|
|
|
back to |
Interactive Mind MappingMost people know something about brainstorming but they don't always appreciate how it can fit systematically into an larger picture of 'communicating in groups'. This page contains four short articles which map out the bigger picture and give some hints for trainers on how to best organise and facilitate the process. Helping people to better understand what they already know (an overview) Brainstorming Categorising Linking
g981007dHelping people to better understand what they already know
Helping people to better understand what they already know is the mental equivalent of tidying up a playroom after a gang of kids has been in. There should be a place for everything and everything should be in its place. The process of designing the storage system for the playroom is the equivalent of what is called Interactive Mind Mapping. The following table maps the concept of Interactive Mind Mapping.
The map, however, describes the process in much too tidy a way. In real life the stages blend together (eg when a 'category' is brainstormed as an 'item') and there is much moving backwards and forwards (a process called iteration) eg having invented a new category you may be reminded of items that you did not think of earlier - no problem, add them: when you begin to map linkages you may realise that a category is missing - no problem, add it - and then maybe reshuffle the items and/or add new ones. In the pure 'emergent' form of concept mapping a Trainer would act simply as a process facilitator ie she would not be interested in the content and structure of the eventual concept map. Her task would simply be to help organise the brainstorming, categorising and linking processes. Sometimes the intention of the Trainer will be to have the trainees understand the structure of a pre-existing Concept Map eg Health and Safety regulations for Child Care facilities. In this case the same technique can be used but the trainer would play a more active role in ensuring that the categories and linkages which the class decides to use are the 'correct' ones. This need not be seen as cheating so long as the trainer is honest about what she is trying to do. Hopefully most regulations do in fact 'make sense' and it helps to promote understanding and ownership of them to have the trainees actively 'guess' what they are rather than being expected to passively absorb them. In the second case the end product is known in advance and a hand-out can be prepared before the activity begins. In the first case the end product will remain a mystery until after the event and the task of preparing the handout can be delegated to one of the trainees. Helping people to better understand what they already know (an overview) Brainstorming Categorising Linking
g981007eBrainstormingThe output from a brainstorm activity is a list of ideas related to a given seed word.
Bad brainstorms are those which are locked into limited points of view. This can happen for various reasons:
There is no single correct composition for a brainstorm group as it could be called for many different purposes. But the general principle would be to make it as mixed as practicable so as to avoid getting trapped in a limited point of view. There are many different ways to organise a brainstorm and the options are set out in the following table:
The most common way is Type 7 where the Trainer supplies the seed word, participants shout out ideas and somebody writes them on a flip chart. This has its uses but the table points to other ways of brainstorming and you are invited to think through what would be involved in situations 1 to 6. A useful variation is to have individuals make a personal list (eg a minimum of three items) to share with a small group and then for the groups to report in plenary to generate a master list. This system has the advantage of forcing everyone to make a contribution. Given that Brainstorming often leads on to Categorising it is useful to have individual ideas written on individual pieces of paper so that they can be sorted quite easily. Everyone in the room should be able to read what is written on the sheets so think about the size of the paper and the thickness of the felt pens that are to be used. Think also of how the pieces of paper are to be attached and reattached - drawing pins, sellotape, blu-tak, post-it sheets? How to get plenty of good ideas
Helping people to better understand what they already know (an overview) Brainstorming Categorising Linking
g981020aCategorisingThe output from a categorising session is a list of generally acceptable categories which is shorter than the list of brainstorm items on which it is based.
* Few people can hold more than seven ideas in mind at the same time
How to get a good set of categoriesSome people and groups are better at seeing how items can be fitted into categories than others. If the categorisation session is not going well the trainer can jog it with broad categorisation prompts. These would obviously vary depending on the topic but the following prompts are applicable to most topics:
Helping people to better understand what they already know (an overview) Brainstorming Categorising Linking
g981020bLinkingThe output from a linking session is a concept map showing how all the individual items and categories fit together to make up the 'big picture' ie everybody has a good grasp of the overall situation such that there are no loose pieces in the jigsaw; ie everybody is enlightened about the topic and will not thus be groping around in the dark.
So far we have items which have been grouped into categories. The task now is to draw a picture or map of how these are interrelated or linked. This involves arranging the categories in some kind of order and then drawing lines between them to show the linkages. Given that you might be mapping issues, topics or systems which have physical, biological, psychological, sociological, administrative, financial, legal or whatever components, there is no single correct way of linking them but some common patterns with examples are listed below:
When you move through brainstorming and categorising to linking you are going from the parts towards the whole ie you are systematically figuring out how the details fit into a bigger picture. Having eventually reached the big picture, however, you will find that (a) it is part of an even bigger picture and (b) that some of the categories and items no longer mean what they did before. This is not a problem - change them. This going backwards and forwards between details and the big picture is the process which earlier we called 'iteration', and it is essential if thinking and organisations are to stay in touch with a changing world. It is never as clean cut as the models suggest but, in essence, the process of understanding the world goes from parts to whole and then from the whole back to the parts and so on - indefinitely. This is how life lives itself - this is evolution. The good thing about being a human rather than a worm is that by taking thought you can direct evolution, you can dream the future and then make it happen. Go for it!
Helping people to better understand what they already know (an overview) Brainstorming Categorising Linking
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
