The Powerful Effects of Drawing on Learning

Research has shown that drawing can be a potent tool for learning. It can help students understand content better and and retain information more effectively. But it’s not because of an innate learning style—that’s an outdated idea in education that has long been disproven. Drawing taps into visual, kinesthetic, and linguistic areas of the brain at the same time, so information is processed in three different ways, establishing more connections across the brain’s neural network—and encoding learning more deeply.

To learn more about the research cited in the video, check out the links below. 

• Myra A. Fernandes, Jeffrey D. Wammes, and Melissa E. Meade’s research on the surprisingly powerful influence of drawing on memory (2018)
• Polly R. Husmann and Valerie Dean O'Loughlin’s report challenging the validity of learning styles by examining undergraduate anatomy students’ study strategies, class performance, and reported VARK learning styles (2018)
• Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork’s literature review on whether there is evidence for the concept of learning styles (2009)