By Emily Winters
Continuing from last week’s post, today we will continue to explore ways of organizing your ideas and information from your classes, whether from lectures, PowerPoints, or course readings. Mind mapping can be a clever, visually satisfying way to organize information - whether you are studying and trying to remember everything that you already know, or if you are brainstorming for a paper.
Are you more of a visual person? Have you felt like more traditionally organized styles like the Cornell Method or an outline method of planning a paper do not fit your own thinking or learning style? Mind mapping might be for you!
What is it?
Mind mapping is a way of visually organizing your information or thoughts. It highlights connections between ideas as well as your own observations and interpretations (there should not really be direct quotes in a mind map, although you could point your future self to certain page numbers if you find it helpful!).
Place your main idea or central idea in the center of the page in a bubble. Then, add smaller circles around the page. These smaller circles will contain evidence and sub points. Then, you could branch off of those sub points and connect to different, tertiary points. In a way, these sub points could represent the main ideas of each of the paragraphs of your paper, while the tertiary bubbles could be the evidence that supports each paragraph!
According to Doug from verbaltovisual, some of the benefits of using this method to plan and organize your thoughts include its flexibility as well as focus on hierarchy and the way ideas connect.
Online Tools
There are several online resources and apps that can help you form mind maps! One helpful resource is Coggle. Though it has some paid features, the free version has plenty of great options.
Check out this video from their website that might give you a better idea of what mind mapping can look like!
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In conclusion, I hope this journey into mind mapping has sparked your interest and creative! Outlining and paper planning does not have to be dull or boring or uninspiring. On the contrary, organizing your thoughts should in a way reflect your pattern of thinking and dreaming, which will help you bring some magic to your paper!
Bonus Fact! Mind mapping is a very old way of organizing ideas and thinking through intricate questions: it was used by people like Leonardo Da Vinci and can be seen in his 15th century notes and designs!
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