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How do I use these resources?
How do I use these resources?
These resources are intended to be a Discussion Board within a fully online course, but they could easily be adapted to other modalities. In its original form, we copied the Assignment Details and Student Resources into a Discussion Board and added the grading rubric within the LMS (Canvas).
Read below for details on the Rubric and support for certain design choices within this assignment.
What are Sketchnotes?
What are Sketchnotes?
Sketchnotes are rich visual notes created from a mix of handwriting, drawings, hand-drawn typography, shapes, and visual elements like arrows, boxes, and lines. Sketchnoting allows the listener to supplement written notes with drawn images to reinforce a key concept or connect big ideas. It can be a great way to synthesize and study written notes, using visuals to recreate and condense pages of notes as you review them.
Sketchnotes aren't just Doodles (but they aren't just notes either)
Sketchnotes aren't just Doodles (but they aren't just notes either)
Doodling infers creating repetitive images such as spirals, circles, and boxes, or perhaps stick figures and flowers. It is used primarily to help maintain focus and retain information. Doodling in itself is helpful for some students as a form of mnemonics, or a way of connecting images with information that can significantly increase their ability to remember what they have learned. In a 2009 study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, 40 participants were asked to listen to an extremely boring recorded telephone conversation. Half of them were instructed to doodle as they listened, and half were given no such instructions. At the conclusion of the study, people who doodled remembered 29 percent more information than their counterparts who did not doodle.
In 2014, psychologists Pam A. Mueller of Princeton, and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of University of California, Los Angeles, published their research on the benefits of hand writing notes (as opposed to typing them). Their findings indicate that students learn more and retain it longer if they write their notes by hand. Capturing important ideas by hand, whether writing words or creating images, stimulates neural pathways between motor, visual, and cognitive skills. So, just imagine what sketchnotes (a combination of the two) can do!
Sketchnotes in the Classroom
Sketchnotes in the Classroom
Sketchnotes have found their way to the classroom more and more because they help students by:
promoting active processing of information,
fostering a useful balance of main ideas and details,
developing more robust knowledge organizations, and
aiding understanding and recall through dual coding.
Keys for success
Keys for success
- Start Slowly
As tempting as it might be, don’t jump into doodling and sketchnoting without first laying a solid foundation. Get comfortable with your own sketching so you can share your work with your students. I make a habit of including images in my note taking at conferences and meetings, which helps me grow and provides an example for my students to follow. I deliberately incorporate opportunities for my students to try doodling and sketchnoting as part of my lesson. It’s easy to make the mistake of introducing something new and then forgetting to give students time to play with it and get comfortable.
Sometimes starting at a blank sheet of paper can be daunting. A grid, dot paper, graphic organizers, or even an icon board can help students get started with visual note-taking.
2. Expect pushback from students
2. Expect pushback from students
Often students want to stick with the “tried and true” when they’re presented with a learning strategy that seems risky (i.e., something that has the potential to embarrass them if they “get it wrong”). I believed if I gave my students the opportunity and freedom to be creative, they would embrace it. And some students did just that. But many responded as though I’d ask them to recite Shakespeare in front of strangers. Naked. “I don’t know what to draw,” or “I’m not artistic” were the most typical responses. Other common responses included concern that notes would be incomplete, or they would get in trouble with teachers.
3. Provide opportunities for students to use their doodles in real-time
3. Provide opportunities for students to use their doodles in real-time
Students can use their doodle skills to play a modified version of Pictionary with academic vocabulary. While students will enjoy the competitive nature of the game, more importantly, they will soon find out that they must have a strong grasp of the vocabulary concepts in order to play well. If you don’t believe me, try playing Pictionary with terms like formative assessment or operant conditioning without using a single word, only images.
4. Make your sketchnotes and assignments WCAG compliant
4. Make your sketchnotes and assignments WCAG compliant
Here are some ideas for ways to ensure your digital sketchnotes are UDL and WCAG compliant.
Take the students on a tour of the sketchnotes.
During a live online lesson, share sketchnotes on the screen and discuss the notes.
