Design strategies, like Visual Thinking, Mind Mapping and Sketchnoting can help students transform ideas into visual communication. Students who engage in any these activities listen and process information, structure their thoughts, cluster information, synthesize what is important and establish a hierarchy to concepts, facts and ideas.

Students can participate in these activities on and off of a computer or tablet. If working offline, they should find a notebook that feels big enough to draw in, but small enough to bring everywhere. They should avoid using pencils. Being able to erase allows students to waste time by correcting mistakes. Students should use ink pens that are fast drying. If a mistake is made, cross it out and move on.

1. Concept MappingOften represented in circles or boxes, concepts are linked by words and phrases that explain the connection between the ideas. This structure helps students organize and structure their thoughts in order to understand information and discover new relationships. Most concept maps represent a hierarchical structure, with the overall, broad concept first with connected sub-topics, more specific concepts, following.
   
   Concept maps:
   • Help students brainstorm and generate new ideas.
   • Encourage students to discover new concepts and the propositions that connect them.
   • Help students integrate new concepts with older concepts.
   • Enable students to gain enhanced knowledge of any topic and evaluate the information.
   The website below is a great way to use concept mapping at the beginning of a research project:
   Instagrok
   
   
2. Visual NotetakingVisual Notetaking or Visual Recording is the process of creating personal visual memory aids that keep students engaged and involved in a lecture. It is not the only or even the best way to take notes, but it can be very helpful to certain students. The idea is to capture the key points and what is relevant to the student from a lecture, presentation or lesson. It forces them to listen carefully, process the information and translate the important points into a structured hierarchy. The notes are personal, expresive and creative, which helps student retain more from the lesson. By practicing this form of note taking, students develop their listening,organizing and synthesizing skills.
   
   Notes become expressive, creative and personal to each student. Listening and synthesizing involves active decision-making when it comes to filtering the important meassages, laying out the information and finding ways to translate the written words into pictures.
   
   Visual Notetaking forces a student to actively listen, synthesize the information, help identfy trends and patterns. Improves understanding, provides triggers. The Head First series uses surprising and humorous imagery to help you remember the different ideas. Visual Notetaking works the same way.
   
   Before you begin drawing have a sense about where a talk or lecture is going. If it is an hour talk divide your drawing space into accordingly.
   
   The goal of Visual Notetaking and sketchnotes is to listen, synthesize and visualize.
   
   Avoid making lists or outlines and use the spatial properties of the page to your advantage by “chunking” information. Some ways to force yourself to work spatially might be starting in the middle and working outwards or working in columns for a panel discussion.
   
   There are 6 Fundamental components to making Visual Notetaking:
   1. Letters and Typography
   2. Bullets
   3. Frames—some of the more common containers include (but are not limited to): quote bubbles, boxes, circles and thought clouds.
   4. Connectors—connect ideas and pieces of stories with arrows and lines.
   5. Shadows
   6. People and a few basic icons (internal library of imagery
   If you mess up a line, draw it again. If you misspell a word, scratch it out and rewrite it. You want to capture what you are listening to, and you can also add your own commentary. Visual notetaking needs to just capture the keypoints. It is essentioal to not focus on the details of your imagery, at least while you are in the process. Remember, it is not about the drawing, but about the listening and capturing of ideas. If you can look at your notes and retell the story you’ve heard, then you’ve done it right
   
   What tools you choose, paper, tablet, pens, a stylus, etc, should be determined by what one is comfortable using. If the tool is too confusing, the process won’t work. It takes all of your attention to listen and synthesize and you want to have a language that already exists and is easy to implement. I personally prefer pen and paper, but I need to use technology in order to share my sketches.
   
   
   
   Resources for Visual Notetaking
   • Drawing in class: Rachel Smith at TEDxUFM
   • Giulia Forsythe at Faculty Academy 2012
   • What Does Doodling do? by JACKIE ANDRADE, School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, UK, 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.