The Impact of Instructor-Provided Lecture Notes and Learning Interventions on Student Note Taking and Generative Processing

THE IMPACT OF INSTRUCTOR-PROVIDED LECTURE NOTES AND LEARNING INTERVENTIONS ON STUDENT NOTE TAKING AND GENERATIVE PROCESSING by Karen L. Gee While the review (memory storage) function of student lecture notes is well established, research findings on the learning benefits of actually taking these notes (memory encoding) has been mixed. The current study provided all students with a complete content outline for use in studying, so the effects of taking personal notes could be isolated. Students who received the complete outline before the lecture took significantly fewer personal notes than did students who received the outline after lecture, though both groups performed similarly on factual and application tests. Students who were directed to generate novel examples for each topic also performed better on the application test than did students who were told to reread or summarize. These findings provide mixed support for the generative theory of learning, in which activities directed at helping the learner make internal and external connections with content facilitate learning.

[1]  M. Wittrock.  Learning as a Generative Process , 1974 .

[2]  The relationship between levels of note-taking and achievement. , 1984 .

[3]  Youngmin Lee,et al.  Viewing or visualising - which concept map strategy works best on problem-solving performance? , 2005, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[4]  J. Hartley,et al.  Note‐taking: A critical review , 1978 .

[5]  Raymond W. Kulhavy,et al.  Notetaking and depth of processing , 1979 .

[6]  Donald L. Peters,et al.  Effects of note taking and rate of presentation on short-term objective test performance. , 1972 .

[7]  Sung-Il Kim,et al.  A more equitable account of the note-taking functions in learning from lecture and from text , 1989 .

[8]  College students' perceptions of notetaking and their relationship to selected learner characteristics and course achievement , 1988 .

[9]  Kenneth A. Kiewra,et al.  Providing study notes: Comparison of three types of notes for review. , 1988 .

[10]  Kenneth A. Kiewra.  Providing the Instructor's Notes: An Effective Addition to Student Notetaking , 1985 .

[11]  A. King.  Comparison of Self-Questioning, Summarizing, and Notetaking-Review as Strategies for Learning From Lectures , 1992 .

[12]  Carol A. Carrier,et al.  Effects of Notetaking Pretraining and Test Mode Expectations on Learning from Lectures , 1981 .

[13]  R. Mayer.  Aids to text comprehension , 1984 .

[14]  P. Kirschner,et al.  Taking the Load Off a Learner's Mind: Instructional Design for Complex Learning , 2003 .

[15]  R. Mayer,et al.  Generative Effects of Note-Taking during Science Lectures. , 1986 .

[16]  M. Wittrock.  Generative Processes of Comprehension , 1989 .

[17]  N. Boreham,et al.  Learning from lectures: The effect of varying the detail in lecture handouts on note‐taking and recall , 1988 .

[18]  S. Tobias.  Another Look at Research on the Adaptation of Instruction to Students Characteristics , 1989 .

[19]  J. Hartley.  Notetaking Research: Resetting the Scoreboard , 1983 .

[20]  F. di Vesta,et al.  Listening and note taking. , 1972, Journal of educational psychology.

[21]  M. C. Wittrock,et al.  Generative processes in reading comprehension. , 1978 .

[22]  F. Craik,et al.  Levels of Pro-cessing: A Framework for Memory Research , 1975 .

[23]  R. Atkinson,et al.  Structuring the Transition From Example Study to Problem Solving in Cognitive Skill Acquisition: A Cognitive Load Perspective , 2003 .

[24]  P. Lachenbruch.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) , 1989 .

[25]  Keiichi Kobayashi,et al.  What limits the encoding effect of note-taking? A meta-analytic examination , 2005 .

[26]  Andrew T. Stull,et al.  Three Experimental Comparisons of Learner-generated versus Author-provided Graphic Organizers , 2007 .

[27]  Keiichi Kobayashi,et al.  Combined Effects of Note‐Taking/‐Reviewing on Learning and the Enhancement through Interventions: A meta‐analytic review , 2006 .

[28]  P. V. Meter,et al.  College Students' Theory of Note-Taking Derived From Their Perceptions of Note-Taking , 1994 .

[29]  Kenneth A. Kiewra.  Aids to Lecture Learning , 1991 .

[30]  F. Paas,et al.  Cognitive Load Theory and Instructional Design: Recent Developments , 2003 .

[31]  R. W. Kulhavy,et al.  Note-Taking and Passage Style. , 1981 .

[32]  Candice Stefanou,et al.  Note-taking in the college classroom as evidence of generative learning , 2008 .

[33]  Richard E. Clark,et al.  Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching , 2006 .

[34]  L. Baker,et al.  Students' Lecture Notes and Their Relation to Test Performance , 1985 .

[35]  R. Mayer.  Should there be a three-strikes rule against pure discovery learning? The case for guided methods of instruction. , 2004, The American psychologist.

[36]  Richard E. Mayer,et al.  Constructivism as a theory of learning versus constructivism as a prescription for instruction. , 2009 .

[37]  Slava Kalyuga.  Expertise Reversal Effect and Its Implications for Learner-Tailored Instruction , 2007 .

[38]  John Wirt.  The Condition of Education , 2005 .

[39]  W. Kintsch.  Learning and constructivism. , 2009 .

[40]  Lawrence T. Frase,et al.  Boundary Conditions for Mathemagenic Behaviors1 , 1970 .

[41]  M. Wittrock.  Generative Learning Processes of the Brain , 1992 .

[42]  Nelson F. DuBois,et al.  Note-taking functions and techniques. , 1991 .