Why drawing diagrams helps you learn science

Would drawing a science diagram help you understand the explanation, or would it just take longer than reading it again? Research suggests drawing can help when it makes you work out what the parts mean and how they relate. The benefit depends on the task, the guidance available and what you would otherwise be doing. Remembering a term, explaining a process and applying an idea to a new problem are different achievements.

What the science research finds

Logan Fiorella and Qian Zhang's 2018 review found that generating drawings supported comprehension and transfer more consistently than reading a science text alone or using text-focused strategies such as summarising. Transfer means using what you have learnt beyond the original task. The evidence is about understanding science, beyond remembering what a page looks like.

The comparison matters, though. The review found mixed results when drawing was compared with imagining a process or studying illustrations supplied by an instructor. Drawing is a useful option alongside other ways of learning. A clear diagram supplied by a teacher may be valuable too.

Claudia Leopold and Detlev Leutner's 2012 study gives a more specific example. In two experiments with Grade 10 students reading chemistry texts, drawing instructions helped comprehension, assessed through multiple-select and transfer tests. Instructions to select main ideas or summarise had negative effects in those particular experiments. That finding applies to the tasks tested.

What the drawing effect actually measured

A related line of research concerns memory. Jeffrey Wammes, Melissa Meade and Myra Fernandes reported seven free-recall experiments in 2016 comparing drawing with writing. Their initial experiments used lists of words: drawing what the words referred to improved later recall. The benefit measured here was recall under the tested conditions. Scientific explanations and new science problems require separate evidence.

The researchers proposed that drawing combines meaning, visual information and the physical action of making a picture to form a memory. They described the supporting evidence as indirect and inconclusive. This remains a possible explanation for the benefit.

These experiments tell us about drawing as an activity and its tested effects. They give no basis for labelling someone as having a visual learning style or deciding how that person must study.

Interpreting meaning matters

In a 2017 follow-up, Wammes and colleagues moved to terms and definitions. Drawing pictures representing definitions improved later memory compared with copying the definitions word for word. The benefit remained after accounting for familiarity with real terms in one experiment, and when invented terms and definitions were used in another.

In a further experiment, learners remembered comparable amounts after paraphrasing and drawing. The authors suggested that both activities require learners to interpret meaning for themselves. Copying word for word does not require that same work.

For someone deciding how to take notes, the comparison is useful. These experiments support expressing meaning in your own drawing or paraphrase. The findings concern the methods tested and what learners remembered; lasting understanding is a separate question.

Draw the explanation

Eliza Bobek and Barbara Tversky's 2016 experiments compared visual and verbal explanations of a bicycle pump and chemical bonding. For the pump, drawing particularly helped pupils with lower measured spatial ability. For chemical bonding, visual explanations benefited both higher- and lower-spatial-ability groups. The pattern varied with the task. Pupils with weaker spatial skills could benefit too.

The pump instructions explicitly told participants not to worry about artistic quality. The paper emphasises organising the essential parts and showing how they interact. Labels, arrows and words can help explain how something works. Aim for a complete explanation whose parts fit together.

That suggests a practical question to ask of your diagram: does it explain the relationships you are trying to understand? Keep the drawing focused on those relationships rather than unrelated doodling or copying a decorative illustration. Scientific accuracy still matters, even when artistic quality is unimportant.

The gains are not all the same

A meta-analysis by Jennifer Cromley, Yang Du and Aygul Parpucu Dane, published in a 2020 journal volume, brought together 53 studies involving 8,111 participants. It examined directed learner-generated visual representations and reported positive effects for factual learning, inference and transfer.

The reported standardised effects were 0.85 for factual learning, 0.44 for inference and 0.22 for transfer. These numbers describe effects on a statistical scale, rather than percentage improvements or predicted marks. The smaller transfer estimate matters: the gains in applying ideas were smaller than those in factual learning.

The synthesis also pooled different drawing approaches as well as drawing versus non-drawing comparisons. To understand the results, ask what learners were drawing, what the comparison group did and what the test measured. The answers matter for any comparison with reading.

When drawing becomes too demanding

Drawing takes time and mental effort. A review by Judith Fan and colleagues describes a chemistry-text study in which secondary-school students asked to draw performed worse than those asked only to imagine the phenomena. Students' reports of cognitive load and mental effort appeared to help explain that disadvantage. Making a picture can add to the mental work.

The same review describes better learning outcomes with support such as instructor demonstrations and partially completed illustrations than with minimal drawing guidance. A demonstration or partly completed picture may help a learner manage the work of drawing. You can start with support instead of an empty page.

A 2025 review by Theresa Dechamps and Alexander Skulmowski found continuing disagreement across studies about drawing's effectiveness and the conditions that shape it. Different visual representations can make different demands, and the skill needed to produce them can affect outcomes. Judge understanding by what the drawing explains, rather than how elaborate it is.

How to use this in practice

Try drawing when the purpose is to explain parts and their interactions. Include the labels, arrows and words needed to make the explanation clear. If constructing the diagram is too demanding, use a demonstration or a partly completed illustration for support. Paraphrasing is also a reasonable option: learners in the definition study remembered comparable amounts with either method. Choose with the task in mind.

For parents and teachers, focus on the explanation the learner can give. Artistic finish matters less. Use these suggestions to apply the research, adapting them to the learner and the task.

For further exploration, Learnacy Labs offers browser-based interactive experiments with a guided Understand, Explore and Prove flow. You could separately sketch and explain a process while exploring it; this is a suggested activity, not a tested drawing intervention or an advertised drawing feature.