Note-Taking: Restriction and Selection

Abstract

We are conducting an investigation into the relationship between note-taking and learning in online courses. The literature has shown that the process of taking notes can have a positive impact on long-term retention. Our completed studies indicate that the features included in online note-taking applications can have an effect on these process benefits. This creates an opportunity to learn more about note-taking. Our main research question regards how and when note-taking increases long-term retention. By addressing this question, we have the opportunity to develop note-taking applications that encourage active processing and retention.

We have two main hypotheses. First, we believe that note-taking encourages active processing, and thus long-term retention, when it requires students to attend to the critical elements of the learning material. This results in increased feature validity of the mental representation. Our second hypothesis is that note-taking facilitates long-term retention when it involves the creation of additional representations of concepts. These two hypotheses fit in with the fluency and coordinative learning clusters, respectively. Our studies are designed to evaluate these hypothesis.

Glossary

Select/ion: This term is used in the context of this study to identify the behavior of using the mouse and cursor to actively highlight a portion of digital text. Selection is first step for several online note-taking techniques, including copy-paste and annotation.

Copy-Paste: This is the act of selecting material, copying it to the computer clipboard (via a keyboard shortcut or menu), and then pasting it into students’ notes.

Verbatim: Verbatim notes are those which use the same words as the course material in the same order. Abbreviated: Abbreviated notes include abbreviations of words and note segments which drop small non-content words (i.e. “to” or “a”).

Shortened: Shortened notes drop longer, and potentially meaningful words, but maintain the same order as the course content.

Own Words: Notes that do not fit into either Verbatim, Abbreviated, or Shortened categories are identified as in students’ own words.

Research Question

Can we improve learning outcomes in online courses by changing the way students can take notes?

Background/Significance

Note-taking research has shown that the process of taking notes can have a positive impact on long-term retention. Our preliminary studies have provided strong evidence that the features included in online note-taking applications impact how students take notes. These may affect learning: specifically, we have found that copy-paste functionality appears to reduce retention. These differences provide an opportunity to learn more about note-taking. Our main research question regards how and when note-taking increases long-term retention. By addressing this question, we have the opportunity to develop note-taking applications that encourage active processing and retention.

There is extensive research on note-taking in both the educational psychology and educational technology fields. About half of note-taking studies have shown the process of note-taking to be beneficial to learning. Three-fourths of studies find that notes are a valuable resource when they can be reviewed (Kiewra, 1991). The cause of note-taking benefits is unclear, however. It has been attributed to rewording or summarizing, but experimental results are equivocal.

Note-taking technology provides new ways of studying note-taking, and provides investigators with more control over the note-taking process. This gives us the opportunity to study note-taking in further depth, perhaps elucidating the circumstances in which note-taking is beneficial. Unfortunately, few researchers have taken advantage of this opportunity. Most note-taking technology is developed to simply mimic paper-based practices, or provide new ways of taking notes.

These new devices have been shown to change the way students take notes, reinforcing the need to study how note-taking practices affect learning, if at all. Our investigations our a first step in doing so.

Dependent Variables

Behavior

Note-Quantity: The total number of ideas students place in their notes is captured, as well as the number of words used to express those ideas.

Note-Wording: How students word their notes is recorded. Each ideas is either recorded Verbatim, Abbreviated, or in students Own words.

Completion Time: The time students take to complete the learning material is recorded.

Motivation/Interest

Experience: After taking the final test, students are given a survey which solicits their reaction to the tool they used. They are asked to identify their most and least favorite features of the tools, and how they believe the tool affected their note-taking behavior.

Tests

Note: all tests include both multiple choice and free response questions. The multiple choice questions all involve solving problems (for example, given a response structure, which variables are direct causes of an effect, or which interact to produce an effect). In addition, some free response questions ask students to explain terminology used in the module.

Normal Learning, immediate: Students are given a test immediately after studying the material.

Long-Term Retention, Normal Learning: Students return a week following the treatment (which lasts between 30 and 90 minutes) to take this test.

Normal Learning, review: After taking the long-term retention test, students are given their notes to review for 5 minutes. Following this review period, students take a final test.

Independent Variables

Note-taking Treatment

Paste: Students can only create notes by copy-pasting material from the learning content to their notepad. Students can select as much material as they like in any single pasting action.

Restricted Paste: Students can only create notes by copy-pasting material from the learning content to their notepad. Students are restricted to selecting 90% of the words of any single sentence they are selecting.

Typing: Students can only create notes by typing directly into their notepad.

Selection-Tool: Students can only create notes by choosing one of the 3 options made available when they select learning material.

Student Variables

SAT Score: All students are asked to provide their SAT scores, as in previous studies SAT-Math was found to be an important covariate.

Pretest score: Prior to the learning material, students take a pre-test similar to the normal tests described above.

Preferences: In the survey, students are asked how they prefer to take notes in their regular student-life.

Hypotheses

1. Restricting the amount of material students can select in any individual copy-paste behavior will increase the attention paid to critical features of the learning material. This will result in improved retention compared to taking notes using unrestricted copy-paste.

2. Requiring students to select alternative representations of material (Selection Tool), will result in students having multiple representations of the learning material. This will result in improved retention when compared with taking verbatim notes using copy-paste.

Findings

We are currently analyzing the results of this study. Preliminary analyses indicate that the note-taking technologies that could be classified as “novel” [restricted paste and selection-tool] show significantly reduced performance across all tests. Typing and Copy-Paste appear to function equivalently with regards to learning outcomes. There is a significant different with time on task, however, with the typing tool requiring more time than the other tools. This results in a learning efficiency effect for copy-paste, where the paste tool produces more efficient learning than the other tools.

These results are based on a very early analysis, and appear to contrast with earlier results. We are currently conducting more detailed analyses.

Explanation

There are many variables that may affect our current study. Regarding student attributes, we previously found that SAT-math was a significant covariate for the learning material used in this study, which is a module of a course in Causal and Statistical Reasoning. In addition, students have different typing speeds, which may affect the time required by students for note-taking.

Another important element is motivation. Most (99% by some accounts) students have a depth of experience with note-taking, and have developed personal strategies. Different tools may not allow them to take notes as they would like (for example, prohibiting typing or copy-paste), which can reduce their motivation to use them and participate in the experiment.

Descendents

None at this time

Further Information

The following is a reference to a conference paper regarding our earlier study contrasting handwriting, typing, and copy-paste.

Bauer, A., Koedinger, K. Pasting and Encoding: Note-taking in Online Courses. IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2006), 5-7 July, Kerkrade, Netherlands.