Taking Note of Note Taking

by Linda Stine

What role does note taking play in student learning and retention? This is an issue I keep changing my mind about. 

In my early days of teaching, at the beginning of each semester I would show my students the Cornell method of note taking: write the notes in the main part of the page, highlight main topics/key words in the left margin and save room at the bottom of the page for summary and application. I preached the SQ3R gospel (survey, question, recite, reflect, review). Then after  awhile I went with the “don’t divide your attention by listening and writing at the same time” approach, encouraging students to focus on hearing and understanding and  participating, just jotting down a few main points if they needed to and using available technology to record the rest for review if they felt that was necessary.  Then, with the growth of PowerPoint, I found myself printing out lecture slides for students or posting them online, again thinking that it made more sense for students to watch and listen and think and participate than to spend their time and energy scribbling down verbatim what I could provide them either in print or digitally. Then, with an increased focus on active learning and workshopping, note taking did not seem to be needed; retention came with the doing rather than the recording.

In an article in the Teaching Professor blog, however, Maryellen Weimer suggests that students learn two important skills from note taking: learning to listen effectively and being able to make the material their own by translating it into their own words.  She lists some small steps teachers can take to encourage good note taking:

• Identify key concepts in the day’s lesson specifically, telling students when you get to it that what follows is important and should be written down;
• Challenge students to retrieve things from their notes to add to the present class discussion;
• Pause after giving a definition and tell students to write it in their own words, not yours;
• Give students a few minutes in the beginning of class to review the last class’s notes and have a few summarize;
• At the end of class have students trade notes with somebody sitting near them discuss what was similar and what was different
• When a number of students miss an exam question, ask them to find what they have in their notes that relates to the question and compare their notes with those of a student who got the question right;
• Tell students they may use notes during the next quiz and talk with them about how that changes what they write down.

What are your thoughts about whether students should take notes in class, how they should do so, and what role, if any, you might play in helping them to learn this skill? Has technology changed the way you think about note taking?  Has the new world of active learning and “flipped classrooms” eliminated note taking, at least within the classroom setting itself?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue. 

PowerPoint in the Classroom

Guest Writer, Dave Royer

PowerPoint – so who has the power and what’s the point? What a great opening this could be if I had a clever answer. But you do get the message that I have chosen to write about PowerPoint, hereafter abbreviated PP. I will give you my perspective and then my students’ multiple perspectives, the latter being the more important as they are the ones who are doing the learning. Based on no reliable or systematic data, I would say that PP is used in more than half the classes at Lincoln, but have we investigated whether it improves student learning, compromises student learning or is neutral? It certainly offers more versatility as to what I can offer in the classroom; I can show pictures, animations, diagrams, figures, etc. that I could never adequately draw on the whiteboard so I feel my lectures are more interesting and engaging. I can go beyond talking about global warming by embedding video of glaciers crashing into the sea in my PP presentation. My students can see the results of extended droughts in sub-Sahara Africa that are more graphic and provocative than my recitation of statistics of rainfall amounts. PP also makes my life easier, and I admit that with some guilt. Nearly every textbook in the sciences comes with a companion website that includes an instructors’ section with a full set of PP lectures. One could simply copy the PP lecture onto a computer or flash drive and present it in the classroom with minimal preparation, and while the quality of these PP lectures varies, most of them are, at the very least, adequate. So even though I routinely edit these PPs by adding, deleting and modifying slides, it is still much easier than preparing a lecture from scratch and thus my guilt. My lectures are being at least partially prepared by a person or team at the publisher with whom I do not need to share my office or my salary. Another advantageous aspect of PP lectures is the ease with which they can be posted to WebCT, where they are accessible to students at any time and from nearly any location.

So what are my concerns about PP lectures? First, I think they contribute to our perennial problem of students not purchasing textbooks; the students feel that the PPs give them all the information that they need to prepare for exams, making the text an unnecessary expense. Second, many of our students have poor note-taking skills, and PPs prevent the development of those skills as students see little or no need to take notes when the PPs will be posted for them.

And for those students who do want to take notes, there is no training available on how to take notes during a PP lecture. My last concern is whether students are learning better, learning more, and developing effective critical thinking skills with PPs, and I have no information or impressions about this.

The second part of the story is what the students think so I took some time with my General Biology II and Microbial Ecology classes to get their thoughts on the subject. I started my classes one day recently by asking whether I should teach with PP or with a traditional write on the board lecture, and more than half voted for the latter. When I asked why, I received a variety of responses. One student stated that if I wrote the information on the board, he would copy it and begin the learning process with the act of writing the information in his notebook. Another said that when I write on the board, it slows things down a bit, and when she copies from the board, it gives her time to think about what is being taught and to come up with questions. She sees PP lectures as going too fast and not allowing for some thoughtful consideration of the material being covered.

Several students thought it was easier to follow the lecture when the instructor wrote on the board, and one student said he was less likely to fall asleep if I wrote on the board; presumably the act of copying something would keep him awake. And many students felt their notes were better when the professor was writing on the board.

As for the students who preferred PP lectures, they cited the ability to include various types of media in the presentation. They also liked that the lectures are available online; the word “convenient” came up several times. Last, they felt that material missed when they could not attend lecture was easily obtained because most faculty post their PPs to WebCT.

In general, the students also noted that the quality of PPs varied considerably from course to course with the worst ones being those that were slide after slide of just text.

So what can be drawn from all of this information? While there are some implicit suggestions above, I invite you, the reader, to share your thoughts, experiences and responses. Barring some new technology, we will be using PP for many years to come.

Last, special thanks to my students in Microbial Ecology and General Biology II for their input on the use of PowerPoints in classes.