Rachel Burnham writes: In this article, I want to share some of my
experiences of how students can make use of Sketchnoting to aid them in their
studying.
Sketchnotes are rich pictures, which you create
yourself, that make use of a combination of both words and simple
pictures. There are many styles and
approaches to Sketchnoting – in Sketchnoting there are no rules, it is about
finding an approach that works for you.
For example, I like to make use of colour in my Sketchnotes, whereas
Mike Rhode, who came up with the term Sketchnote in 2007, creates fabulous
sketchnotes just using black ink. Some
people create Sketchnotes using a tablet & software, whereas I prefer paper
and pens.
I have been using Sketchnoting for about 6
years and have introduced many people to Sketchnoting to aid their work,
thinking and learning. I have worked with Learning & Development and HR
professionals, engineers, digital marketeers, coaches, forensic scientists, geographers,
university lecturers and many others including school and university students. From this experience I have become convinced
of the value of Sketchnoting to anyone who is studying, whether at school,
college, university or for a professional qualification.
Sketchnoting is a flexible tool that can help
you to be more effective in the way you study.
It can be used to create memorable notes; to aid you in making sense of
what you are learning; for planning your work including assignments; for
reflection; when revising; and when communicating your ideas to others. In addition, many people with dyslexia seem to
find Sketchnoting a helpful approach to making notes.
One thing that concerns many people when they
first hear about Sketchnoting, is the fear that you need to be good at art to
be able to use Sketchnoting.
Fortunately, you don’t need to be able to draw to start Sketchnoting, as
the drawings used are very simple indeed, which can be picked up quickly with a
little practise and an open mind.
In this blog, I want to explore practically how
Sketchnoting can be used to aid learning.
As I do this, I will make links to the concept of ‘dual coding’ which is
a well-researched approach to learning which has been extensively studied in cognitive
psychology. Dual coding essentially
identifies that information which is presented with words and pictures is coded
by the brain in two different but linked ways.
This means when you make notes using a combination of words and visuals,
your brain creates linked memories, which you have a much better chance of
recalling. The power of ‘dual-coding’
is at the heart of what makes Sketchnoting effective.
Here are the 6 ways you can use Sketchnoting
to help you study:
1. Note-making
Sketchnoting can be used both
for making notes of lectures and discussions, but also to summarise material
studied through reading, watching videos or listening to recordings. Sketchnotes enable you to make personal
notes, that focus on the key points from the session, lecture or reading. When making notes in a class or lecture it is
awfully tempting to try and write everything down, but the very effort of
trying to record everything, can mean that you almost stop thinking about what
you are writing in the effort to capture it all. When Sketchnoting a lecture,
talk or class, it is impossible to record everything, yet this apparent
weakness, is one of the strengths of Sketchnoting. If you are Sketchnoting you
do not attempt to record everything, just the key points, but because you are
actively choosing which points to capture and which words & images to use,
you stay focused and engaged. When
looking back at your notes, your memory is then triggered to recall additional
detail not directly captured in your Sketchnote. To get the full benefit of this, it is
helpful to look back over your notes and actively seek to recall the full
information. If you do this, say the day
after creating your notes, you will also gain the benefits of retrieval
practice, which I will discuss in more detail when looking at revising.
You can also use
Sketchnoting to summarise information gained from reading books & articles
or from watching videos or listening to recordings. Once again, the benefit of Sketchnoting over
other forms of notetaking, is that it requires you to think through and actively
identify which are the key points to record.
2. Connecting
ideas and thinking things through
Often when studying a subject
it helps to think about how the different aspects of that topic link together
to deepen and broaden your understanding. You can use Sketchnoting to help you
do this, by creating a Sketchnote that shows the connections between the topics. If you are researching a topic, you can use a
Sketchnote to show the relationships between the information you have
gathered.
For example, I was
researching with a colleague the ways that virtual reality (VR) could be used
to facilitate training in the workplace – we talked to experts, read articles
and tried out different VR applications ourselves. We realized that one way of making sense of
all the different ways of using VR was to consider how much the different VR
apps immersed learners and so we arranged all the uses we had come across along
a rating scale of the degree of learner immersion and I drew the following
Sketchnote to illustrate this.
