Mind Mapping for Assignments
I’ve noticed that the quality of assignments, especially among international students isn’t very good. Often the assignment questions are not answered fully, or the thought processes not explored completely. I wanted to address this gap.
Empathy : Doing this exercise made me understand that the students’ challenges are multi fold- (1) time constraint (2) non familiarity with attempting such assignments (3) inactive/unhelpful team members.
Define Challenge/ Learner Activity I and II : I decided to tackle the first two points through my tool. How can i improve the quality of assignments by helping students train their minds in a methodical way of thinking? Which tool could I use? After a little research, I felt Mind Maps would be a good fit-it would help them think in a organised manner, they could work online collaboratively, increase chance of every aspect of the assignment being addressed and also be time efficient!
Ideate/Sections Framework: This helped me think of the tool from the student and the college perspective. Was the tool free? Would it require increased technology demand on the student or college?
Prototype: Building the prototype brought up the challenge of explaining something that seems very simple but can therefore be easily overlooked. My focus, therefore, was on bringing out the benefits of the the tool to the students. I focussed on the fact that if the map is well thought out, the report writing is just a tiny hop away-it flows directly from the mind map, which is the heavy lifting.
Design: Finally, the implementation plan helped to think about how I would approach the students with the new tool. This stage also helped to anchor my tool in the learning outcomes of the course.
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Example for "Mind Mapping for Assignments":
https://bank.ecampusontario.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Mind-Map-Prototype-Implementation.pdf
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