map, just whatever is helpful.
5:40A mind map’s categories and subcategories are just brief titles, but you’re not limited to headlines. Here, an extended note is added to the Loyalty Oaths topic. In this case, this is excerpted text of the original loyalty oaths required from Japanese Americans.
6:00There’s a bewildering array of mind mapping applications for computers and mobiledevices. Consider your needs and purposes. Do you want to mind map solo, or do you want to collaborate with others?Will you mind map at a specific computer, or do you need access from multiple computers or mobile devices? What’s your budget? There are free versions, trial versions, and both inexpensive and pricey options.
6:20Mind mapping can help you see challenges from a different perspective. It’s a different way of approaching problems.
6:40Research your options, and try it out. A good starting point is a Google search. Educational literature is beginning to report innovative experiments with mind maps in K-12 and higher education. And, I’d welcome the chance to talk more with you about mind mapping.
