Mindmap

Intro

The Mindmap activity in LAMS is a powerful tool that allows you to facilitate idea generation, organise thinking, and visualise relationships between concepts. It supports both individual reflection and collaborative knowledge building, making it highly flexible across different teaching scenarios.

Unlike linear note-taking, mindmaps enable students to explore connections, structure their thinking, and develop a holistic understanding of a topic.

Why do I want to use Mindmap?

You can use Mindmaps to:

• Focus students’ attention on a central concept or problem

• Encourage creative and divergent thinking through idea generation

• Support brainstorming before problem-solving or decision-making

• Promote collaboration, allowing students to build on each other’s ideas

• Help students organise and structure knowledge visually

• Activate prior knowledge and connect it to new concepts

Educational Insight

As Mindmaps help students focus on free flow idea generation without criticism or judgement. It's important to emphasise to students to accept and respect for individual differences.

When used effectively, mindmaps help students to organise their thoughts and understanding as well as to highlight relation between concepts that might not have been clear before hand.

Mindmaps help students see the whole picture.

What can I use Mindmaps for?

Mindmaps are particularly effective when you want to:

• Brainstorm ideas at the start of a lesson or topic

• Map relationships between concepts, theories, or processes

• Summarise complex topics in a structured and visual way

• Prepare for assessments or projects by organising key ideas

• Facilitate group collaboration, where students co-construct knowledge

• Encourage critical thinking by exploring links between ideas

When used effectively, mindmaps help students see the “big picture” while also understanding how individual ideas connect.

Pedagogies that use Mindmap: Problem Based Learning, Reciprocal Learning, etc.

How does it work?

You set up the activity by defining a central topic and providing clear instructions.

• You decide whether the Mindmap is individual or collaborative (team-based)

• Students create nodes (ideas) and link them together

• Students can expand, refine, and reorganise ideas as the activity progresses

• In collaborative mode, students build on each other’s contributions, creating a shared knowledge structure

This aligns with LAMS’ focus on structured learning design, where activities are sequenced to guide students through meaningful engagement