Many college students believe that typing lecture notes on computers produces better notes and higher achievement than handwritten lecture notes on paper. The few studies investigating computer versus longhand note taking yielded mixed note-taking and achievement findings. The present study investigated computer versus longhand note taking but…

This electroencephalography (EEG) study tested the benefits of generative learning and the underlying neural mechanism of these benefits when learning from video lectures. Twenty-six Chinese young adults independently viewed two video lectures in a repeated measures design. Each video lecture was broken into 40 segments, and after each segment,…

Laptop computers allow students to type lecture notes instead of relying on the traditional longhand (i.e. paper-pencil) method. The present research compared laptop and longhand note-taking methods by investigating how the quality (i.e. complete versus incomplete idea units) and quantity (i.e. total words and total idea units) of typed and…

There has been a shift in college classrooms from students recording lecture notes using a longhand pencil-paper medium to using laptops. The present study investigated whether note-taking medium (laptop, longhand) influenced note taking and achievement when notes were recorded but not reviewed (note taking's process function) and when notes were…

Note taking has been categorized as a two-stage process: the recording of notes and the review of notes. We contend that note taking might best involve a three-stage process where the missing stage is revision. This study investigated the benefits of revising lecture notes and addressed two questions: First, is revision more effective than…

The current experiment examined the potential effects of the method of propositional manipulation (MPM) as a lecturing method on motivation to learn and conceptual understanding of statistics. MPM aims to help students develop conceptual understanding by guiding them into self-explanation at two different stages: First, at the stage of…

This study contributes to research that characterises the affective learning that is evoked and taken on by students in response to their perceptions of their contextual learning environments. Interview-discussions were held with lecturers of both introductory and higher-level physics courses (n = 3) concerning how they formulated their patterns…

Have you ever thought about why qualities whose definitions are elusive, such as those of a sunset or a half-opened rose, affect us so powerfully? According to de Saussure (Course in general linguistics, 1983), the making of meanings is closely related to the production and interpretation of signs. All types of design, including advertising…

This paper reports on a quasi-experimental study comparing a "productive failure" instructional design (Kapur in Cognition and Instruction 26(3):379-424, 2008) with a traditional "lecture and practice" instructional design for a 2-week curricular unit on rate and speed. Seventy-five, 7th-grade mathematics students from a…