Bellinger, D. B., & DeCaro, M. S. (2019). Note-taking format and difficulty impact learning from instructor-provided lecture notes.\u00a0Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,\u00a072(12), 2807-2819.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOthers students used guided notes that emphasized conceptual\/relational processing<\/em>. These notes — “outline notes” — organized the lecture’s ideas into conceptual hierarchies, which the students filled out.<\/p>\nAnd, to be thorough, Bellinger and DeCaro used both “more challenging” and “less challenging” versions of these note systems. As you can see, examples A and B above leave much larger blanks than examples C and D.<\/p>\n
So, which note-taking system helped students more?<\/p>\n
Because the lecture was “information heavy,” a note-taking system that highlights facts (the “cloze notes”) would be “redundant,” while a system that highlights conceptual relationships (the “outline notes”) would be “complementary.”<\/p>\n
That is: students would get facts<\/em> from the lecture<\/em>, and see relationships<\/em> highlighted in the outline\u00a0notes<\/em>.<\/p>\nFor this reason, Bellinger and DeCaro predicted that the outline notes would help more in this case.<\/p>\n
And, sure enough, students remembered more information<\/em> — and applied it more effectively<\/em> — when they used the challenging form of the outline notes<\/em>.<\/p>\nClassroom Implications<\/h2>\n
Based on this study, do I recommend that you use outline notes with your students?<\/p>\n
NO, READER, I DO NOT.<\/p>\n
Remember, the “outline notes” worked here because (presumably) they complemented the factual presentation of the lecture.<\/p>\n
If, however, the lecture focused more on relationships and connections, then (presumably) “cloze notes” would help more. They would be “complementary.”<\/p>\n
As is so often the case, I don’t think we teachers should DO what research says we should DO.<\/p>\n
Instead, I think we should THINK the way researchers help us THINK.<\/p>\n
In this case, I should ask myself: “will my classroom presentation focus more on\u00a0facts<\/em>, or more on\u00a0relationships and connections<\/em>?”<\/p>\nHonestly: that’s a difficult question.<\/p>\n
In the first place, I lecture only rarely.<\/p>\n
And in the second place, my presentations (I hope) focus on both facts and relationships.<\/p>\n
But, if I can figure out an answer — “this presentations focuses on relationships among the characters” — then I should devise a\u00a0complementary<\/strong> note system. In this case, “cloze notes” would probably help, because they highlight facts<\/em> (and my presentation highlights connections<\/em>).<\/p>\nIn other words: this research — and the theory behind it — doesn’t offer a straightforward, simple answer to the question that launched this post: “how should my students take notes?”<\/p>\n
Because learning is complicated, such a usefully intricate answer might be all the more persuasive.<\/p>\n
\nBellinger, D. B., & DeCaro, M. S. (2019). Note-taking format and difficulty impact learning from instructor-provided lecture notes.\u00a0Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology<\/i>,\u00a072<\/i>(12), 2807-2819.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Teachers often ask me: “how should my students take notes?” That question typically springs from a heated debate. Despite all the enthusiasm for academic technology, many teachers insist on hand-written notes. (Long-time readers know: I have a provocative opinion on this topic.) For the time being, let’s set that debate aside. Instead, let’s ask a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,93],"class_list":["post-6360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-note-taking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6360"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6371,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6360\/revisions\/6371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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