Interested in improving study skills and make studying more enjoyable?
Mind Mapping is an ideas generation and organization tool that can improve different aspects of study. In this article, you will learn how Mind Mapping can improve study skills effectively.
What is the traditional way of note making?
In the old days, people take notes in a linear form by listing information lines by lines. This way of note taking ends up creating complex text list which is extremely difficult to read and understand.
Why is the traditional note taking approach bad?
By writing notes in lines you are forced to structure information in a flat and linear structure. You also cannot connect ideas effectively. Ideas organized in this way is simply hard to read.
What is Mind Mapping?
Mind Mapping is a technique to map out your ideas in the form of a visual map. A mind map obeys a radial format around a central thought. To use Mind Mapping for study, use the key topic as the central concept, and then create branches for the notes. Make sure sub-branches are created properly in organizing your notes.
What are the benefits using Mind Map for study?
Mind Maps presents your ideas visually with idea nodes, coloring of nodes, images and connectors. All these help you better understand the information retained.
Traditionally, notes are written as phrases, if not sentences. In a Mind Map, notes are written as words, which both saves your time and makes the map easier to read. This is very helpful when you take the map as reference in writing essays and preparing for examinations because you can easily recall the information you noted down.
Mind Mapping is improves creativity. As you generate ideas, you update the map, and when you update, you keep generating new ideas.
Mind Mapping provides an effective way to organizing ideas generated from a natural human thinking process. You will find your ideas flow onto the page, which makes studying more enjoyable and effective.
Mind Mapping as study skills
Mind Map can improve many different aspects of study, including:
- Organizing and structuring knowledge and information
- Retain information from books and articles
- Essay planning
- Innovating new ideas
- To-do list
- Problem solving
- Presenting ideas
- Time management
- Event planning (e.g. preparation of exam – what to prepare, when will the exam take place, where to go, study planning)
How could Visual Paradigm Online improves your study skills?
Visual Paradigm Online (VP Online) comes with an online mind map software that can improve your study skills even further with a rich set of mind mapping tools that is powerful yet easy to use:
- Hotkeys support: Focus on brainstorming but not operating the tool. Develop mind map effectively by creating child and sibling nodes with hotkeys.
- Keeps your mind map neat with quick alignment tools.
- Easily re-positioning the whole branch through drag and drop
- Cloud-based mind mapping tool that can be accessed any time and any where online
- Compatible with all operating systems and web browsers
- Add your own images into the mind map for annotation purposes
- Categories ideas further by formatting the nodes with different fill and line styles
- Share your Mind Maps with your schoolmates, friends or teachers by exporting the drawing to PDF and image files (PNG, SVG, GIF, JPG)
More details about Visual Paradigm Online’s online drawing tool.
