Designing Sketch and Learn: Creating a Playful Sketching Experience that Helps Learners Build a Practice Toward Visual Notetaking (aka Sketchnotes)

Notetaking is an important practice in classrooms around the world and is useful for capturing information and forming connections between large amounts of information and ideas. However, traditional notetaking methods tend to follow a linear structure, and students are often trained to capture information in a verbose text-based format. Visual notetaking, also known as sketchnoting, is an under-recognized strategy that can enhance the practice of notetaking. Sketchnoting taps into both the verbal and visual processes of decoding and encoding information, allowing learners to use a combination of words and images to make meaning from verbal or text-based information. Not only do studies show the potential benefits of sketchnoting, educators who have taught sketchnotes in their classrooms have also reported that it opened up opportunities for minority students such as neurodiverse individuals and language learners, providing them with another means of expressing their ideas and showing their understanding of content.

To facilitate the learning of sketchnotes, we designed Sketch & Learn, a web-based game that engages learners in playful sketching quests that help them build a visual library and a dedicated practice toward sketchnoting. Drawing insights from learning theories on scaffolding, game design, and best practices from educators, Sketch & Learn uses a relevant narrative and short challenges to recruit interest from novice learners and support long-term engagement. Pedagogically, we used gameplay to establish a playful low-stakes learning environment and used worked examples to ease learners into sketchnoting.

Preliminary testing results showed that the narrative and quests sparked interest, promoted engagement from users, and elicited learning gain. Users expressed interest in further engagement, and a digital version of the visual library feature. With promising results from our design concept, we are one step closer to our mission to equip learners with tools that help them take control of the information around them, form connections, express ideas, and make their learning visible.