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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
What is the IPO? What is the input? What is the process? What is the output? If you can just write those down, you have a map or a process that you're following for your work.
Larry Cox II:You're familiar with the work. Always start with what you're familiar with.
Narrator:This is the Transform Your Teaching podcast. The Transform Your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. On the heels of our conversation about mind mapping last week, Rob and Jared continued the discussion through a conversation with Doctor. Larry Cox II, senior instructional designer at Virginia Tech. Thanks for joining us.
Rob:Well, Jared, we're here at OLC twenty twenty five. And as we like to do when we come to these is we kinda have, like, what we're learning Mhmm. Reflections. But today is a little bit different because I was intrigued by someone in a session I was in. And and and as I'm in the habit of doing, if something comes into my mind, like, and I see an opportunity, you know, what do I say?
Rob:If you don't ask, you already have your answer.
Narrator:That's true. Yeah. So This is literally a we were walking down the Disney Boardwalk and you saw him and pulled him across
Rob:I didn't even have my name tag on.
Narrator:No. You're just grabbed him by the shoulder.
Rob:Session. Yeah. And he's like, who is this weird guy? You know, I could just see the fear in his eyes. Yeah.
Rob:But I was intrigued by the gentleman. I will let him introduce himself, and then I will tell you what intrigued me. So would you please introduce yourself?
Larry Cox II:Yes. My name is, doctor Larry Cox a second. I work as a senior instructional designer at Virginia Tech. And for the most part, I deal with program and project management and coordination. So supporting later online course development and then also doing some professional development on various topics, much like one with the session today on systems thinking.
Rob:So what intrigued me was he had the second so there were three presenters and he had the second session part of it, I should say. And it was on graphing kind of systems analysis, essentially. Yeah. And if I'm wrong with that, you tell me.
Larry Cox II:Oh, no. That sounds good.
Rob:But what was so intriguing was, one, he had some some really down to earth, easy to understand ideas, and then showing how he went through basically mapping the system that he was a part of and recognizing where he was at in the system and then thinking through it holistically. So, you know, going from inductive doing an inductive analysis is what I think he did, as well as a deductive analysis. And he just blew this thing up on an XMind.
Larry Cox II:Okay.
Rob:So we've talked about XMind before. Oh, yeah. Right? For those of you who are listening, don't know what XMind is, it's a brainstorming mind mapping software. It's been around for a long time, Like twenty some years, I would say, if not more than that.
Larry Cox II:It's been around for a while.
Rob:Yeah, it's been around for a while. Pretty open. We use MindNode. You and I have talked about MindNode Yes, several
Larry Cox II:it's another favorite of mine.
Rob:Yeah. And so Doctor. Cox, I thought just did a wonderful job and I wanted to hear more from him. And I thought our listeners would be interested in what he had to say too. So, doctor Cox, thank you for joining us.
Rob:You're welcome.
Larry Cox II:Thanks for having me.
Rob:And talk to us a little bit about what what caused you to go into this particular field, especially in terms of thinking through systems, in a graphical way? You know, what pushed you there?
Larry Cox II:So I had an interest in system thinking a long time ago. Actually, one of my first dissertation topics was looking at the systems of systems engineering and kind of like the macro systems and then subsystems that were inside of that. So I wanted to map that out and look at where the interconnections were for instructional designers in the larger system of higher ed and, like, where our impact was. Then one of my committee members looked at me and said, you wanted to graduate. So you should pick an entirely different topic.
Larry Cox II:And this might be something to do once you're done. Yeah. And you can actually build a career and have more of, an actual research agenda. So I listened to her and picked something entirely different.
Narrator:Smart.
Larry Cox II:Found a different topic. It's like you don't, you know, disgruntle your committee. Did that, graduate. And now once I finished with that, I'm coming back to that topic and looking at it again. Because as we all know, instructional design is built around general systems theory.
Narrator:Right.
Larry Cox II:Like, that's one of the core underpinnings. And I was very fascinated with that idea and I wanted to explore more, but she said I had to wait until they called me doctor and then I could spend more time looking into it. So now that I'm done and they can call me a doctor, I've spent more time looking at some of those pieces and guess exploring, what's the utility that we can have with that with solving
Narrator:problems?
