June 26, 2007, by Teaching at Nottingham

Planning module content: mind-mapping, podcasting and WebCT (now Moodle)

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Richard Field, Geography: “I actually planned it out, and I wanted to deliver it via what we call mind maps. Our first years have a series of lectures called study skills, or series of sessions called study skills given by a colleague of mine, and we talk quite a lot about teaching with each other (he’s the other biogeographer in the department) and he talks to students a lot in the first year about mind maps, which are, for those who don’t know, they’re kind of a bit like spider diagrams – you have a main topic in the middle (and my lecture’s on biogeography, so say it might be Island Biogeography), and then coming off that you have things that link up, so perhaps subtopics within that which might link to each other.

“And the idea of mind maps that my colleague talks about is mainly as a revision tool to try and pull the topic together and see how it all fits together, and perhaps organise your revision notes and things like that using the mind maps.

“So I thought, well, I can easily apply that to my lectures. So I had a look at the content I’ve been delivering over five years and drew little mind maps of all the different content, how it all links together, and then the WebCT (now Moodle) delivery of the material is all based around that.

“So we have interactive mind maps where you can click on each of the little bits and that pulls up the audio file, the associated PowerPoint slides and transcripts for the audio file as well, mainly for disabled students.

“I recorded all of the lectures before the beginning of term, put them up onto WebCT, with the help of Claire Chambers, who’s been very helpful in the School of Geography (she’s our web support officer), and so she went through and did a lot of the editing and the technical side of it, and I just recorded all of my lectures in smallish chunks onto mp3s, and then they went onto the website.”

Richard Field 
School of Geography

Extracts from interviews with staff and students about teaching inclusively. This video was originally published as part of PESL’s Thinking about Dyslexia collection. Produced June 2007.

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