Faculty Responsibilties

[Yolanda Y. Williams]

Read the article, "Should Instructors provide Students with Complete Notes," published in Faculty Focus.


Should Instructors Provide Students with Complete Notes?
October 6, 2008
By Maryellen Weimer

Course management software programs make it especially easy for instructors to provide students with a set of complete lecture notes. It seems that more instructors are doing this, as witnessed in the regularity with which students ask that the instructor’s notes be posted. But is giving students a complete set of notes a good idea?

Previous findings (like those of Kenneth Kiewra, highlighted some years back in this newsletter) recommend against this practice. Kiewra’s research demonstrated both a process and a product benefit of note taking. The process benefit accrues when students make selections about what to note and when they use at least some of their own words to record that material. When students record lecture content using their words, it becomes easier for them to connect new material with things they already know. This process benefit is lost when students are provided with complete notes. Even so, students prefer teacher notes because they think that having the content in the instructor’s words will better prepare them for exam questions.

The product benefit of note taking obviously comes as a result of having a product, in this case a set of notes, that can be reviewed and studied subsequently. It is generally thought that instructor-provided notes enhance this benefit because students don’t have to worry about losing notes (they are always available online) and because the material in instructor-provided notes is sure to be accurate.

However, a recent study confirms Kiewra’s earlier findings—but with an interesting elaboration. In this study, psychology students received either a complete or a partial set of instructor notes. The partial notes included major headings and titles made up of definitions and concepts, but students needed to write in the additional information. In both cases, students were instructed to download the notes and bring them to class. About three-fourths of the students complied with this directive.

The researchers looked at the impact of the complete versus the partial notes on exam scores, final grades, and attendance. They found that those students who received partial notes performed better on the third and fourth exams and earned significantly higher course grades. They did not find “differential effects of note type on class attendance.” (p. 10)

There was one other “noteworthy” effect. On the final exam, the students who received partial notes performed better on conceptual questions, those questions that involved “application of a theoretical concept to an example that required additional mastery of the material beyond the definition.” (p. 8) Researchers speculate that the students with partial notes had encoded material throughout the semester, and when confronted with the large amount of material they needed to know for the final, they understood more and so had to rely less on memorization.

Based on their findings, these researchers recommend providing students with partial notes. Giving students some notes conveys the instructor’s sensitivity to their concerns about getting the material they need from a lecture. If those notes provide the outline or structure of the material, students can concentrate on understanding the information rather than on trying to figure out how to prioritize and organize the material. Partial notes also clarify what students need to be writing and still retain the process benefit of note taking by forcing students to encode some of the content. The researchers summarize their results this way: “Partial notes … may provide a nice balance in terms of providing students with some notes, which they report as helpful, and still requiring encoding and higher-level processing of information, which will ultimately improve learning and performance.” (p. 11)

Reference: Cornelius, T.L., and Owen-DeSchryver, J. (2008). Differential effects of full and partial notes on learning outcomes and attendance. Teaching of Psychology, 35 (1), 6-12.

Originally published in The Teaching Professor, June/July 2008


What do you think. What do you provide your students with? Do you provide your students with your notes, your powerpoint slides, etc? Have you studied the impact of what you provide your students on their learning? I am anxious to get your thoughts.

http://www.magnapubs.com/issues/magnapubs_ff/5_27/news/601920-1.htm...

[Linda Russell]

I have read other reports like this, and they do point to an advantage (for learning) for providing partial notes, an outline or some kind of structure that requires students to fill in the details. Since I'm a study skills teacher, I certainly agree that it's easier to be actively engaged in class if you have to do some work! It also taps into making sense of material (in order to write it down), which is good for learning--and for knowing if you have learned or not. I have heard some interesting things from students at MCTC when I've asked them to put the PPT slide handout away and take notes "the old fashioned way" however. They tell me that they can't keep up. That teachers who use PPT pack so much info into the slides, that students could never actually just take the notes. I think it happens because with PPT, teachers don't need to be writing as much on the board or overhead, so less time is used up that way, thus making it possible to get through things much faster. Students in math classes, interestingly, don't report this, but math teachers usually do a lot of problems on the board rather than lecture from PPT.

[Yolanda Y. Williams]

I often hear this about the PowerPoint slides as well. But what I notice more, since I really try not to put more than 5 lines per slide, and they are sometimes just a word, is that students want easy. they don;t want to have to focus all of their attention on what is going on in class at any given moment. Another comment I just heard form a colleague is that students have really poor listening skills. As a musician, I have worked quite a bit on developing listening skills and using what can be developed aurally in music to apply what can be heard when the information is being given in a spoken form. If students weren't so used to easy, quick soundbites rather than in depth, compelling information, and had better listening skills, I think they would not have to have teachers prepare their work for them. Just a thought...

[Hope Doerner]

I like to give students access to materials via D2L. It is then up to them to print off or use the resources I use while teaching. These are not full notes, but I think can often be helpful for certain learning styles. It is also helpful for students who miss a class session to retrieve information and stay on track.