Generating a visual representation of a concept through drawing has been established as a valuable strategy for improving memory. While this has been demonstrated in both the laboratory and the real world, the findings are mixed in educational settings, perhaps due to variable operationalization of the drawing task. Participants are often provided additional scaffolding for their drawings, including instructions, training, or pre-drawn backgrounds. In the current work, we investigated whether the drawing advantage persists when participants in an introductory university class (N = 145) were permitted to create free-form drawings without additional scaffolding, akin to the technique often studied in the laboratory. In addition, because the effect has only been established at relatively short timescales, we tested whether benefits persist over multiple weeks. In the tutorial sessions of an undergraduate Biology course, we asked participants to either draw or copy a set of definitions for terms derived from the course textbook. One and 3 weeks later we quizzed participants by showing them the definition and asking them to recall the associated term. The evidence indicated not only that there was better recall for drawn than copied items after 1 week (even with no training or scaffolding), but also that this effect persisted after a 3-week delay. Our results establish that no external guidance is necessary for drawing to enhance memory, and that the benefits are robust over time, providing a foundation for further research on the durability of the benefits of drawing in the laboratory and the real world.
Keywords: Education; Human memory and learning; Memory; University.
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