How To Use Sketchnoting To Create Stronger Learning Experiences With Rachel Burnham

How did you start with sketchnoting, and how does it connect to learning?

I’ve worked in learning and development for over 30 years, and during that time I’ve also done work as an independent consultant where I tutored people who were coming into L&D, particularly around professional development. That whole area, how people actually learn and how we make an impact, has always been a big focus for me, so it’s  relevant when we talk about sketchnoting as well.

I started sketchnoting purely for myself. I was going to a conference and I’d taken some paper and pens with me just to amuse myself on the way there, and when I got to the conference, instead of making traditional written notes or sharing key quotes on something like Twitter, I started sketching. I took photographs of what I’d done and shared them, and I had such a positive response from other people that I carried on doing it.

Over time, through my own practice, through running workshops, and through introducing other professional groups to sketchnoting, as well as reading more widely, particularly in cognitive psychology, I started to realise that sketching can really help people with their learning. The key thing with sketchnoting is that it uses a combination of words and simple visuals. They don’t have to be artistic or polished. It's not art or even illustration in that sense. They’re more like the kinds of drawings a child would do, so you can tap into your inner eight-year-old.

The point is that by combining words with visuals, and by using the layout of the page effectively, you create much richer notes that are far more memorable than traditional ones. This connects strongly to a topic from cognitive psychology called dual coding. The idea is that when you make notes using both words and visuals, you are encoding that information in two different ways in your brain. The words are encoded one way, and the visuals, which include not just images but also colour, layout, placement on the page, and spatial relationships, are encoded in another way. These two strands are then linked together.

So when you come to recall something, you have a much better chance of remembering it. For example, I can remember a sketchnote I created maybe seven years ago, and I can picture a drawing of a bug in the bottom right-hand corner. I can’t just remember the image. I also remember the idea that it was connected to, which was about designing learning programmes around things that are “broken” or not working well in the workplace to make them more relevant. I even remember where it was positioned on the page, and that spatial memory helps trigger the recall of the content.

This kind of recall process becomes much more active. You might think, “I remember something was in the top right corner, something else in the bottom right corner. What else was there?” That process of actively searching your memory strengthens learning.

Dual coding is one part of it, but sketchnoting also connects to other well-researched learning strategies like retrieval practice. Retrieval practice is about actively trying to recall information rather than just re-reading it. Simply reading something repeatedly can give you a false sense of familiarity. You feel like you know it, but you haven’t really embedded it. If instead you study something, then close your notes and try to write down everything you remember, or create a sketchnote from memory, that effort to retrieve information helps embed it much more deeply.

Even when you can’t quite remember something fully or when you know there’s something there but you can’t quite access it, that process is still valuable. When you then go back and revisit the material, it strengthens the learning further.

Sketchnoting can also link to spaced repetition, which is the idea of revisiting material over time. You might study something, create a sketchnote, and then come back to it later, reinforcing the learning again. So it’s not just about making notes. You make notes to support multiple evidence-based learning strategies.

It’s clear there are a lot of learning benefits to sketchnoting and that makes me think of the debate between learning styles and learning preferences. I’ve heard there’s no such thing as learning styles and preferences may be more appropriate.

What are your thoughts on this?

I don’t really think it’s a debate anymore. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that while people may have preferences, learning styles as a concept don’t actually impact the effectiveness of learning. There have been many studies and large-scale reviews of the research, and the conclusion is that it doesn’t hold up as a valid approach.

That said, it’s important to distinguish between preferences and effectiveness. Some people might feel they prefer visual learning, or auditory learning, or something else, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they learn better that way. What we do know, however, is that using visuals effectively can support learning for everyone.

When you use a well-designed visual and that’s important, because not all visuals are well designed it can help people see the big picture on a single page. That might be a concept, a process, or how something works. A good visual allows people to understand structure, relationships, and sequencing much more easily. For example, organisational charts work well because they show relationships clearly e.g. who reports to whom, how different parts of the organisation connect, and so on.

This idea also links back to the work of Paivio, who developed dual coding theory. He explains that when we only use words, we tend to process information in small chunks or packets, and it can be difficult to link those together, especially if the material is complex or new. That’s why people often have to re-read text multiple times.

