While some of your students might be excited to draw, others may be less inclined to take the assignment seriously. Here are some ways to frame why drawing assignments are valuable when introducing the assignment to your class.
For the student who may be thinking, “I can’t draw. It’s not fair to grade someone on artistic talent,” you might explain:
When we use the word “drawing,” we’re not talking about what you do in a traditional art class. Our goal is different. In this class, we will not be drawing things; we will be drawing ideas. Scientists draw ideas all the time, and it is important to learn how to draw your ideas. Accordingly, your grade (if this is a graded assignment) will be based on the clarity of your thinking and your mastery of the course content, not on how realistically you can render a still-life or a portrait.
For the student who may be thinking, “I’m here to learn the content of this course, not how to draw,” you might explain:
We’re asking you to draw because drawing helps you learn the course content. Drawing requires you to select which pieces of information are worth representing on paper, decide how to represent those facts, and understand the relationships between them. Drawing allows you to see the bigger picture, so to speak. In other words, as you plan what to draw and how to draw it, you will be cognitively wrestling with the course content on a structural level and on a functional level. You will have to parse how systems physically fit together and how they work. In some ways, drawing actually requires you to be more specific and precise about your thinking than writing does. This is why thinkers and inventors like Darwin and Da Vinci kept sketchbooks. Drawing allows you to inspect your own thinking. In fact, you may even find that you thought you understood something until you were asked to draw it. In this way, drawing helps you catch and correct your misunderstandings.
For the student who may be wondering, “Why can’t I just write an essay or take a quiz?” you might explain:
Looking at your drawings enables me to teach you more effectively. As a teacher, I cannot see the models that you’re constructing in your head until you externalize those models in some way. When you answer multiple choice questions on a test or write essays, we get some sense of your thinking. When you write essays and research papers, we also get clues about your thinking. Yet, there are certain details that we can only see in your drawings, particularly when it comes to the sciences. Spatial relationships are much easier to communicate through drawing than through text, for example. Drawings help us pinpoint precisely what you do and do not understand which, in turn, helps us give you more targeted feedback and differentiated instruction.
To the student who may be thinking, “I already understand the material. Drawing seems unnecessary,” you might explain:
Setting aside our goals for your learning in this class, we are also preparing you to becoming thought leaders and effective communicators. People who know how to draw their ideas are in a much better position to communicate and disseminate their ideas. After you have graduated, you will go on to make discoveries and have new ideas. Whether you find yourself sketching an idea on a napkin in a conversation with a friend or preparing slides for a TED talk one day, we want you to have as many tools as possible at your disposal in order to share your ideas with the world. Drawing helps you become a more accurate communicator.
To the student who may be thinking, “Despite all that, I know myself and I know that I won’t draw again after I take this class,” you might explain:
In our increasingly visual world, part of our job is to help you become a more thoughtful consumer of visual information. Even if you never draw again, the time and effort that you put into creating your own visual explanations will train you to be more discerning as you encounter the visuals of others.