Case Study

How we oversee practical study reports and prepare learning pathways for students using MindView

School:

Jean Rostand Vocational High School

Key User:

Virginie Duplessi

Title:

Professor of Horticulture

Could you introduce yourself?

I teach horticulture at a vocational college in Offranville, near Dieppe in France.

How do your students use MindView? What instructions do you give them?

Because students have often had trouble producing their practical study reports, I created a mind map which operates like a pre-filled document mirroring the program of study. The mind map shows the different sections with titles and sub-titles, so the students only have to fill in the body text. Previously, the students were inclined to go off in all sorts of different directions so the whole thing quickly became quite unmanageable. Now, we have a central document which allows us to follow the progress of each report. I can also add notes in the various sections to guide the students.

Thanks to MindView’s export function to Microsoft Word, the reports are formatted automatically. This helps to speed the students’ progress, while still allowing them to customize the choice of activities they are presenting.

The big plusses are that nothing gets forgotten and that I can work with them throughout the year. What the students like most of all is that they can export their work in one single click to get a fully formatted Word document containing all their notes.

Do you also use MindView with other teachers?

Our school inspector asked us to create a learning pathway for the students, and this has motivated me to enlist my colleagues’ help to try this with MindView. I created various plans for our Bac Pro 3-year program, and we are currently busy completing them together. I started from a mind map, and we ended up with a Gantt Chart that was created very easily. We used to create learning pathways for each class and each teacher, but this time our inspector wanted us to work on a project basis. We therefore created one mind map per project, these projects forming part of a global learning pathway monitoring the progress of the students in each section.