Larry Cox II:Because what our problems bring is, you know, structured pieces inside of a system that have other influences. And now you need to find out what's the what's your leverage point? What can you stick a lever in to actually start exacting and causing some change and figuring out how to solve the problem? So it's kinda like Archimedes, like, me a lever and give me a point and I can flex and I can solve it. That's the whole thing that we're doing is just trying to find where's your inflection point.
Larry Cox II:So you wanna draw it out to see where you insert yourself and actually figure out how you can change things.
Rob:So you went at it from a graphical organization model. We've we've talked about these things, and and you'd brought a couple of resources here. One was by, I think it's Cabrera and Cabrera?
Larry Cox II:Correct.
Rob:Called Connect the Dots, and we'll have this in the the show notes. And then the other one, organize ideas that's organized spelled with an s and not a
Narrator:z. Yes.
Larry Cox II:I would say this for those that are looking to get a better idea about mind mapping and then system thinking or just, like, visualizing problems and information. The organizing ideas is probably a good start because it gives you very different ways to think about how you want to visualize or represent that information. And now why I gravitated toward this, my mind thinks in this way, like straight outlines and trying to bullet point things. I can do that, but it wasn't really helpful in trying to make sense of a problem. It was much easier for me to just start plotting things onto a piece of paper.
Larry Cox II:Mhmm. Or as most of my coworkers know, I am the whiteboard person inside of her office. Mhmm. I am the one that at any point in time, will gravitate towards a whiteboard with a marker and say, let's start drawing out this conversation. What are we really discussing?
Larry Cox II:What am I hearing? And I started moving more and more in that direction, but just writing the stuff on the board wasn't good enough. There was no sense making aspect of it. So the diagramming was a lot easier to start making sense of the information and also gave me an artifact that when I went to other meetings or met with clients or met with other stakeholders at the university, I could put something in front of them, and we all had something to analyze as opposed to me just trying to talk and then interpret or visualize. You're gonna have an interpretation.
Larry Cox II:Another part of my research was looking at communications and coming to a consensus on ideas. I'm going to say something, you're going to interpret a certain way, and then you're gonna respond back. And now I have to guess an into it whether or not what you receive from me, you decode it correctly with my intent. If I put it on a piece of paper in front of us, now I give us something to analyze and look at together. So we both can keep tweaking and altering and changing this representation and have a shared representation of what we're discussing as opposed to trying to guess if we have the same shared representation.
Larry Cox II:That's part of the reason why I like it a lot more, especially when looking at systems and looking at problem solving. We don't know if we're all trying to solve the same problem. And if we're looking at the problem the same way Mhmm. Oftentimes, we're not. Yeah.
Larry Cox II:We have different vantage points. We have different purviews. We have different histories. But if I can put that down on a piece of paper, I can at least get you to elicit those differences.
Rob:Mhmm.
Larry Cox II:I still may not understand them, but I at least know they're there. Yeah. And I can see them and I can start working with them and working around them. So that's why I like documenting and visualizing these pieces because it makes it easier to have a more holistic conversation and a more, like, holistic problem solving process.
Narrator:Seems like this method within I'm thinking immediately as an instructional designer, the communication I have with our SMEs that come in, it allows I'm thinking about the other avenues of communication where this would fit even within like interdepartmental or enter you know, within our own office, within departments, between instructor and student. There's a lot of different applicability to just adding this element to those conversations.
Larry Cox II:I use it everywhere.
Narrator:Yeah.
Larry Cox II:Either in client meetings, with my boss, with my teammates, with others inside our organization, like anyone, when I will sit down and try to depict what we're discussing, whether it's kicking off a new project or trying to solve a problem or just figuring out who's working on what aspect. All of that can be represented as a system and as a diagram process. And I just found with system thinking in particular, diagramming these has made it a lot easier to make sure we all were viewing the system the same way. But I think visualizing things can go beyond that.
Narrator:So for me, when I do mind mapping, I don't follow a specific like I know this organized ideas book has a bunch of different patterns and organizers that fit. If you want to do this, do this. Or if you want, if you have this question, use this type of diagram. I'm not one that really follows that idea. Do you do that or do you kind of just improvise as you go?
Larry Cox II:I use a lot of improvisation, so I do build them as I go. But sometimes if I'm trying to convey a particular idea, that's where this book can come in as a good resource. If there's something I already know and I just wanna shape it to get my point across to make sure we can discuss the same thing, I may use things here. But if I'm in a meeting and I'm just writing, I'm going more free form. I may go back and clean it up.
