Doodling In Class: How To Do It Right And Why

Doodling in class can be more useful than you thought

It seems like informative writing is not the only way to keep your class notes. You can also use doodles. If those doodles in your notebook help you remember and memorize the information that was given to you during a class, then you should definitely use them. Did you know that combined with writing, doodles significantly increase your memorization efficiency?

Many students don’t just write during classes, but also draw and doodle. Something that may look like a piece of abstraction or a pointless doodle to others becomes a useful supporting tool for the student who draws. If you ever tried drawing in the margins of your notebook while listening to a lecture or during safe essay writing, you know it helps you to stay more focused and organize your ideas better. Simple words and drawings help you distinctly see the connection between the pieces of information you have received.

How To Keep Your Class Notes Correctly

When they instruct students on how they should keep their class notes, they usually note how important it is to make your writing understandable to anyone who would look at it. This approach is not quite right, though. First of all, it’s virtually impossible to take your notes fast and at the same time keep them as understandable as possible. Second, it’s not the best way to understand and memorize new information.

Your class notes’ most important role is to help you memorizing everything you’ve heard during a lecture. It’s only logical that students must keep their notes as they find convenient and as makes sense to them personally.

Some people manage to keep their notes perfectly understandable to themselves, but not necessarily use writing only. Drawings and writing structure is a reflection of how your mind works, of how it tries to connect pieces of information into one seamless text. When you look at notes like this, you can easily remember why you’ve arranged information blocks the way they are and what was the reason for this kind of writing strategies.

The Science Of Keeping Class Notes

There is a large amount of research on what is the best way to keep class notes and how visual language affects them. Some of them may seem quite surprising.

For example, one of them shows that handwritten notes are more effective than those typed on a computer or other device. When you handwrite, you absorb and memorize information much better. Yes, a digital device can record your professor’s speech word for word, but that doesn’t improve your memory (nor does it improve writing skills). When you write your notes down, you try to rephrase what you’ve heard, cut it down and mark it to record it as quickly and effectively as possible. This helps analyzing the information received and reinterpreting it almost instantly.

Another research showed that people who quickly create simple drawings can memorize words faster than those who try to learn them by heart. Quality of your drawings doesn’t matter at all. Visual handwritten class notes help you use a combination of doodles and writing to process the new information received in your class and single out the most important points.

How To Keep Class Notes Using Drawings

• Turn your notebook through 90 degrees for album layout.
• Combine drawings and writing: practice writing down your own interpretation of what you’ve heard.
• Arrange information blocks so that your writing structure made sense for you personally.
• Draw simple figures and shapes; no high art is required.
• Your class notes must be understandable to you in the first place. Opinions of others don’t matter.

Maybe this method of keeping class notes won’t work for you. But for those who drown in countless lines of words and phrases and have hard time memorizing things, this may be an effective solution. Doodling in your class notes is a great way to interact with new information and the world around you.