Picturing to Learn, based on preliminary results from a pilot project, promotes the notion that when students visually explain science to others by the process of making drawings, the process clarifies and illuminates the science for that student. The process of making a visual explanation for someone else is similar to writing an article; one has to fully understand a concept before communicating the ideas successfully to another person.
In addition, Picturing to Learn introduces a new teaching tool for teachers to quickly assess whether students truly understand a particular science concept. While a student might give the correct response to a text-based exam question, the underlying concepts could be completely misunderstood. Observing visual explanations of students will prove to be a quick means of assessing their deep understanding and offering corrective feedback to them.
A team of cognitive psychologists and faculty members from five schools involves students to: develop exercises that are used in existing curricula; create assessment rubrics; and examine data to measure improvements in student learning.
The program promotes widespread adoption of these methods through workshops and publications, and creates computational visualization tools to describe and analyze drawings and illustrations. More broadly, the program engages students to study science using an active and visually appealing approach. In addition the program educates students and teachers to the importance of communicating science to others.