With a well-designed visual, you can often grasp those relationships much more quickly. You can see how everything fits together at a glance, while still having access to the detail where needed. So while learning styles themselves may not be valid, the use of visuals and thoughtful design absolutely enhances learning for everyone.

Something I also hear a lot of is that L&D are needing to be seen as strategic partners in a business. How can L&D create more impact within an organisation rather than just reacting to training requests?

I think the starting point always has to be understanding what problem you are actually trying to solve. That sounds simple, but it’s often where things go wrong. Many performance issues in organisations are not solved by learning alone. Sometimes learning isn’t needed at all. It might be a process issue, a systems issue, or something else entirely. Sometimes learning is part of the solution, but not the whole solution.

So the key is to really dig into what’s causing the problem. There’s work around performance mapping that focuses on identifying what’s actually happening and what people genuinely need to learn. Traditionally, we’ve focused a lot on knowledge or what people need to know but in many cases, that knowledge doesn’t need to be stored in someone’s head. It might be something they can look up, or something embedded in a system that changes frequently.

What often matters more is skills such as being able to apply information, make judgments, communicate effectively, handle difficult situations, and so on. Those are things that require practice and rehearsal, and that’s where L&D needs to focus more attention.

Too often, organisations jump straight to solutions and say “We need a training course on this by Thursday” without properly understanding the issue. If you want to create impact, you have to push back on that and ask the right questions. That can mean saying no sometimes, which requires confidence and strong relationships with stakeholders.

It’s about building influence with senior leaders and line managers, finding people who are willing to work in that way, and sometimes piloting approaches to demonstrate what works. It’s also about recognising that learning doesn’t just happen in a classroom. It should be supported in the workplace, with managers playing a key role in reinforcing and enabling that learning.

How should L&D communicate impact to senior leaders in a way that resonates?

It’s really about using the language of the business, not the language of learning, and that distinction is absolutely critical because what often happens is that L&D defaults to talking about things like how many people completed a course or how many people passed a test, and those measures, while they might feel internally useful, don’t tell senior leaders anything meaningful about whether the business has improved. 

What you have to do instead is start much earlier in the process by understanding what actually matters to the business like what are they already measuring, what are the challenges they are trying to address, what are the pain points that have prompted the conversation in the first place, and crucially, what does success look like in their terms rather than ours. That means getting into the details of the problem and aligning your evaluation approach with those existing measures, rather than trying to impose a separate L&D lens on it.

At the beginning of any initiative, you need to be very clear about what will look different if it’s successful, and that’s not a vague statement, it’s meant to be specific. What behaviours will change in the workplace? What will people be doing differently? What outcomes will improve as a result of that? Because unless you’ve defined that clearly upfront, it becomes difficult to demonstrate impact later on in a way that resonates. It’s about building that clear picture at the start, so that when you come back to senior leaders, you’re not talking about learning activity, you’re talking about what has actually shifted in the workplace, using the same language and metrics that they already care about. 

That alignment is what makes the difference between L&D being seen as a support function and being seen as something that genuinely contributes to business performance.

A lot of great insights there. I’m also interested in the storytelling side of L&D where programmes need to prove impact. How can L&D balance quantitative data of stats and metrics with qualitative, human impact that comes from storytelling?

I think both are important, and it’s not a case of choosing one over the other because different leaders will respond to different types of evidence, so part of the skill here is understanding your stakeholders. Some people will absolutely want to see the hard data and they’ll want the numbers, the metrics, the before-and-after comparisons because that gives them a sense of objectivity and credibility. Others, however, will find the stories much more compelling because they bring the impact to life in a way that numbers alone can’t. Ideally, you’re using both together, because they complement each other rather than compete.

Stories are incredibly powerful for illustrating what’s actually changed and helping people understand why something works. They allow you to show the human side of impact, the lived experience, the difference it’s made to individuals and teams, and they can also be used more broadly to communicate with other parts of the organisation, to build engagement and momentum. At the same time, quantitative data provides that foundation of evidence that makes your case more robust.

