Using Mind Maps as a Teaching and Learning Tool to Promote Student Engagement

Creating an environment that engages students in the learning journey is not always easy. Sometimes as faculty members we ask ourselves, “Are we taking this learning journey by ourselves?” Several years ago as I began my scholarly exploration of the utility of mind mapping as a teaching and learning tool to foster critical thinking, my colleague and I instituted a mind mapping learning activity which has helped to promote student engagement in the classroom.

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An Innovative Way of Analyzing Critical Thinking Skills

The goal of most majors is to develop the kind of critical thinking skills students will need to address the not clearly defined and conceptually complicated problems that most professionals regularly face. Faculty in the Finance Department at Seattle University wondered if they were preparing their majors to solve these kinds of problems.

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Is There Too Much Interaction in Your Online Courses?

Interaction has always been seen as a key component of an online course. Whether it is student-student or student-teacher interaction, the ability to discuss and exchange ideas has long been considered to be the piece that adds value to an online course, keeping it from becoming simply the posting of written course material on a web page, the digital equivalent of a correspondence course. In fact, many programs promote the highly interactive nature of their curriculum as evidence of its educational value.

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