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It has been my experience teaching college math that there is a strong correlation between doing well and taking notes. Many students believe (and the people w

It has been my experience teaching college math that there is a strong correlation between doing well and taking notes. Many students believe (and the people who give ed tech workshops strongly encourage this view) that they should just sit back, because they will get the beamer slides later, or watch the online videos. And taking a picture of the board with their smartphone, rather than writing out what is written there, seems to me to be a quite good predictor of having trouble. What they are doing is logical but experience shows that for many students it is not as effective as actively writing the material.

jjoonathan 11y ago
I don't doubt that your observed correlation is true, but I think you have cause and effect reversed. When I understand material, it's easy to copy it down in its entirety because I can internalize and reproduce the meaning. In this case I'm with you that taking notes is a net positive, because it lets you exercise the concepts as you "copy" them. However, when I don't understand material, copying it down is much more challenging. I can't internalize the meaning so I have to resort to glyph reproduction which is a much heavier cognitive burden and much less instructive. This makes it even harder to keep up let alone untangle the conceptual debt that got me into the situation to begin with. In this case I think notes are a net negative. If you let people make the choice on their own, the kids who get the material but don't want to take notes suffer. If you force people to take notes, the people who are already having trouble suffer even more. Therefore I tend to favor giving (and receiving) choice. An exception would be online classes which have pause buttons that conveniently bypass the tradeoff.
jacobolus 11y ago
> strong correlation between doing well and taking notes. Many students believe [...] that they should just sit back, The important thing is not to take notes per se, but to make sure to engage with the lecture and focus, and fully follow the mathematical argument being presented. Personally I pay attention much better without writing notes, but I know other people who pay attention best while drawing unrelated doodles, or by writing down everything that goes on the chalkboard. If I try to write everything down, the action of mechanical symbol copying takes up brain cycles and prevents me from thinking about what I’m hearing/reading. The “strong correlation” you noticed is because taking notes is a clear signal that the student was paying attention at least enough to write something down. However, you’re looking at a symptom rather than the root cause of the problem. For those students who don’t take notes, some of them might be fully mentally engaged, and others might be daydreaming or checking facebook on their phones. Of course this group is going to do less well on average than the note-taker group when you lump them all together.
jschwartzi 11y ago
An English teacher I had once explained that this works because you're engaging different areas of your brain in writing notes than you are in reading them. She also recommended handwritten notes because typing did not promote effective recall or understanding.

jjoonathan 11y ago

I don't doubt that your observed correlation is true, but I think you have cause and effect reversed. When I understand material, it's easy to copy it down in its entirety because I can internalize and reproduce the meaning. In this case I'm with you that taking notes is a net positive, because it lets you exercise the concepts as you "copy" them. However, when I don't understand material, copying it down is much more challenging. I can't internalize the meaning so I have to resort to glyph reproduction which is a much heavier cognitive burden and much less instructive. This makes it even harder to keep up let alone untangle the conceptual debt that got me into the situation to begin with. In this case I think notes are a net negative. If you let people make the choice on their own, the kids who get the material but don't want to take notes suffer. If you force people to take notes, the people who are already having trouble suffer even more. Therefore I tend to favor giving (and receiving) choice. An exception would be online classes which have pause buttons that conveniently bypass the tradeoff.

jacobolus 11y ago

> strong correlation between doing well and taking notes. Many students believe [...] that they should just sit back, The important thing is not to take notes per se, but to make sure to engage with the lecture and focus, and fully follow the mathematical argument being presented. Personally I pay attention much better without writing notes, but I know other people who pay attention best while drawing unrelated doodles, or by writing down everything that goes on the chalkboard. If I try to write everything down, the action of mechanical symbol copying takes up brain cycles and prevents me from thinking about what I’m hearing/reading. The “strong correlation” you noticed is because taking notes is a clear signal that the student was paying attention at least enough to write something down. However, you’re looking at a symptom rather than the root cause of the problem. For those students who don’t take notes, some of them might be fully mentally engaged, and others might be daydreaming or checking facebook on their phones. Of course this group is going to do less well on average than the note-taker group when you lump them all together.

jschwartzi 11y ago

An English teacher I had once explained that this works because you're engaging different areas of your brain in writing notes than you are in reading them. She also recommended handwritten notes because typing did not promote effective recall or understanding.