Mind-mapping Exercise

BUSI 601, Week 1

5% of course grade

Mind-mapping is a vital skill for examining business environments. It is a tool that helps you inductively
locate people, resources, issues, topics, or any other conceptual relationship in terms of inductive and
systemic relationships. You will develop mind-maps as part of all the major projects in this course. The
skill of developing mind-maps will turn out to be invaluable in your future career as you seek to
understand problems and develop tools to solve them.

This exercise asks you to look at all of the information in the Course matrix and to try to organize it in a
mind-map that explores the concepts of the course and its academic structure. You will probably find it
useful to look at the course syllabus and the textbook table of contents. To complete this exercise, you
need to:

Read the “Guide to Mind-mapping” on the Week 1 additional readings list. Then,

1. Identify all student activities in the course

2. Develop a conceptual framework for linking them to the core course concepts of Business
Environments, Ethics and Strategy. (Hint: Start your mind-map with three boxes at the center, one for
each of Environments, Ethics, and Strategy.)

3. Organize all the materials in a mind-map. This may be a mind-map developed using software such as
Coggle, or done in PowerPoint, or drawn on a piece of paper or whiteboard and photographed. Try to
show logical connections at multiple levels if possible. You might wish to use a time structure as part of
the organizing framework. Be thoughtful and creative.

4. Write a brief summary of how you think the course is organized conceptually based on what you
learned through developing the mind-map. This may require guesswork on your part. The goal is to see
if you can develop a logical approach to thinking through the information provided. This summary
should be no more than 100 words.

5. Organize your mind-map and summary with an APA title page (total assignment length, 3 pages) and
load it to the Turnitin Drop-box on the course Week 1 Assignments section.

This assignment is due by Sunday night at 23:59, Pacific time.

There is no correct answer for this assignment. This is an inductive exercise that challenges your
imagination and logical thinking abilities. Do the best you can. Guess as necessary.

Feel free to talk to other students as you develop your ideas (ensure your final work is your own). You
might also want to look up other resources on mind-mapping.
Grading Rubric
This assignment will be assessed as follows

 Visual clarity & legibility of mind map up to 15 points

 Comprehensiveness of content up to 15 points
 Insight into logical relationships up to 15 points
 Quality of language, use of APA formatting, and other design issues up to 5 points

Up to 10 bonus points will be assigned for integrating the textbook chapters into your mind-map.

Total 50