Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a strategy that helps students visualize and analyze difficult concepts. Starting with a prompt or topic, students identify supporting themes or subtopics and illustrate connections using branches, color, and illustrations (or other media). Mind maps are great for organizing thoughts and ideas related to subject matter but can also be used to help analyze and critique material, encouraging deeper thinking and understanding of difficult concepts. Listed below are some activities where mind mapping can be effective:

Mind mapping is proven to help increase engagement, creativity, and collaboration amongst students (Rosba et al., 2021). Additionally, research supports that mind mapping can help students to understand long-term lessons, increase participation, and enhance peer communication, if working collaboratively (Lubov Vorona-Slivinskaya & Olga, 2020). 

There are a few free online mind mapping tools that can be used to facilitate independent or collaborative mind mapping. Listed below are two suggested mind mapping tools. All are web-based platforms and are mobile-friendly. View the chart below for a more thorough comparison of tools.

* While all tools have unlimited access, there are some caveats with Miro. When sharing a Miro map, use the “Invite to team and board” link; take note that with this link, invitees will also have access to any Miro board in your dashboard, so use Miro for independent and small group work only.

**While Padlet does offer a handful of templates, only the “Canvas” template can be used for Mind Mapping because it is the only template that includes the branching tool to connect posts.

*** Accessibility statements are generalized in this table. These tools report WCAG 2.1 compliance in some capacity, but please review each tool’s accessibility capabilities for features such as alternative text, screen reader functionality, color blindness, etc.