Creativity Step 8

Outcomes

To achieve Step 8, individuals will show that they can use mind mapping as a way of further developing their ideas. 

In earlier steps, individuals explored what it means to use imagination in different situations and how to generate ideas. They have also explored how creativity can be useful in the context of both work and their wider lives. These next steps are about using different techniques to develop and refine more sophisticated ideas – starting with mind mapping.

Learners need to be able to:

• How to create a mind map 

• How mind maps can be useful 

• Other visual creative tools

Introduction

• Creative tools are methods that support creativity. That is, they support you to use your imagination, generate something new, and work towards an outcome. 

• A mind map is a simple creative tool to explore a particular idea: 

  • It starts with a single theme or question in the middle of the page, called the stimulus 

  • Initial ideas then fan out from that stimulus 

  • Lines are drawn between the ideas and the stimulus to show they are linked 

  • There might also be further ideas or connections that come from those ideas, and links between them can also be linked with arrows

Teach & Apply

• While mind maps are useful tools, they have their limitations because they only focus on one stimulus or idea and work out from there. 

• An alternative is concept maps which take different ideas and then look at connections between them. They might include labels on their linking lines to explain what the connection is between those ideas. 

• At other times it will be useful to think about flow charts, for how ideas link together, or circular diagrams if there is a cycle. Again, these help to add clarity about what the connection is between different ideas.

• Finally, while mind maps are helpful for identifying and organising ideas, they are only a starting point – eventually, we are likely to want to create other things to help explore those ideas further, like diagrams, charts or fuller explanations.

Reflection & Assessment

Embed these strategies across your teaching and coaching to help learners apply what they’ve learnt.

• Use this step regularly as a way for learners to reflect on their existing sports knowledge, or as a tool for gathering notes as they listen.

Use these ideas for ways of assessing this skill step to help you check learners’ understanding and confidence.

• This step is best assessed through an exercise. This could be through setting the learners a question or stimulus challenge and asking them to gather and organise their ideas through a mind map. The question or stimulus should be something accessible and familiar.

• Ask learners these key reflection questions:

  • What is a mind map? 

  • When are they helpful? When are mind maps less useful? 

  • What other visual creative tools have you come across?