Larry Cox II:Once the meeting is over, I have all the information. Now I can start readjusting, shifting, and making sense of some pieces. And then I'll represent it, and I may use something here to, like, help that. Yeah. But as I'm doing it on the fly, no.
Larry Cox II:I'm just trying to capture and I'll organize as I go through and try to build some hierarchy and structure as things evolve.
Narrator:Gotcha.
Rob:I think what what interests me too is that I think it has a lot of connection with what we've been talking about in terms of how the brain operates.
Narrator:Yeah.
Rob:And you remember when we talked with doctor Oakley and we talked about focus and we talked about how the brain encodes, you know, memories, how it encodes learning, it's it's very highly visual. And and if you took a picture of someone's, you know, neuron map, if you will, it it would look Yeah. To some degree like some of these three-dimensional mind maps. Mhmm. So there's almost a sense in which there is some some continuity there.
Rob:Yeah. Right? Because it's closer probably to what is actually physically happening in your brain. Mhmm. And so whether you think of focus as that octopus with the four legs in the front of the head, tossing the ball back and forth around the top of your head, these kinds of diagrams allow you to focus.
Rob:You can shut things off. And the thing I liked about what he showed today was one of the first things he did, he had this exploded view of this massive system that he had kind of mapped out, org chart, you know, roles, lot of these different aspects. Right? And he, in XMind, was able to just close those down. So kinda like shutting the drawers.
Narrator:Yeah. Yeah.
Rob:Right? Yep. Or maybe another analogy would be turning off the tabs. My wife would say to me sometimes she's like, Rob, do you have too many tabs open?
Narrator:In your brain?
Rob:Yeah, in my brain, because I'm going back and forth from different things. And then I lose my place because I don't even know. So, you know, again, shutting those things down. He did that with that organizer. And I wonder, you know, is this a really helpful tool for everyone, you think?
Larry Cox II:It can be. And another one for the tabs, you can also make tab groups. Then you can have the tab group and then you can collapse that and just pull it
Rob:up from the side Tabception.
Larry Cox II:Come back to it later.
Narrator:Yeah. It's tabception.
Larry Cox II:And that actually is what I do. Like, I have, like, eight or nine tab groups that may have, like, nine to 12 tabs inside of them. But then I can take the tab group and then save the group for later. Mhmm. And then I can bring the group back when I need it.
Larry Cox II:So I know I have that collection of tabs Yeah. Yeah. When I need to find it, much like inside of the mind map. Now the reason why I've used many mind mapping pieces of software, but the reason why I settled on XMind was because it had this feature and another feature that helps with those that don't necessarily like the exploded diagramming. You can convert it into an outline.
Larry Cox II:I don't know if many people know that, but XMind has a very quick quick share where you can toggle it between the exploded mind map and then an outlined version of it. Mhmm. And I do that a lot for the people that work because they don't think in the mind map. They don't like seeing the exploded pieces, but I give them an outline. They can follow the outline.
Larry Cox II:They can follow the pieces. So part of the cleanup that I'll do afterward is how can I structure this information in such a way that if I convert it into an outline Mhmm? It makes sense to someone else. They can see the hierarchy and structure. Even if it's not fully exact, but I can give them something that they can latch onto that's familiar to them.
Larry Cox II:Yeah. But I can work in a medium that's very familiar to me to capture the information. So I like using that particular software because I can juggle back and forth between the two modes. So when I'm going to my bosses or some of the other deans or the provost at the school, I can give them an outline. They're familiar with the outline.
Larry Cox II:They're comfortable with the outline. Mhmm. But if I wanna do a presentation, I can switch back to the mind map and then open and close different pieces and build the other relationship lines. I don't know if you saw that down at the bottom.
Rob:I did.
Larry Cox II:But with parts of it, we're looking at the context. I wanted to see what was the relationship between the different pieces. How did they work with each other? How did they influence them? What kind of power do they have?
Larry Cox II:Like, what are the shifting dynamics? That's something that I can't represent inside of the outline very easily, but I can do very easily inside of a mind map. So giving them an outline to help them think through whatever I wanna discuss, but then I can switch back to the mind map to actually show the relationship, show the dynamics between the different pieces. Yeah.
