HANDS OFF THE KEYBOARD! - THE COGNITIVE BENEFITS OF DOODLING AND LEARNING THROUGH HAND WRITTEN MATERIALS.
LEARNING THROUGH HAND WRITTEN MATERIALS.
Taking notes on your laptop may have become second nature to you by now; especially after 2020 - the year that a significant portion of the world switched over to remote working and virtual learning. However, the dangers of that convenience are also very real. Since you began primarily taking notes with your laptop, have you noticed any of the below?
Your attention span and ability to focus have decreased.
Your memory and recall ability isn’t as good as it used to be.
You’re a little more stressed and overwhelmed.
You process a lot more information but have more difficulty drawing the necessary insights, knowledge, or wisdom from the data.
You aren’t learning content or subject matter as quickly as you used to.
Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) suggest that writing notes out by hand activates a different type of cognitive processing as compared to when you take notes electronically on your laptop. Typical behaviour may be to record notes verbatim when using your laptop - because you can - and so the transcription process negates the necessary mental heavy lifting required for hand written notes. Transcription is not possible when taking hand written notes, given the limitations of writing speed versus the speed of speech, and so the note taker needs to actively consider the information, to make sense of it in the moment, and record only the pertinent information for recall. It is this mental heavy lifting in the moment that engages the note taker’s attention, activates their focus, and enables more effective learning and recall capabilities.
Scientific America’s article A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop summarising the work of Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) highlight that:
You learn more when you write things out on paper.
You gain stronger conceptual understanding of the subject.
You become more successful in applying and integrating the material.
You invoke different types of cognitive processing writing things out by hand which has a direct consequence on learning.
You remember the material better in both short and long term memory settings.
DOODLING.
At work and in learning settings, doodling has traditionally been seen in the negative light; where doodlers are oftentimes perceived to be inattentive and rude. However, in his Harvard Health Blog: The “thinking” benefits of doodling, Pillay (2016) highlights that this perception of doodling is actually incorrect. Pillay (2016) says that:
Doodlers were able to recall 29% more information.
Doodling served to enhance focus and attention, rather than acting as a distraction.
Doodling commands attention from the brain, preventing it from losing total interest so long as the doodling is kept to a limited time.
Doodling may act to relieve psychological distress, helping individuals fill in gaps and create meaning.
PUTTING IT TOGETHER USING SKETCHNOTING.
I believe sketchnoting brings together the best of both doodling and learning through hand written materials; to maximise engagement via focus and attention, sense making, meaning making, learning, and recall.
“Sketchnotes are rich visual notes created from a mix of handwriting, drawings, hand-written typography, shapes, and visual elements like arrows, boxes and lines...Sketchnotes are about capturing and sharing ideas, not about art. Sketchnotes are a way to think on paper using images and words.”
I put together this sketchnote about two years ago during a positive psychology lecture.
To outsiders with no background in positive psychology, this picture means very little. To outsiders with knowledge of positive psychology, this picture can make sense to them though they are required to utilise their own meaning making capabilities to fill in the gaps. However, to me, it is a very powerful image. As I sit here and write this article, I can vividly recall the conversation that occurred in that moment, the content behind the picture, the meaning behind each element of the sketchnote, and how my peers and I made sense of the materials we were learning at the time. All because my attention was engaged and I did the mental heavy lifting in the moment whilst I generated the sketchnote.
This scrappy picture to me is worth 1,000 pages of typed notes.
JUST START.
If you want to experience the cognitive benefits of doodling and learning through hand written materials, the best thing to do is just start. You already have the all the necessary basic skills to do it. You don’t need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on courses or fancy pens and stationery. Focus on the mental heavy lifting rather than how aesthetically pleasing your hand written materials might be in the initial instance; then look at evolving your skill, short hand, and style over time if you want to.