Interest in understanding the use of mind maps for
instructional purposes has grown significantly in the past three
decades. Yet, many questions remain unanswered related to how
concept maps can be used most effectively to promote students'
motivation and learning in higher education courses. When used as a
part of instruction, these types of mapping techniques have been
shown to increase students' achievement scores and knowledge
retention. There are many ways to use mind maps in educational
settings. This 'Mara Management Mind Map' is part of a
long standing interest of Resilience-UK in how mind maps could be
used to extract meaning from conservation management plans.
Such plans are usually arranged in a linear fashion because they
are published and archived as word processed documents or a
sequence of forms.
Typically, when used in an instructional setting,
students who complete a concept map place concepts or ideas in
ovals (or any shape), organize the ovals in some type of logical
manner that shows the relationship among them (which may or may not
be hierarchical), and connect the concepts to one another with
lines that might or might not be labelled. Mind mapping is slightly
different from concept mapping in that the mind mapping process
starts with a topic at the centre of the graphic. Important
concepts and phrases are then linked to the centre topic on
branches which can continue to branch into other concepts and
phrases. In addition, the text can be accompanied by images, and
colour can be used for emphasis or to facilitate
organization.
Mind maps help students learn information by
forcing them to organize it and add images and colour to it.
These maps have been shown to lower extrinsic cognitive load
because students are creating a multi-dimensional space to tie in
ideas and concepts that relate to each other. Mind maps allow
students to create a visual image of a body of knowledge to enhance
their learning and can be used as a metacognitive tool that allows
them to make connections to material in meaningful ways. For
example, it has been found that mind maps not only aided biology
students in studying, but also encouraged a deeper level of
learning, especially when paired with a problem-based learning
curriculum. Mind maps have also been used as reflective tools that
allow for broader associations to be made to the material. Using
mind maps also helps teachers vary their teaching methods which may
be more likely to reach diverse learners who thereby can assemble
their own personal body of knowledge.