Rob:I think the thing that I liked, and I can't remember what you showed this morning, that first that first graph that you showed was actually more of a three-dimensional space. So it had an x y z axis, so it just wasn't x and y. Like most mind mapping is two dimensional. It's very flat. Even though you can branch off and you have different branches, you can't gotta, you really can't get a sense of it in a three d space.
Rob:And so a lot of times, just a three d space can help in terms of the size of the node, right, how important it is so that you can see hierarchy with with node size. And then what I thought again was very intriguing was his he came in and put meta information. At least I would call it something like that. That it was showing quality of relationship or things that bound those relationships. So there was a connection, but it also showed dotted lines towards others.
Narrator:Okay.
Rob:You know? Mhmm. And relationships that wouldn't be maybe necessarily solid, but yet have influence. So these influence lines, And that was that was really cool the way you represented those. So just thinking through what does the system actually do.
Rob:Right? And you were trying to it seems like you were trying to just understand what you were involved with.
Narrator:Mhmm.
Rob:And then how you could best, as you said, lever.
Larry Cox II:Yeah. So this was looking at trying to improve, like, process efficiencies inside of our unit. And, like, how might we do that with our services? But to keep in mind with that, we had to know where we were inside of the organization and then what groups did we work with, how did they work with us, to what extent, or why some groups might not wanna work with us depending on what we're trying to do. So we'll be able to just map out more of that information and the relationship and the influences between the various groups and how that influences travel.
Larry Cox II:Because sometimes it's bidirectional. Both of us are influencing each other, and sometimes it's unidirectional. They're just influencing us or we're influencing them. So I guess having that representation in those different perspectives helps us make better solutions or at least picking different solutions on how we can move forward. And it's like, alright.
Larry Cox II:We can do this. We can do that. We can do a third. But knowing that if we pick the second one, well, that's going to have some impacts. And now we can see what are those impacts going to be if we try to implement this.
Narrator:So you're an instructional designer. So let me ask you, if you present this to an educator or an instructor at your school and they say, yeah, but how does it fit into my daily teaching and learning? What would you say to them?
Larry Cox II:For that one, I would wanna also pull in another piece, which I do at times, but not all the time, which is the org chart. And pulling in the org chart, like, okay. You're a professor over here in sociology. So you think all of these things don't actually impact you. But if my boss is going to the provost roundtable
Rob:Mhmm.
Larry Cox II:And your dean of the college is being invited to look at a presentation at this roundtable, The decision that we make over here are going be communicated to your dean. That can influence your funding. That can influence the professional development you have to go through. That can influence how your course is going to be mapped out. So you as an instructor may not necessarily see the direct impact of this immediately, but there are people inside of your system that are attending a presentation that are looking at aspects of this.
Larry Cox II:So they're hearing pieces of it. It's going to, I hate the term sometimes, trickle down to you. But you will have some impact inside of the system. You can't escape it. It may not be direct impact.
Larry Cox II:And that's why I like the cogs. There's a giant cog, which is a giant, you know, wheel for the institution, and then all the little small ones that are around it. Now this may be a little tiny cog here in the corner. It's still being spun Yeah. By this giant one.
Larry Cox II:Yeah. And if there's a large enough influence where this large one is spinning, well, this one down here is gonna be, like Yeah. Hauling trying to keep up.
Narrator:Yeah.
Larry Cox II:Right. So you may not understand why you're spinning so fast. Well, that's because something here changed this call, which influenced your dean, but now Yeah. You're having to catch up a whole lot. So Yeah.
Larry Cox II:The impact is still going to get to you in some way, shape, or form.
Rob:We need to shift gears. Exactly. But that's really helpful. That's so I think you're kinda seeing, and hopefully, our listeners are are are hearing, you know, there's there is something here to pay attention to. So one of the things we'd to do is give our listeners, like, super easy, you know, next steps, like practical steps.
Rob:So doctor Cox, what is something that you would say, you know, one, two, three things that you would say to listeners maybe who have never thought about this or maybe they've been doing something like this. That that may be another one. Right? Maybe they've been doing this intuitively. You know, these resources that you've you've brought here today, very helpful.
Rob:Maybe that's one of them. But would you just give our listeners a couple of practical tips on how they could utilize this in their own life?
Larry Cox II:I think two easy ones. The first would be with a process that you're doing inside of your unit, like any service or work that you're doing. Guess map that. That is something that you know or something that you're familiar with. It's something that you do all the time.
