About

The Picturing to Learn Project

Picturing to Learn began with a simple observation: when scientists were asked to draw their research rather than describe it, the act of drawing often clarified the science in their own minds. If drawing helped working researchers think more clearly, could it do the same for students?

That question, raised by Principal Investigator Felice Frankel, became the foundation of a multi-year research project funded by the National Science Foundation from 2007 to 2010 (NSF DUE-0925110).

The core idea

Students in undergraduate science courses were asked to create freehand drawings explaining scientific concepts to an imagined high school senior. The drawings were then analyzed — not graded — for what they revealed about the students' understanding.

The results were striking. Drawings exposed misconceptions that written answers concealed. A student could produce a technically correct paragraph on chemical bonding while drawing something that showed they hadn't actually grasped the underlying idea. For teachers, this was diagnostic gold. For students, the act of drawing to explain forced a depth of understanding that passive study rarely produced.

Over the course of the project, more than 3,000 student drawings were collected and analyzed across courses in chemistry, physics, and biology.

The institutions involved

The project brought together faculty and students from four institutions:

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Harvard University
  • Duke University
  • Roxbury Community College

Collaborative workshops also included design students from the School of Visual Arts in New York, who worked alongside science students to explore how visual thinking and scientific explanation intersect.

What we found

Three findings stood out:

Drawings reveal misconceptions in ways that text does not. Students who could write fluently about a concept often drew it incorrectly — and the drawings made the gap visible.

The process of drawing to teach deepens the student's own understanding. Explaining something visually forces a kind of clarity that reading and writing alone can skip past.

Drawings give teachers direct feedback on what students are actually getting. Tests measure outcomes; drawings expose the reasoning underneath.

These findings were documented in press coverage by The New York Times, the Harvard Gazette, MIT News, and the National Science Foundation, among others.

Where the site is today

The formal project concluded in 2010, but the questions it raised have only grown more relevant. How students learn, how visual thinking shapes understanding, and how new tools change the classroom are now playing out against a backdrop of AI, online learning, and rapidly evolving study software.

This site preserves the original project's archive — the research premise, the workshop documentation, and the media record — and continues the conversation through a blog exploring where learning is headed now. We write about AI tools reshaping how students study, the software researchers actually use, online courses opening access to new fields, and the craft of academic writing in an era when the tools are changing faster than the standards.

The mission is the same one that started the project: paying attention to how people actually learn, and sharing what works.

Credits

Principal Investigator: Felice Frankel

Web development (original): Jun Wang, Gordon Multimedia

Funding: National Science Foundation, DUE-0925110 (2007–2010)

Get in touch

For questions about the archive, editorial inquiries, or partnership opportunities, visit our contact page.