VisualNote: Physical Image Tagging for Building a Personal Visual Library

Effective note-taking strategies can benefit learners over a lifetime. Studies have shown that students who take notes by hand learn more than those who take notes on a laptop. Additionally, adding drawings to notes to represent concepts and relationships significantly effects memory and learning. This practice of representing ideas through diagrams and drawings in notes is referred to as visual note-taking. To engage learners in taking handwritten visual notes, we developed VisualNote: (1) a toolkit that facilitates purposeful practice of visual note-taking, and (2) a tangible tagging process that allows for online storage of notes and sharing within class and amongst broader communities. Guided by Universal Design for Learning (UDL), we took a constructivist approach to provide alternative approaches of expression, representation, and engagement that can be leveraged to equip learners with tools to pursue more pathways to learn and make learning visible.