Theory Garden™ MindDraw™ is a visual thinking tool that enables you to construct, explore and share drawings of your ideas.Special introductory Price:$19.95. Download it now for a free 30 day trial.

Theory GardenMindDraw™ helps learners of all ages think carefully about a question or situation that is important to them. It helps them create a drawing of what they see as the elements and relations at work in the situation. Drawing an idea is useful for clarifying your own thinking as well as for communicating your thoughts to others. Theory Garden is a community for sharing your theories with others.

Drawing is an important form of thinking, since you never really know whay will be in your drawing, or what it will show you, until you have drawn it. Sharing drawings of ideas with others and discussing your ideas with them, is an equally important form of thinking made possible by MindDraw.

 
MindDrawT can support free form thinking as well as more precise, theoretical and analytic thought processes. An example of freeform thinking is to use MindDrawT to construct a concept map in which you draw links between the words in your idea, showing how they are associated. The above concept map shows that the drawer has associated work with a boss, with being tired, and with earning wages. A concept map is very free form and unstructured. It is helpful for letting your ideas flow without inhibitions.

MindDrawT can help you go beyond an understanding of a current situation and show the changes that you would like to make in the future, by drawing a design model. A design model is a theory diagram of an existing situation to which you have added your desires as to how the situation could be changed for the better. In the above theory model, the drawer has shown that they desire to begin and exercise program which will improve their health and energy, thereby reducing their backlog and stress.

MindDraw™ also has a brainstorming feature to help you in developing an idea, and all your work on a map is recorded so that you, or someone you share it with, can play it back, step by step, to review your thought process as follow your thinking as you drew it.

  

MindDrawT also helps support a form of visual thinking known as a theory diagram. A theory diagram is your model of the important elements in a situation, showing how a change in one element causes or influences a change in another one. By drawing your understanding of the elements and influences at work in a situation, you are better able to anticipate what will happen next, and why. The theory diagram above shows that stress builds when backlogs grow at work, and that stress reduces your health and therefore your energy, which, in turn, increases your backlog.

Drawing is an important form of thinking, since you never really know what will be in your drawing, or what it will show you, until you have drawn it. Sharing drawings of ideas with others and discussing your ideas with them, is an equally important form of thinking made possible by MindDraw™.

From University Research to Practical Application

Theory Garden™ MindDraw™ is the brainchild of Professor Richard J. Boland, Jr. and Dr. Tanvir Y. Goraya, Ph.D. It grows from research at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, funded by the National Science Foundation Program on Coordination Theory and Collaborative Technology. The research funding was supplemented by a grant from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and included development of a software tool named Spider.

Spider was tested by managers and proved to be a powerful learning experience. It was then tested with students from both primary schools and universities, and again proved to be an exciting and valuable learning experience. The learning occurs in stages. First, making your ideas visible through an interactive process of self-reflection and drawing is a constructive opportunity for bringing together ideas that you know but do not normally connect in a single thought. Second, sharing and discussing your idea drawings with others is a dynamic, dialectic learning experience that stretches your horizons and opens you to new perspectives. Third, comparing your drawn expectations of what will happen in a given situation, to what actually happens, is an empirical test that generates learning similar to that of the scientific method.