•••quote:•••Originally posted by Dodge This:
•Most of us haven't been taught to think like this. I find them disorganized, cluttered, and useless. I end up frustrating myself trying to make them because I just can't change the way I reason through problems, and if I want to go back and look at it later to find specific info it ends up being more trouble than it's worth. I don't know why they try to impose these things on people so late into their academic careers. If The Powers That Be want us to use mind maps now, they should have been teaching it in elementary school.
Sequential organized outline = good
Weird connected webbing and circles = not so good•••••I totally hear what you're saying. I've never used these concept maps ever in my life, that's why I was kind of freaked out when I saw so many of them on whiteboards in classrooms when I was going on interviews. I never saw them in lecture halls, just in those small classrooms where small group learning takes place. I have never been comfortable using concept maps when learning anything and have always resorted back to the traditional outline form of note-taking.
However, during my time off before I start med school, I've been teaching 7th grade and as teachers, we're being pushed to encourage all types of learning (just as med schools are moving towards PBL - middle schools are also moving towards this). As part of this, we were taught this software called "Inspiration" which allows students to create concept maps very easily and switch from diagram form to a more organized table-like form - to the traditional outline form with the click of a button.
Although I was very uncomfortable with it at first, it actually makes learning (especially if you're doing case studies and PBL) much easier and you don't have to give up the outlines you're use to - it creates the outline automatically as you brainstorm symptoms, diagnoses, etc using the concept map.
