The benefits of in-class discussion, a form of active learning, are well-documented; in particular, discussions allow students the opportunity to learn from their peers. Yet students often treat discussions as 'down' or 'free' time. If students are not taking notes during discussion and reviewing those notes later on, they may not be learning much…

Taking notes is a popular activity for students attending instructional lectures and has been linked to achievement. Research on note-taking has shown that the contents and usefulness of student notes depends on several factors, including the pace of the lecture and the presence of organizational and selection cues. However, this research has…

Lecture podcasts are considered an efficient means for passing on learning contents to students, most notably in lectures with large numbers of students. Here, the lecturer's presentation, combined with lecture slides, is recorded and broadcasted in video form. The present study investigates how students organize learning when they have the choice…

The use of digital materials in educational settings is common, despite evidence indicating that comprehension of digital text is inferior to comprehension of printed text. A potential solution to this problem is to use learning strategies for deeper text processing. Text-highlighting is a strategy known to improve comprehension of printed text;…

In a quasi-experimental setting, a group of U.S. college students in an introductory media law course had higher test scores when the instructor provided access to guided worksheets than a group of students without access to guided worksheets. It also allows educators in journalism and mass communication to cover more materials during courses…

Note contents taken by students during a blended learning course were evaluated, to improve the quality of university instruction. To conduct a quantitative comparison of the contents of all notes for effective instruction from lecturer to students to occur, the contents were mathematically compared and evaluated using two ways of summarizing the…

Feedback is known to have a large influence on student learning gains, and the emergence of online tools has greatly enhanced the opportunity for delivering timely, expressive, digital feedback and for investigating its learning impacts. However, to date there have been no large quantitative investigations of the feedback provided by large teams…

This study examined the effect of online metacognitive strategies, hypermedia annotations, and motivation on reading comprehension in a Taiwanese hypertext environment. A path analysis model was proposed based on the assumption that if English as a foreign language learners frequently use online metacognitive strategies and hypermedia annotations,…

Undergraduate biology education is often viewed as being focused on memorization rather than development of students' critical-thinking abilities. We speculated that open-note testing would be an easily implemented change that would emphasize higher-order thinking. As open-note testing is not commonly used in the biological sciences and the…

The study aims to discover whether audio or video modality in a listening test is more beneficial to test takers. In this study, the posttest-only control group design was utilized and quantitative data were collected in order to measure participant performances concerning two types of modality (audio or video) in a listening test. The…

This article presents the early findings of an experimental design to see if students perform better when taking collaborative notes in small groups as compared to students who use traditional notes. Students are increasingly bringing electronic devices into social science classrooms. Few instructors have attempted robustly and systematically to…

The current study evaluated engineering college students' self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies while learning electric circuit concepts using enhanced guided notes (EGN). Our goal was to describe how students exercise SRL strategies and how their grade performance changes after using EGN. Two research questions guided the study: (1) To what…

Two sections of an introductory microbiology course were taught by one instructor. One was taught through a hybrid format and the other through a traditional format. Students were randomly assigned to the two sections. Both sections were provided with identical lecture materials, in-class worksheets, in-class assessments, and extra credit…

This study examined the encoding specificity principle in relation to traditional and computer-based note taking and assessment formats in higher education. Students (N = 79) took lecture notes either by hand (n = 40) or by computer (n = 39) and then completed either a computer or a paper-based assessment. When note taking and assessment formats…

In many African countries, English is the medium of instruction in higher education even though students may not always be entirely familiar with "standard" English. This study aimed at investigating the relevance of English language competencies for teaching and learning from the perspective of students and lecturers. The study was…