- Give one sentence describing the main purpose of the research reported in the paper.
- What type of design was used in the research reported in this paper? (Observational/Correlational/Experimental)
- Describe the sample that was used and note any specific characteristics that you think might affect the ability to generalize their results.
- What was the behavior(s) that was under study? How was the dependent variable(s) operationally defined?
- What did they specifically do in this study to learn about this behavior?
- What did the author(s) conclude about the results of the study?
- Do you agree or disagree with the conclusions? Why or why not?
- Briefly describe a future study that could address either a limitation of the current research or provide further evidence for the conclusions discussed.
Note-taking habits of 21st Century college students: implications for student learning, memory, and achievement Note-taking habits of 21st Century college students: implications for student learning, memory, and achievement Kayla Moreheada, John Dunloskya, Katherine A. Rawsona, Rachael Blasimanb and R. Benjamin Hollisc aDepartment of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA; bDepartment of Psychology, Kent State University, Salem; cOffice of Continuing & Distance Education, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA ABSTRACT Students rely on their notes to memorise and learn critical course content, and recent studies of note-taking state that most students take notes, citing a survey published in 1974. Over the past four decades, classrooms and note-taking technologies have evolved: students can take notes on electronic devices, and some classes are entirely online. Despite these changes, few studies have investigated their impact on note-taking habits. Given that note-taking is critical for student learning, the purpose of the present study was to update the literature on students’ general note-taking behaviour and investigate the impact of these newer technological advances on note-taking. We surveyed 577 college students, using questions from prior surveys and new questions relevant to technology. As per prior studies, students still reported taking notes in classrooms, and as important, students reported flexibility in their note-taking by (a) using a notebook or a laptop depending on course demands and (b) often deciding not to take notes in online courses. Thus, students are flexible in their note-taking behaviour, but may not always make the best decisions about how and when to take notes. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 6 June 2018 Accepted 6 January 2019 KEYWORDS Note-taking; note-taking habits; survey; technology; online courses With the exception of three reported studies concerning the utility of notetaking in the fifties… , little other recent attention in the area of student practices has been evident. The effort reported here attempts to assess current student attitudes and practices in the area of notetaking, and to compare these to earlier findings. (Palmatier & Bennett, 1974, p. 215) This quote comes from one of the most recent large-scale surveys focused on student note-taking, which was pub- lished in 1974. Noting the lack of relevant research from the 1950s to the 1970s, Palmatier and Bennett raised a concern that “the appearance of the spiral-bound note- book” (p. 216) would affect student note-taking. We suspect that most researchers will agree that the techno- logical advances introduced in education since 1974 far exceed the advance of spiral-bound notebooks. Moreover, recent survey research indicates that when students are preparing for high-stakes exams, they largely rely on mem- orising their notes (Karpicke, Butler, & Roediger, 2009; Morehead, Rhodes, & DeLozier, 2016). Given that the content of notes is foundational to what students learn, it is important to understand when and where students take notes as well as the strategies students use when studying their notes to enhance memory and learning of course content. Accordingly, the main goals of the present research were to provide an extensive and up-to- date survey of student note-taking habits – both for lec- tures in classrooms and on-line courses – as well as to compare student note-taking habits against what is considered best practices. To provide a context for the present research, we first discuss what has changed since 1974 and then describe an empirical framework for evalu- ating the effectiveness of students’ note-taking habits. Then, we briefly review prior survey studies (in the context of the framework) and end with an overview of the present research. Changes since 1974 that may Influence note-taking habits So, what has happened since 1974 that may be relevant to note-taking and the degree to which students are taking effective notes and learning from them? With respect to taking notes, unlike the first laptop computer (which was introduced in 1981, had no battery, and weighed close to 25 pounds), modern laptop computers are lightweight and can be readily used to take notes in the classroom. More recently, eWriters (e.g., Boogie Board™ eWriters, which function as electronic paper) and other tablets (e.g., iPads, which have eWriting capabilities as well as other functions) now allow students to take notes long- hand without using paper. As for teaching technologies, many advances have been made that could impact whether and how students take notes. PowerPoint was introduced in 1990 and is now used by many teachers to present course content during lectures. The internet has led to enrollment in online courses in which students © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group CONTACT Kayla Morehead
[email protected] Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44240, USA MEMORY 2019, VOL. 27, NO. 6, 807–819 https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2019.1569694 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/09658211.2019.1569694&domain=pdf mailto:
