In an article from Youki Terada in a 2019 Education Research Highlights article, Terada states that research now shows that in order to remember something best, students should draw what they are learning. He states that a 2019 study found that students remember less of what they’re learning if they’re doodling at the same time. But the study also addresses a big misconception: Doodling is not the same as drawing. Earlier research concludes that drawing easily beats reading, writing, or listening when it comes to learning and retention.
So what’s the difference? Free-form doodling is often a distraction from what’s being learned. At least six decades of studies show that divided attention impairs learning. But drawing that reinforces what’s being studied – for example, sketching out and labeling the solar system -taps into visual, kinesthetic, and linguistic areas of the brain at the same time, encoding the information more deeply.
