Tools for visualizing your structure

For this section, you will be required to reflect, to write notes, even to draw a mindmap. Your main tools will be pen and paper, and then later, you can type up the outline of your module and start filling in each part.

At this stage, you have a good idea of the topic of your module.  Take a coloured pen if you have one, and write the topic in big letters on a page. 

There, you have started, no need to fear the blank page any more.

What are Mind Maps again?

The concept of drawing ideas on paper might be an old one, but the word MindMap was coined by the psychologist Tony Buzan, to describe a way of thinking laterally and visually, using the concept of ‘radiant thinking’: thoughts arise from one single idea, radiate from it, and that idea is often expressed as an image.

You could now use a mind map for the next stage of your course preparation, or follow a set pattern.

Exercise:

Use a big page (the biggest paper you have!) and write the topic of your course in the middle. Draw a circle around it, you will then link it to other circles that you fill with ideas and reflections. Use colour to match and group similar ideas.