Sketchnoting As An Art Mini-unit (& A Plug For The ATA Library)

A few years ago I found Sunni Brown’s TED Talk on the power of doodling and it really resonated with me. I picked up her book, The Doodle Revolution, and realised that I had been doodling and sketchnoting my way through high school and university. At the time, my teachers just thought I wasn’t paying attention, just doodling because I was bored, but after my test scores were graded, they didn’t say another word. Doodling and manual notetaking in an unconventional way (what Mike Rohde called “Sketchnotes” in 2006) seemed to increase my attention and recall in lecture-format classes that were information-heavy and participation-light.

I checked the ATA Library collection and pulled everything I could on sketchnotes and visual thinking. I bought books, read the research, went to sessions at Convention and generally delved into this idea that doodling can be a powerful aid to creativity, engagement, retention and learning in general. Visual notetaking turns out to be a really useful way for some students to engage with content in their classes.

Looking at the Art PoS and beginning with the idea that I wanted students to have another way to engage with and retain course content, I put together an Art unit on sketchnoting for Junior High students. We focused on basic shapes and forms, shading and shadows, quick proportional sketches of the human form (essentially gesture drawing), hand-lettering and printing, note bullets or ding-dongs, arrows and shorthand renderings of everyday objects. Sounds like an Art mini-unit to me.

The research behind this approach to notetaking is clear: manual note takers outperform typing notetakers and students who don’t take notes (except for my friend Mark who never took notes - very clever dude, Dr. Mark).

So here are some of the key take-aways. When we create sketchnotes (using both graphic and textual cues to note key information) we:

• promote active processing of information and encoding in a kinaesthetic way (hear, see, think, note).

• improve factual recall over time.

• deepen conceptual understandings of the material covered.

• foster a useful balance of main ideas and details and force our cognition to create a structure that fosters better recall.

• help ourselves develop more robust knowledge organizations and knowledge structures.

• use visual cues (icons or doodles) to help the brain recall information.

• aid understanding and recall through visual and textual encoding.

The strength of this approach to learning is the sketchnoter’s ability to capture complex ideas in iconic, graphically simple forms. Visual notes are nonlinear: a student can critically connect one idea of a lecture with another from later in the lecture. This forming of relationships and critical thinking about conceptual relationships activates and encourages whole brain activity. Hand-drawn notes are more effective than typing or straight notetaking because they force critical reflection and focus attention on key ideas and concepts, not every word of the meeting or lecture with its distractions and tangents. Sketchnoters must be critically attentive rather than simply scribing the text of the meeting or class at a fast pace. Non-linear notetaking leads to improved learning outcomes over linear notetaking. Graphics, charts and visual organizers foster the selection and organization of information. In other words, the encoding of the important data from a meeting or lecture into a sketchnote format with text, charts, icons and visual organizers leads to improved retention and understanding.

OK, you get the idea.

Now check out the ATA Library and get a couple of books about visual notetaking or sketchnotes (I have a box of books beside me right now, but I’ll get them back to Edmonton very soon). Look up Mike Rohde or Sunni Brown on the web or check out Jen Giffen’s work on Instagram.

As Art teachers we have the knowledge and skills to connect textual literacy, visual literacy, deeper learning, improved engagement and transferable skills to boost learning outcomes for our students in a way that’s actually a lot of fun. Just one word of advice: be prepared to explain to your Social Studies teacher friend why her kids are doodling in class.

Sketch, draw, create!

Mike Shain

Visual Arts Rep