A labeled drawing explains a shape better than words alone

A 1987 paper explains why drawings help: each fact sits where it belongs, so you see what a description makes you work out. In all 11 comparisons Mayer reviewed, students given words with pictures solved new problems better than students given the words alone. A 2006 review of 50 studies found that words placed on a picture, beside what they name, helped more than the same words set apart. The gain was largest with complex material.

What we built

When a shape is the hard part, Topic Tutor draws it in the chat to scale. Each length and angle sits on the part it measures. A drawing whose numbers don't match its shape is left out. Concept sheets can print the same drawings.

Where the evidence stops

These studies used pictures that people made for a lesson, not drawings a tutor makes as it goes, and no study has tested ours. Pictures may help most for students new to a topic. A labeled drawing can also give the answer away. So during an exercise, your tutor draws a different example or marks the unknown with a question mark.

• Larkin & Simon (1987). Why a Diagram is (Sometimes) Worth Ten Thousand Words. Cognitive Science.
• Mayer (2009). Multimedia Learning. Cambridge University Press.
• Ginns (2006). Integrating information: A meta-analysis of the spatial contiguity and temporal contiguity effects. Learning and Instruction.