[email protected] http://www.tandfonline.com view lectures and course content online without being in a classroom. Given these advances in note-taking and instructional technologies, one could safely argue that the need to update our knowledge about students’ note-taking behav- iour is greater now than in 1974 when the largest impact on note-taking was the invention of the spiral notebook. Given that notes themselves represent the focal stimuli rel- evant to a great deal of student learning, understanding how students take notes and how they go about studying them when preparing for exams will have important impli- cations for memory investigators who seek to improve student achievement. Accordingly, we conducted a large- scale survey of students’ note-taking that both connects with earlier research (by using several of the survey ques- tions from prior research) and extends it (by surveying stu- dents about note-taking with respect to the aforementioned technological advances). Furthermore, the present survey included more detailed questions about students’ note-taking beyond whether they take notes, so as to help memory investigators generate hypotheses and research ideas based on students’ reported note-taking behaviour. Empirical framework for interpreting students’ note-taking habits Students largely self-regulate their note-taking. Teachers may offer scaffolds (e.g., an outline of a lecture or copies of PowerPoint slides) to help students take notes, but it is typically up to each student to decide how and when to take notes. Unfortunately, the literature on self-regulated learning has revealed that how students regulate their learning – including decisions about which strategies to use and when to use them – often does not match empiri- cal evidence about how best to regulate learning (Bjork, Dunlosky, & Kornell, 2013). For instance, many students report preferring to prepare for exams by rereading their textbooks instead of testing themselves (Gurung, Weidert, & Jeske, 2010; Hartwig & Dunlosky, 2012; More- head et al., 2016), whereas evidence indicates that reread- ing is less effective than self-testing (for reviews, see Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013; Roediger & Butler, 2011). Accordingly, to provide a framework for interpreting the outcomes from students’ reports of their note-taking habits, we first consider the relevant empirical evidence concerning best practices. We also organised the frame- work on the distinction between the two main functions of note-taking: encoding and storage. The encoding func- tion concerns the degree to which the act of taking notes improves student learning of the target materials, whereas the storage function concerns how students sub- sequently attempt to learn from their notes and its impact on test performance (for a review, see Kiewra, 1989; Kobayashi, 2005; Kobayashi, 2006). Concerning the encoding function, two aspects of note- taking are arguably most relevant: (a) what method stu- dents use to take notes and (b) whether students attempt to organise their notes as they take them. With respect to note-taking methods, students can take notes by longhand in a notebook or using an electronic device (e.g., a tablet or eWriter), or they can type notes on a laptop computer or tablet. In empirical research of which method is best, taking notes longhand has generally pro- duced as good or better performance outcomes when investigated in real-life courses and in the laboratory (Carter, Greenberg, & Walker, 2017; Luo, Kiewra, Flanigan, & Peteranetz, 2018; Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014; for one exception, see Bui, Myerson, & Hale, 2013). Using a laptop in a classroom may be especially disruptive, because computer use (typing, access to the internet) while taking notes can be distracting for the laptop user and potentially for students sitting near them (e.g., Sana, Weston, & Cepeda, 2013). Thus, key questions concerning the encoding function of note-taking include, Will the majority of students report taking notes longhand, or do many now use laptops? And, do any students use both note-taking methods, and if so, why? The encoding function of note-taking may also be ben- efitted by organising and transforming notes, versus just copying a lecture verbatim. The idea here is that transform- ing a lecture into one’s own words and organising (or inte- grating) the lecture content can boost performance, partly because such generative processes are more effortful than passively copying a lecture. Better organisation (e.g., using outlines or the Cornell note-taking method) may support more effective restudy and subsequently improve the storage function. Thus, to investigate their approach to note-taking in the present survey, students who indicated taking notes also reported whether they tended to copy notes or organise them in some manner. The effectiveness of the storage function is largely reflected by how students study their notes, and some study strategies are better than others. For instance, to enhance the storage function, students should test them- selves on the content of notes instead of merely rereading them (e.g., Dunlosky et al., 2013; Roediger & Butler, 2011). General surveys of students’ study behaviour suggest that they tend to overly rely on less effective strategies (e.g., rereading), and outcomes from the present survey provide converging evidence about how students use their notes to prepare for exams. Finally, one novel aspect of the present research per- tains to revealing how students approach taking notes in online courses, which could have implications for both the encoding and storage function of note-taking. One possibility is that some students will not take notes, with the idea that they will merely view the online lectures and supporting materials to prepare for exams. Recent research suggests that students who rely on reviewing online lectures perform poorly (e.g., Liles, Vuk, & Tariq, 2018). But, is it common for students to rely less on 808 K. MOREHEAD ET AL. note-taking for online than in-class lectures? To answer this question, we compared reports of note-taking habits for those students who were enrolled in both kinds of course when taking the survey. Because students may not always make the best choices about how to take notes, we included several other ques- tions on the survey to provide possible insight into why they might make