Relations Between the Quality of University Students' Post-Lecture Notes and the Students' Test Performance: Students' Perception of Strategies for Making Notes to be Used During Examinations

Abstract

In the present study, students' perception of their post-lecture note-making strategies and changes in their strategies during a course, and the relations between qualitative characteristics of the students' post-lecture notes and the students' performance on examinations, were investigated. The participants were university students: Study 1, N = 171; Study 2, N = 114; and Study 3, N = 45. The results of Study 1, which was conducted in a lecture course, suggested that the amount of notes written and the frequency of the use of figures predicted the students' test performance, and that the students' perception of the utility and cost of making post-lecture notes differed, depending on whether the notes could be referred to during examinations. The students participating in Study 2 prepared postlecture notes twice during the exercise course. Their performance on fact problems suggested that the amount of writing and the level of organization of the notes had a positive effect, whereas copying a summary had a negative effect. The level of organization and the copying of summaries also predicted the students' performance on problems requiring application of the material and on tasks requiring explanation. The change in the perception of the postlecture notes was statistically significant, although the size of the effect was small. In Study 3, the lecturer explicitly explained characteristics of effective post-lecture notes. The degree of organization in the post-lecture notes of the participants in Study 3 predicted their test scores on problems requiring application of the material; their perception of strategies also showed a significant increase.