While creating these visual notes, I realized that I was double-checking all of my work in order to make sure that I would be drawing the correct thing. In a way, this was good because it forced me to check my work and make sure that I truly understood what I had written down in class. I discovered that having to break it down into images was helpful and allowed me to further grasp the concept. Personally, I enjoy drawing, and I liked incorporating little images into my notes, so this was a fun experience. What was helpful for me throughout this process was tracing images that I found on the internet and changing them into something that worked in my notes. I was expecting my visual notes page to be a lot more packed with information, like my class notes. However, because of the use of images, it helped tell the story of my notes more clearly.
While creating these visual notes, I realized that I was double-checking all of my work in order to make sure that I would be drawing the correct thing. In a way, this was good because it forced me to check my work and make sure that I truly understood what I had written down in class. I discovered that having to break it down into images was helpful and allowed me to further grasp the concept. Personally, I enjoy drawing, and I liked incorporating little images into my notes, so this was a fun experience. What was helpful for me throughout this process was tracing images that I found on the internet and changing them into something that worked in my notes. I was expecting my visual notes page to be a lot more packed with information, like my class notes. However, because of the use of images, it helped tell the story of my notes more clearly.
In school, I have always been a visual learner. Whether it be through photos of graphs, I found it much easier to learn concepts and ideas through visuals. This assignment embodied my learning style. I chose to make my FIN 201 notes visual because I thought that would be the most real world applicable. I used a buyer (the stick figure) and the product he was trying to buy (mangoes) to personify the laws of supply, demand, and quantity demanded, which are all connected. I enjoyed this assignment very much because it allowed me to use my preferred style of learning to convey what I have learned in the class.
Link back to blog post: https://engrd101f25.davidmorgen.org/sketches/sketch-3-visual-note-taking/
These are my notes that I took during Microeconomics. During this lecture we learned the basic fundamental Ideas of Individual decision theory focusing on Economic Surplus, Opportunity cost and Decision Pitfalls.
I felt that adding these visual representations to my notes has actually been very helpful especially for studying. When it comes to understanding the basic definitions having a picture allows me to easily understand what I am being asked to understand and remember. For example when looking over my notes in the top left corner you can see the section where we went over Economic Surplus. To help me better understand what Economic Surplus is I added a picture of a full pizza with a slice left over. This represents exactly what economic surplus is an excess of a good or service when supply exceeds demand.
I definitely found this sketch assignment enjoyable and found it very helpful for my understanding of my notes and for studying for a quiz that I will have on Monday. My Microeconomics class is a lecture class with one hundred and eighty people so it is often easy to get distracted and not fully understand the points the professor is trying to make. By going back and analyzing my notes taking visual notes I was able to fully understand the concepts that we are going over.
Hello everyone! For my sketch today, I decided to sketch the notes that I took from my Political science class. The original notes can be found here if you would like to see my strange note taking methods. I actually found the process to be very useful. A lot of these terms and concepts are things that I have to memorize for tests and as my english professor likes to say “we are all to some degree, visual learners.” I found the process of making the sketches to be helpful in remembering as well. Similarly to how writing notes makes them ingrained in your head, making these pictures makes it so that I think of the visiual whenever I think of the concept. Maybe Im more of a visual learner than I thought!
Link to original assignment here
These are my sketched-out notes for Econ 101, regarding the three key decision pitfalls of: failing to think at the margin, ignoring implicit costs, and thinking in terms of proportionality.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say the sketched notes helped me understand the notes better, but they certainly helped me understand the concepts differently. I had already taken these notes in class previously but rewriting them in a drawn/artistic form held the concepts in a different light. Mentally, I was able to visualize each of the three decision pitfalls and their interconnectedness, rather than simply memorizing words and definitions.
After reading the initial assignment, I was weary as to how it would help me digest the content of the class. The biggest difference lies in the engagement that it brought. Drawing out notes instead of writing down words makes the entire process more enjoyable. As with most things in life, the more you enjoy something, the more likely you are to succeed in doing it. Therefore, occasionally visualizing or drawing notes can help you think in an effective and creative way, allowing for you to retain information at a quicker rate because you’re rethinking those concepts in multiple modes.
For your sketch assignment this week, I want you to create a set of visual notes for one day in one class (other than this one) that you are currently enrolled in. You do not need to take your visual notes in real time; in fact, I recommend that you don’t. I recommend that you go to your classes and take notes in whatever manner you normally do, then after class go through your notes and recreate them as visual notes.
Below is an example of a professional illustrator creating a set of animated video notes to represent a lecture by Sir Ken Robinson on “Changing Education Paradigms”
You do not need to make a video like this, but only a static image.
You do not need to draw your notes in a digital environment, either, though you are certainly free to do so. If you prefer to doodle with pen, pencil, or marker on paper then do that and once you’re done with your drawing, just scan the pages as JPG files so you can upload them to your site. If you have an iPad or other tablet or would like to draw on your laptop or desktop, then you might try apps like GoodNotes, Procreate, Inkflow, or Adobe’s Sketchbook or search for other free/cheap drawing applications. I am completely tool agnostic on this assignment, so make your drawings in whatever manner make sense to you.
Your visual notes do not need to be polished or beautiful or supremely intricate, like the RSA Animate video above. Do try to take this assignment as an opportunity to really engage differently with your material – don’t just make a series of doodles that follow the outline of the lecture or discussion in your notes but try to translate the concepts and information into a new, visual set of notes. You might think about creating flowcharts or diagrams, which are also visual devices.
Once you’ve got your notes, load them onto your course site as a sketch post. Embed the images from your notes into the post and as you do, take a few moments to reflect on the process and then write a paragraph or two about what you learned during the process of creating your visual notes. Did it help you to understand the course content any differently or better to create notes visually rather than just as text? Did you discover anything new about yourself or the way you think in the process? Did you find it enjoyable or find some aspect of it particularly interesting? Someplace in your reflective text, create a link back to this blog post assignment.
