beyond 'chalk and talk'

I have created two in-class exercises in which small groups of students make Mind Maps. At the start of the class session, I provide a brief introduction to Mind Maps by outlining the basic principles and showing some examples from Buzan and Buzan (1993). I then describe the topic for their Mind Map, and divide the students into groups of three and provide them with a large sheet of paper, a handful of colored markers, and a number of small post-it notes.

Because brainstorming is a critical component of creating a Mind Map, the groups are instructed to brainstorm as their first step. Small post-it notes are quite useful at this stage because the groups can write ideas on the post-it notes and then shuffle them as many times as necessary to create effective categorizations. The creation of Mind Maps in small groups instead of by individual students facilitates a deeper analysis of the topic through brainstorming. Moreover, small group activities allow students to voice their ideas, support their ideas with evidence, listen to other points of view, and gain confidence (Meyers and Jones 1993).

Each group of students has approximately one hour to construct a Mind Map. When completed, the Mind Maps are attached to a classroom bulletin board, and we have a quick poster session so everyone can review all of the Mind Maps. The remainder of the class time is devoted to a discussion of the major themes and different categorizations for the problem at hand.

During the exercise, it is important for the instructor to circulate among the groups to help those groups that are having trouble getting started and those that need prompting to broaden their thinking. Because Mind Maps are generally not familiar to most students, the groups also benefit from encouragement to incorporate color and small pictures as organizational aids and prompts. Once started, however, some groups also need to be redirected away from elaborate drawings toward more substance. This is an informal method of continuous feedback (Huba and Freed 2000). Circulating among the groups also gives the instructor a chance to interact with the students in a more personal manner than a traditional chalk-and-talk lecture affords. Lastly, the Mind Map exercise was not graded and lacked formal mechanisms to ensure participation of all group members. Moving from group to group during the exercise allows the instructor to observe the extent of participation and to get the more passive group members to be more active. For example, I frequently address questions specifically to the passive group members and then turn their answers into concrete action steps on the Mind Maps.

In my course, the topic for one of the Mind Map exercises is the bargaining environment, which is the range of factors that influence labor and management negotiators and that determine bargaining power. To make the exercise more concrete, I create three newspaper-type articles written as if they were providing a preview of the upcoming negotiations between a specific local union and the copper company Phelps Dodge. The articles are for 1954, 1967, and 1983-time periods in which the bargaining environment was very different.

Each team of students is assigned a specific year, and their task is to create a Mind Map of the bargaining environment for the negotiations with Phelps Dodge for that specific year on the basis of the newspaper-type article. The central image of the Mind Map represents the local union. Major branches might include economic, political, legal, and technological categories. Within the economic branch, students could then identify labor market and product market factors, various other subcategories, and more specific factors (e.g., the unemployment rate).

The other Mind Map exercise in my course involves the effects of labor unions. This exercise occurs near the end of the course so it can facilitate student reflection on the entire course. The central image in this Mind Map represents unionism, and the various branches identify categories and examples of the effects of unions. One branch might be macroeconomic effects, which could include effects on unemployment and inflation, and another branch might be workplace effects, which could include effects on wages, adjustment costs, and productivity. One of the Mind Maps created by a student group on this topic is presented in Figure 3. The effects of labor unions are broadly grouped into five categories and various subcategories branch off from each of them. In a relatively short period of time, the group was able to analyze, categorize, and display many important dimensions of a wide-ranging topic.

Although my specific exercises are for a labor relations course, there are applications in traditional economics classes when the problem at hand involves categorization and is amenable to being captured by a traditional outline. For example, consider the topic of elementary supply and demand in a principles course. A Mind Map is not appropriate for replacing the usual graphical analysis introducing supply and demand. However, if an instructor wants students to think carefully about the determinants of supply and demand for a specific product, after seeing the traditional graphical analysis, then the creation of a Mind Map that outlines broad categories and then specific examples within different categories is a possible tool for serving this goal (Figure 1).

Other applications are possible. The sources of economic growth could be categorized through a Mind Map in a macroeconomics course. The varied consequences of policy interventions could be outlined in a Mind Map exercise in a wide range of courses. For example, the creation of a Mind Map of the effects of minimum wage legislation could be a useful exercise in a labor economics course. Other examples might include violations of the classical regression assumptions, sources of income inequality, determinants of migration, or types of trade barriers. In short, the outline structure of a Mind Map is appropriate for problems in economics courses in which a traditional outline is used; it is not intended as a substitute for other problems in which other methods, such as graphs or equations, best capture the problem. The Mind Map exercise is also intended to promote the reflection and application components of learning, not initial instruction. In the case of supply and demand, for example, a Mind Map exercise is a vehicle for students to reflect on the concepts of supply and demand by thinking of various influences; I am not suggesting that it is an effective way to initially teach students the meaning of these concepts.