Listening and note taking.

Abstract

Listening To Take Good Notes: Hearing is a spontaneous act. Listening, by contrast, is something you choose to do. Listening requires you not only to hear what has been said but to understand as well. Understanding requires three activities: dynamic listening; paying attention, concentration The best way to concentrate is to start with anticipation. Review your notes from the last lecture and make sure you go to class having read the assigned material. Use this method to cultivate a mindset that is needed for 100% concentration during a lecture. Be a comprehensive listener! Comprehensive listening has to do with the feedback between speaker and listener. The speaker has an obligation to make his/her words comprehensible to the listener. The listener, in turn, must let the speaker know when he/she does not understand. Both parties must make a conscious effort to accept their individual responsibilities. You may think this is a 50/50 proposition, which in part it is; however, both parties must be willing to give a 100% for effective listening comprehension to be achieved. The best way for you to let the speaker know that you don't understand is to ask questions. A surprising number of students are too embarrassed to ask questions. The only dumb question is the one that goes unasked. Twelve Guidelines to Effective Listening: •Sit where the instructor will always see you, preferably in the front. •Pay attention to content, not the lecturer's appearance or distracting habits. Judge the material, not the delivery. •Put aside emotional concerns. If you disagree with what is being said, hold your judgement or fire until after class, then see the instructor. •Find areas of interest; listen for ideas, not just facts, and words; put new ideas to work during the lecture by using your imagination. •Intend to get down a good written record of the lecture material; be a flexible note taker. •Listen for new rods and watch for signals of important information; listen for examples the instructor provides to define or illustrate main ideas. Note these examples with "EX" in your notes or textbook. •Read in advance about the topics to be discussed in class and relate them to something you care about. •Exercise your mind with challenging material; keep your mind open even if you hear emotional words. •Be prepared to ask questions in class. Use facial expressions to let the instructor know that you don't understand an idea completely or you would like the information repeated. •Don't stop listening or taking notes during discussion periods or toward the end of the lecture until the instructor concludes. •Work at listening instead of pretending to listen. •Resist external distractions such as someone coming in late to class, a pager going off, maintenance mowing the grass, other students talking.

Shared Annotations: The Social Side of Exam Preparation

“…This result is interesting if considered that a vast research literature showed the positive effects of self-note-taking on learning performance [30,5,12]. Clearly the limitations of the study prevent us from taking any strong conclusion on this result.…”

“…Second, we reconsidered the theoretical and empirical foundations sustaining that, taking notes [30,5,12], and reading in presence of external representations [31,17], enhance learning and retention. Therefore we wondered whether using annOot while taking and sharing notes and browsing shared notes would be beneficial for students comprehension.…”

“…Communication features explicitly aimed at facilitating such note sharing practices could have benefits on the individual learning, group cohesion and team building. In the last semi-centennial we have assisted to the emerging evidence that note taking, in its different forms and fashions, serves both as an encoding and an external storage function [30]. Taking notes can trigger a deeper processing of information [5] and therefore increase learning and recall performance [12].…”

Learning to speak in the digital age: an examination of instructional conditions for teaching public speaking online

“…314). The benefit of note-taking is well documented (Di Vesta & Gray, 1972;Kiewra, 1985;Kiewra et al, 1991;Titsworth & Kiewra, 2004). Although recent literature has sought to delineate between the values associated with various types of note-taking approaches such as free form (conventional), matrices (Kauffman, 2004), and copy/paste (Igo, Kiewra & Bruning, 2008); the general consensus of extant literature on note-taking concludes that it is an effective method of encoding for learning.…”

Does Downloading PowerPoint Slides Before the Lecture Lead to Better Student Achievement?

“…Students in colleges are expected to take notes and review them while preparing for examinations. Many previous studies have suggested that the two frequently mentioned functions of note-taking -encoding and external storage (Di Vesta and Gray, 1972) -improve students' learning (Hartley, 1983;Kiewra, 1985;Kiewra and Benton, 1987;Kiewra et al, 1991). However, note-taking is not an easy task for students (Cohn et al, 1995).…”