I don't know what to say with your other questions, but I can tell you that mindmapping is VERY, VERY effective. This has been proven with studies that are independent of Learning Strategies. It's like creating a piece of artwork, and you visually remember it better because you see the big picture of how everything is related, and you also have a personal connectino with it (since it's your artwork). The personal connection allows you to remember it more easily. The brain actually works like a mindmap, with branching, inter-related ideas. Many psychology classes explain this. I can tell you from personal experience that the night before a very difficult exam, my friend and I were drawing mindmaps like crazy of everything that was covered in class, over and over. By teh end of the night, we knew the material so well that we ended up having the highest scores in a class of 300 students.
