Unit 3 Mind Map Essay

1081 Words3 Pages

Introduction
Learning is defined as the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study or by being taught (Merriam-Webster, 2014). Every student has a different way of learning, or if you will a learning style. Learning style is defined as an individual’s unique approach to learning based on strengths, weaknesses and preferences (Dictionary.com, 2014). Many professors try to accommodate the different learning styles of their students through lecture or one-on-one time sessions. The International Dimensions of Technology and Culture at University of Colorado at Denver is different from all of the other courses that I have taken on this campus due to the teaching techniques offered by Dr. Michael Tang. The professor of this course shows his students how to study for this particular course and hopefully apply this study technique to other classes. The study technique is referred to as mind mapping. Mind mapping accommodates the visual learners, logical learners and kinesthetic learners. Mind mapping is designed to make complex reading simpler to understand, make simple units of meaning into complex units and make connections between those units, and help students understand these relations as the whole. The process of mind mapping helps students recall information better. However, the main purpose of mind mapping to help students synthesize and integrate knowledge in a visual form.

Mind Mapping And Other Learning Techniques
The course and the required textbook teaches us several learning techniques such as: skim reading, meta guiding, schematic processing and mind mapping.
Speed reading allows us to read at fast pace. Speed reading can be thought to be skim reading – where you take your finger and put on the text a...

... middle of paper ...

... that mind mapping isn’t useful. As a student, I found mind mapping to very helpful in understanding the assigned readings and made the readings simpler instead of the text being complex and hard to comprehend. Mind mapping gave a way to express how my mind works: thinking logically while making connections to other related concepts. However, I found that mind mapping is tailored around particular engineering courses. Mind mapping can also be thought to only be helpful for those who are kinesthetic and visual learners. I am a logical learner. My study methods are very unique; when a text is placed in front of me, I read it, but as I am reading I am annotating the text (taking notes during or after reading a text). I feel that noting taking or annotating helps me recall information better. I found that combining mind mapping and annotation help me in this course.

Open Document