In terms of gathering that data, one of the most important things is building relationships with other teams within the organisation, because often the data you need already exists and you just don’t own it. So it might be HR holding data on staff turnover, or insights into why people are leaving. It could be compliance teams with metrics around adherence to processes. It might be health and safety teams tracking incidents or near misses. There are lots of different sources, and if you can tap into those existing data sets, not only does it save you time, but it also makes your evaluation much more relevant because you’re using measures that the organisation already values.

You also have to think about timing, because impact is not always immediate. It might take time for changes in behaviour to translate into measurable outcomes, and that can make evaluation more complex. This is where piloting can be useful, because it allows you to test an approach on a smaller scale, gather some early evidence, and build a case before rolling it out more widely. That way, you can demonstrate impact in a controlled way and use that as proof of concept.

Focus groups sound like a powerful way to gather the feedback that will make programmes stronger. What are best practices for running focus groups and gathering meaningful feedback?

One of the key things to think about is that you don’t necessarily need to gather detailed feedback from everybody, and in fact, trying to do that can sometimes dilute the insight you get. It can be far more valuable to focus your attention on the outliers, the people for whom the intervention worked extremely well and the people for whom it didn’t work at all. By really digging into those extremes, you can uncover much richer insights about what’s actually happening. 

For those who succeeded, what made the difference? What enabled that success? What aspects of the experience were particularly impactful? And at the other end, for those where it didn’t work, what were the barriers? What got in the way? What was missing? The middle ground often doesn’t tell you as much, whereas the outliers can reveal the underlying dynamics much more clearly.

When it comes to encouraging people to participate in focus groups or more detailed feedback processes, I’ve always found it helpful to frame it in terms of helping their colleagues. Most people have experienced training that hasn’t worked well because it’s been poorly organised, it hasn’t hit the mark, it’s taken them away from their work without delivering value, and so if you position their involvement as a way of improving the experience for others and preventing that kind of wasted time, they are often much more willing to engage. It’s about making the purpose meaningful to them.

The other important aspect is closing the loop. It’s not enough  to collect feedback. You need to go back to people and show them what you’ve learned from their input and what you’re doing differently as a result. That’s what builds trust. When people can see that their feedback has had a tangible impact, they’re much more likely to engage in the future because they feel that it was worthwhile and that they were genuinely listened to. Over time, that helps to build a culture where feedback is seen as valuable rather than just another request on people’s time.

I’m always interested in highlighting key learning research and studies. Are there any important research insights or resources on learning transfer you recommend?

There’s strong research in this area that’s absolutely worth looking at, because learning transfer, the act of getting what people learn to stick and be applied in practice, is one of the biggest challenges in L&D. One book I would highly recommend is What Makes Training Really Work, which pulls together a significant body of research on learning transfer and distils it into what are described as 12 levers of transfer effectiveness. It was written by researchers Dr Ina Weinbauer-Heidel and Masha Ibeschitz-Manderbach who essentially reviewed and synthesised a wide range of existing studies, bringing them together into a structured and evidence-based framework.

What’s particularly valuable about the book is that it provides a clear roadmap for understanding all the different factors that influence whether learning transfers into the workplace. It’s detailed, because there are a lot of variables involved, but it’s also well organised, so you can see how those different levers interact and where you might need to focus your efforts.

There’s also a book by Paul Matthews called Learning Transfer At Work which is also very good. His approach is perhaps less structured than What Makes Training Really Work, but it’s full of practical ideas and insights that can be useful. Between the two, you get both a solid evidence-based framework and a range of practical applications, which together provide a strong foundation for understanding how to make learning effective beyond the training environment.

How do you continue to evolve your own learning and practice?

It’s a combination of several things that come together rather than a single approach. One of the most important is being curious and open to new ideas and perspectives. That curiosity drives a lot of what I do. Alongside that, there’s a strong element of reflection, so I spend time thinking about my own practice and experiences, considering what’s working, what isn’t, and what I might do differently.

I also learn a great deal from talking to other people, particularly those who are using sketchnoting, whether that’s people I’ve taught or others I’ve come across. I’m interested in how they’re applying it in their own contexts, what they’re finding works well, what challenges they’re encountering, and what they’re discovering through that process. Those conversations can be rich in terms of insight.

And then there’s the evidence base of looking at research on how people learn, what actually helps learning to stick, and connecting that back to what I’m doing in practice. It’s about making those links between theory and application, rather than treating them as separate things.