The Directed Notetaking Activity: A Self-Questioning Approach.

m A major task that confronts secondary and postsecondary students is the acquisition of notetaking skills in order to effectively accommodate the lecture format. As students progress to higher grades, they increasingly have to depend on their ability to take notes in order to be successful in the classroom. Some recent investigations of notetaking have substantiated students' inability to take comprehensive notes from a lecture (Fisher & Harris, 1973; Locke, 1 977). A central issue in other studies is whether notetaking's value lies in the encoding function (the act of taking notes) or the external storage function (the act of reviewing notes). (See Hartley & Davies, 1978; McAndrew, 1983.) Evidence supporting the external storage view is relatively strong: Reviewing notes leads to higher achievement. Less convincing is the literature supporting the encoding hypothesis: The simple act of taking notes does not appear to be sufficient for comprehension and retention of new information (Rickards & Friedman, 1978). One reason that taking notes does not necessarily ensure comprehension of the material may be that the notetakers do not always self-monitor during the task. Studies based on metacognitive theory note that good readers employ skills that include "predicting, checking, monitoring, reality testing and coordination, and control of deliberate attempts to study, learn or solve problems" (Brown, 1980, p. 454). On the other hand, poor readers often do not recognize that their comprehension has failed; additionally, if they are told that a comprehension problem exists, they often do not use specific strategies to resolve the problem (Baker & Brown, 1984; Bruce & Rubin, 1984). Given the parallel nature of processing lecture information to that of processing written text, we hypothesized that a metacognitive emphasis during notetaking could be the missing link: It might produce more active involvement on the part of the notetaker and thus enhance comprehension.