Larry Cox II:But what, as my dad would say, what is the IPO? What is the input? What is the process? What is the output? If you can just write those down, you have a map or a process that you're following for your work.
Larry Cox II:That's a very easy one that anyone can start with because you're familiar with the work. Always start with what you're familiar with because you wanna get the reps of putting these things together and creating a larger holistic system of, like, something, whether that's a process or an org chart. Guess mapping out, like, what is your reporting structure? Can you draw that out? And then can you say, what are the relationships between the different groups?
Larry Cox II:So in your unit, inside of where you work, there's a big boss and there's a lot of people that work underneath them. Can you map the different relations between the departments? And you can get start there. You have five or six departments inside of a unit. Okay.
Larry Cox II:How do they work with one another? How do you work with the different groups? I guess simple things you can start with. You don't have to go too deep. You don't have to go too involved, but start trying to just map out systems that you're a part of.
Larry Cox II:You are a part of something. What are the other somethings that make up the whole unit? And just identify those. Then from there, you can start working to build in other aspects, create more nuance, build more relationships, show, like, the influences of power between them. But really get starting with either you're a part of a larger system or breaking yourself down, what are you made up of?
Larry Cox II:So you as an individual are a lot of systems. What systems are you a part of? Like, what makes up you? Like, for instance, like, I am a I was a student. I was a researcher, like, practitioner, husband, like, you know, son.
Larry Cox II:There are many different things that make up the system of Larry. You can start there as well just to start getting some ideas of what does it mean to create a system or understand the parts of a system. So I would start with those. Start with yourself. Look at where you work and try to structure that in the departments or look at a process that you do very often to just get your toes wet with it.
Narrator:I like the idea of, like, creating a mind map of yourself and then going, why did that annoy me? And then go through and go, oh, that's why.
Rob:The system is Jared.
Narrator:This system over here
Rob:Why is really messed
Larry Cox II:couldn't you get to something? Well, there are a multitude of other things Yeah. That you're that you are competing with.
Narrator:Yeah. That's a really cool idea. I'm about to do that. What blocks you? Yeah.
Narrator:What's hindering you from doing this?
Rob:Mhmm.
Narrator:Yeah. Yeah. That's cool.
Rob:That is excellent. Is there anything else you wanted to ask?
Narrator:No. Unless there's anything else you wanna add?
Larry Cox II:Take your time. It may come easy to some. It may not come easy to others. That's okay. You will find your way.
Larry Cox II:Like, not everybody will do systems thinking the exact same way. Not everybody would do system mapping the exact same way. You can do it if you wanna do it. This is gonna take you some time and take some repetitions.
Narrator:So that's gonna take some vulnerability too. Yes. Especially if you do a self analysis. Mhmm. Something that we talk about in teaching, and I think you you would echo this too, but the sense of self reflection when you're teaching is very hard because you don't want to peel back the layers and realize, oh, that's a big problem.
Narrator:Let's put those layers back so I don't see that.
Larry Cox II:And you're going to see that in a lot of this. And also, you're going to be wrong. Yeah. Like, you're gonna miss parts of the system. You're gonna miss parts of the whole.
Larry Cox II:You're not gonna have the whole picture. You're not gonna have all the relationships. Yeah. That's the point of the process. Yeah.
Larry Cox II:Because once you build it, Naga's like, hey, Jared, can you fill this in? Like, what am I missing? Yeah. What part is not included? Yeah.
Larry Cox II:Rob, can you go through and add some other pieces? You know this other department I don't know. Mhmm. Can you help me fill out the rest of this map? And now now we have this shared understanding, this shared map that we all can work from because it covers more angles, more perspectives that we were unaware of.
Narrator:Yeah. That's cool. Well, we appreciate your time.
Larry Cox II:Oh, thank you, gentlemen. I enjoyed this.
Rob:Yeah. And thank you for allowing me to accost you on the boardwalk.
Narrator:Mance trying to get a corn dog.
Rob:Yeah. He's just going for a corn dog.
Narrator:Was that corn dog good, by the way?
Larry Cox II:Yeah. Actually, it was really good. I was surprised with that.
Narrator:Well, thanks again for coming on.
Larry Cox II:No problem.
Ryan:Thanks for joining this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you have any questions or comments about our episode today on mind mapping, feel free to send us an email at CTLPodcastcederville dot edu. You can also connect with us on LinkedIn, and don't forget to check out our blog at cederville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.