Intro Drawing in anatomy increases comprehension, enhances test grades, and promotes long term retention. Literature supports the use of drawing in teaching and learning anatomy, however, there is little research into the effectiveness of drawing on teaching clinical anatomy and its comparison to traditionally used resources such as lectures and textbook reading. Additionally, previous studies have failed to compare in-person drawing to virtual sessions. We hypothesize that students participating in instructor-guided drawing or lecture sessions, both in-person or virtually, will perform better on anatomy assessments and will rate their sessions higher than students reading textbooks. Methods In order to test the hypothesis, novice first year medical students were recruited over two academic years. All sessions in 2019 were held in person, while sessions in 2020 were conducted virtually to compare effectiveness of drawing templates in two academic environments. Student participants completed the Index of Learning Style questionnaire which helped categorize the students as either a preferred visual or non-visual learner. Visual and non-visual students were randomly but uniformly placed into one of four interventional groups: a drawing on paper group, a drawing on technology group, a lecture group and a reading group. The study focused on teaching the structural, functional and clinical anatomy of the vagus nerve. Each learning session began with an anatomy pre-test, followed by a teaching session specific to each interventional group, and ended with an anatomy post-test and a satisfaction survey. Students were invited to complete an additional test and survey 6 months after the primary learning session to assess long-term retention. Results Preliminary results suggest students in all four interventional groups significantly improved from pre-test to post-test in both academic years. When scores on clinical questions were analyzed, participants in groups with instructor guidance including the drawing and lecture groups significantly improved following their teaching session, while students in the reading group had no significant improvement. Additionally, students in those specific groups rated their sessions higher than students in the reading group when asked if they found their session to be effective and if they recommend sessions like theirs be added to the curriculum. Students in the drawing and lecture groups agreed their sessions were more effective than if they spent that time reading from a textbook. Conclusions The results of this study suggest in-person and virtual teaching sessions involving instructor guidance either through drawing or lecture lead to enhanced retention, clinical knowledge and student satisfaction when compared to textbook reading.