Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!dykimber
From: dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Message-ID: <5129@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 4 Jan 89 18:43:18 GMT
References: <4893@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <6435@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <5237@pdn.UUCP> <2145@faline.bellcore.com> <210@uncmed.med.unc.edu> <541@mccc.UUCP> <1828@buengc.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 24

In article <1828@buengc.BU.EDU> bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>In article <541@mccc.UUCP> pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes:
>>"partial notes".  The instructor prepares lecture notes as usual but
>>then deletes about 50% of what's there, leaving empty space.  This
>>permits the student to take some notes but not all, and encourages
>>preparation so that the student will know what's in the notes.  Pretty
>[humorous reply about "partial lectures"]

For anyone who's interested, I think rather than speculate on this or that
personal theory of notes, it would be good to check out the literature.
The latest issue of the Journal of Educational Psychology has a paper on
the subject, comparing several different types of handed-out notes, and
I'm sure there are good pointers to more work.  The gist of the paper
seemed to be (I haven't read it) that full notes are bad, partial notes are
better, and matrix notes are the best.  Partial notes aren't notes with half
the material deleted, they're notes with shortened descriptions, i.e. about
6-10 words per topic, I think.  Matrix notes, apparently, consist of a table
in which all of the cells represent the topics, and they're somewhat more
brief than the partial notes.  In any case, they were apparently the best in
terms of facilitating transfer learning, or something like that.  Anyone
who's interested should take a look, because this is just blathering based
on a short perusal.

                                                       -Dan