Mind Mapping

Purpose

• To visualize ideas and concepts and highlight relationships between people, places, ideas, and elements of a situation.
• To reflect on an experience

Facilitation Instructions

• On the center of a large canvas, write the core concept in the center (or in the central bubble of the spider web.) For example: A day in the life of an online student.
• Think of related keywords and broad aspects of your experience -- these can be added as “spokes” off of the main topic (you can use different color markers for each one, but this is optional). For example: social, studying, classes, work, family
• Continue expanding your mind map by adding associations, places, ideas and emotions for each of the areas (e.g., off of social, you could add “meeting new people” and off of that “joined a RSO”, and could add a perception/emotion.
• Try to be concise -- 1-3 words is best, rather than whole sentences. You can also use drawings and colors to indicate different aspects of your experiences.
• Create lines and arrows ← → to show relationships between concepts (e.g., large classes might be related to challenges meeting new people)
• The goal is to move outward from the broad/general to specific, individual aspects of their experience.

Products Generated

• Brainstorming maps that show relationships between concepts and ideas.

Reference

75 Tools for Creative Thinking

Additional Information

• Suggest that students do a gallery walk after completing their maps, asking them to see where they are seeing themes, points in commons across the different maps. Indicate at the beginning of activity that participants will be doing a gallery walk to look at each others’ maps (so don’t put anything there that you don’t want others to see!)
• Brief discussion at the end: what were some common themes we saw across the maps?