Using screen capture video software, zoom in on each part of the sketchnote and talk through the images. Explain to students what images are there, their relationships to each other and what those connections and visual cues can mean. This helps students understand how to interpret notes and how to make meaningful design decisions in their own sketchnotes.
These tours should verbalize as much information as possible. Such phrases as “The sum of this plus that is this” and “The lungs are here and the diaphragm here” are meaningless to blind students. In the first example, you can just as easily say, “The sum of four plus seven is eleven.” Blind students get the same information as sighted students. In the second example, you may be pointing to a place on a drawing. In this instance, personalize the locations of the lungs and diaphragm by asking class members to locate them by touch on their own bodies. While these types of solutions will not always be possible; if you don't rely heavily on visual examples, both blind students and the rest of the class will benefit.
Ensure your sketchnotes take vision issues like color blindness into account. Use high contrast and choose colors that
Provide long descriptions for all your sketchnotes. Describe not just what is there, but also the relationships and the meaning behind the connections you made.
Provide text-only alternatives for sketchnotes that have a lot of writing on them.
Provide alternative assignments for those who may need them.
For those with mobility issues, students can use computer programs like MSPublisher to find images and type their notes if they need to.
Students with vision issues may want to create a series of several large-format notes about a concept or they may wish to talk through their understanding instead.
Blind students may type out or record audio of their understanding of the concepts and how they are able to find connections between different concepts.
The key is to keep the lines of communication open and not be afraid to accept alternative formats of these types of assignments.
5. Use Sketchnotes to humanize the online learning environment
5. Use Sketchnotes to humanize the online learning environment
Allowing learners to show what they know through visuals supports Universal Design for Learning's second principle, Provide Multiple Means of Expression.
It is important to provide alternative modalities for expression, both to the level the playing field among learners and to allow the learner to appropriately (or easily) express knowledge, ideas, and concepts in the learning environment. These include:
Compose in multiple media such as text, speech, drawing, illustration, design, film, music, dance/movement, visual art, sculpture or video
Use social media and interactive web tools (e.g., discussion forums, chats, web design, annotation tools, storyboards, comic strips, animation presentations)
Compose in multiple media such as text, speech, drawing, illustration, comics, storyboards, design, film, music, visual art, sculpture, or video
Such alternatives reduce media-specific barriers to expression among learners with a variety of special needs but also increases the opportunities for all learners to develop a wider range of expression in a media-rich world (http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/udlguidelines/principle2).
Sketchnotes as course content and course assignments can help you cater to individual learner differences.
Assessing the Sketchnotes
Assessing the Sketchnotes
There are two good reasons that you might want to assess your students’ sketchnotes in some way.
The first is connected to a student’s current note-taking style. By providing feedback on their current approach, you can help them build on what’s already working well by pointing out opportunities for improvement.
The second reason is particularly relevant with sketchnoting: with transparent grading practices, you can encourage students to try out techniques they might not otherwise use (and, in some cases, realize that they find those techniques useful).
So, how do you tell that they "did it right?" Can they look back at their notes and tell back the story? Grading will focus on how well they can tell the story. Here are some grading strategies:
Use a Rubric for grading
Use a Rubric for grading
The benefit of using a rubric is that it ensures that students get experience with specific sketchnoting elements (when they see the rubric before the sketchnoting session), and then based on the scores they get it helps them know what to pay more attention to next time.
The Value of Self-Assessment
The Value of Self-Assessment
By giving each student the opportunity to evaluate their own sketchnotes, you help them develop an internal feedback loop that could serve them well in the moment and in the future.
Why Sharing with the Class is Important
Why Sharing with the Class is Important
When students share their sketchnotes with the class, they’ll likely pass on helpful techniques to their peers. Not only will that give the student sharing the opportunity to share the story behind their notes, but it will also give every other student the chance to see some techniques that they might want to weave into their own note-taking. Use a Canvas Discussion board for students to share their notes and describe their process. Ask students to evaluate their own notes and their peer's notes using questions like:
Find an element in a peer's sketchnote that was particularly helpful in explaining the topic.
What are some advantages of using visuals in your notes?
What are some drawbacks of sketchnoting? Was anything in your sketch particularly difficult?
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