Re:Study: Students who take notes by hand outperform student...
by gumby on Saturday April 09, 2016 @02:14PM
(#11462514)
They key point is to be engaged and your father had the right idea. Someone who writes everything down, or writes nothing down, probably misses out.
My first year I took no notes, and attended lectures intermittently. And got the middling results you'd expect.
The next year I looked in the syllabus and tried to do the assigned reading (to be read after the lecture) before the lecture. Often it was confusing, but some of it I'd understand. But that way the lectures were more useful since I could tell when the prof was explaining something I didn't understand, and I had the context for it.
Of course the ideal lecture would be "well you all have read the material; here's the stuff that's hard and/or non-obvious about it." But since what's hard varies from person to person, it's not really possible for a prof to do this except in a small seminar.
And of course note I said "I tried to do the assigned reading" ahead of time. In retrospect I wish I'd done it 100% of the time, but really humans are humans and the amount I did manage it paid off.
My first year I took no notes, and attended lectures intermittently. And got the middling results you'd expect.
The next year I looked in the syllabus and tried to do the assigned reading (to be read after the lecture) before the lecture. Often it was confusing, but some of it I'd understand. But that way the lectures were more useful since I could tell when the prof was explaining something I didn't understand, and I had the context for it.
Of course the ideal lecture would be "well you all have read the material; here's the stuff that's hard and/or non-obvious about it." But since what's hard varies from person to person, it's not really possible for a prof to do this except in a small seminar.
And of course note I said "I tried to do the assigned reading" ahead of time. In retrospect I wish I'd done it 100% of the time, but really humans are humans and the amount I did manage it paid off.