Leonardo Da Vinci, who was
not only an amazing artist but interested in a wide range of scientific subjects,
used to carry out ‘thought-experiments’ in which he regularly sketched out
pictures illustrating ideas he was exploring such as wave patterns, light &
the moon, river eddies and added notes alongside them. Effectively he was Sketchnoting! Some of his
notebooks still exist today and so you can see how he did this.
3. Planning
Sketchnotes
can be used very flexibly to aid you plan all kinds of work tasks including
assignments, presentations and projects.
When using Sketchnoting for planning, I often create much messier and more
unfinished looking Sketchnotes than for other purposes – I rarely keep them
beyond the need for the immediate task.
Here is an example of a Sketchnote I created when preparing a
presentation on Networking:
One
of the advantages of using Sketchnotes for planning is that you can begin with
whatever ideas first come to mind and you can then go back and decide the order
in which you tackle the tasks or the order in which the sections go. In this respect, Sketchnoting has some
similarities to MindMapping, though there are many more options about how you
lay out your Sketchnote.
4. Reflecting
Many courses encourage you
to carry out reflection during your time of study, perhaps as preparation for
using reflection as part of continuing professional development (CPD) in a work
role. It may even be an integral part of the whole course or a requirement
within one or more assignments to carry out a reflection. The idea behind reflection is to take time to
learn from experiences (whether those experiences involve doing an assignment,
carrying out a task, doing some research or from a life experience) by
identifying what went well and why, what
could be improved and what you will do to be even more effective in the
future. This process of reflection may
make use of a model such as Gibbs' reflective cycle (1988).
Reflection can be done and
recorded in many ways, in the form of a journal, a blog, through a video
recording, through a professional discussion with an assessor. Sketchnoting can also be used to record your
reflections. Some people find that this
is an alternative approach that works for them in a way that other methods
don’t. Others have commented that it allows
them to slow down and reflect more deeply and for this reason they find it more
effective.
5. Revising
One of the powerful lessons from cognitive psychology is how to revise
effectively. Often when revising people use the approach of reading and
rereading their notes. Many experiments
have shown that it is more effective to use an approach called ‘retrieval practice’,
in which you study a topic and then return to it and rather than study the same
material again, instead actively try to bring the material back to mind – this
could be through questions posed by a tutor or teacher or fellow student or
jotting down what you remember from the topic or you could create a Sketchnote
of what you recall. Once you have done
this you can then check back against the original study material, to check for
any errors and also fill in any gaps.
This method of revising is highly effective even if you find that you
struggle to recall much material at first.
But when you return to it again, you will have reinforced the links to the
correct and full information far more effectively through that process of
struggle.
If you allow some time to elapse between revisiting the material in this
way, you will also tap into the benefits of ‘spaced practice’, another well
evidenced learning practice from cognitive psychological research. If you are
interested in finding out more about ‘dual coding’, ‘retrieval practice’ and
‘spaced practice’ it is worth checking out The Learning Scientists Podcast for
easy to understand explanations and examples.
6. Communicating
your ideas
Finally, Sketchnotes can be used as a way of presenting your ideas, perhaps
within a seminar or session or even in an assessment. Some courses make use for example, of
academic posters for presenting ideas and Sketchnoting would be an excellent
way of producing one. These 6 ways of using Sketchnoting all come from experience and make use
of what we know is effective in learning.
They are all practical ways of adding to your study skills and enabling
your study experience to be both effective and enjoyable. If you think that
Sketchnoting could help you with your studying this year, why not learn to
Sketchnote?
Rachel Burnham
2 September 2020
I
help individuals and organisations to work and learn more effectively,
particularly though using the tools of Sketchnoting and the curation of resources. I make use of Sketchnoting to introduce
people to using visuals to aid thinking, working and learning. I help people to manage for themselves the
information they need to stay up-to-date in their professional work.
