• Question: I have been giving my GCSE biology students hand-outs with notes from my lesson. Some students insist on writing out the notes or different ones in class before answering questions. Is this a waste of their time or does note making even if it's just copying help with memory and understanding? Dose if prevent a cognitive overload perhaps?

    Asked by Emyr Thomas to Michael, Catriona on 15 Apr 2015.
    • Photo: Catriona Morrison

      Catriona Morrison answered on 15 Apr 2015:

      Just copying will help them absorb the information, I wouldn’t worry about that, and indeed, would encourage it. It doesn’t, obviously, facilitate deep learning, but at GCSE I’m guessing this isn’t necessary. If students were to try it an university it probably wouldn’t work! So maybe this is something to think about: the changing learning culture as you move from school to university.

Comments

  • Photo: sjays

    sjays commented on :

    Hi Catriona
    Is there evidence / research that backs up the idea that copying itself helps absorb information and therefore be a useful component of a lesson? (Obviously not the whole lesson)
    Thanks

  • Photo: emyrrthomas

    emyrrthomas commented on :

    Thanks Catriona. I’ve always thought that some time devoted to note taking was useful as it lead to ‘encoding time’ but had no evidence for this. The act of writing and thinking about the words would help with memory formation. Any evidence for this?

  • Photo: spurgeon

    spurgeon commented on :

    I think that re-ordering, precising (as in precis, the French word), summarising, listing key words and other such activities mean that thought has to be involved in what the students are doing with the written material. Merely copying has some merit, when concentration is poor and it is making them read every word, but not much, as it is so easy to copy without absorbing or processing the information. The students delude themselves that they are working, and lots of writing is the outcome, which again is a delusion. In my view, copying is a snare and a delusion! It allows the writer to think that they are thinking, while giving them the luxury of being in a trance, rather like playing a game on their phone. They are not really processing the words into a new format, expressing the ideas contained in a different way, making links to other aspects of their own knowledge, developing skills in the use of words, and styles, and so they are not really thinking at all. If we are trying to teach hand writing, it might be useful. If we are trying to teach analysis or application of ideas, it is almost useless. It all depends what the desired learning outcome is.

  • Photo: Sue

    Sue commented on :

    This study reports that students learn better and remember more when taking notes by hand instead of typing:
    http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/6/1159

    The key factor though isn’t computer versus hand but the fact that handwriting is slower and forces the student to pick out the important points instead of writing everything out verbatim.

    The same conclusion is drawn in this study where summaries are found to enhance memory in students. The problem comes when students put the wrong content in their summaries.
    http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-014-9290-2#page-1

    So you don’t need to dissuade students from writing but they would benefit most if a) encouraged to write abbreviated summaries and b) helped to learn to select the most important points from the lesson content.

  • Photo: herbalchan

    herbalchan commented on :

    A couple of years ago I attended a workshop on Universal Design for Living (UDL). One of the presenters was a biology teacher. She taught a lesson in anatomy by having students write parts of the body on stickies and putting them on a partner’s appropriate part of the body. Their homework was to go home and do the same there. She said it was very successful.