While concept mapping is widely recognized as an effective active learning strategy, it is still underutilized in higher education. The current literature in SoTL demonstrates the utility of concept maps but the means by which the learning benefits are realized are not well explored. This study focuses on two first-year anatomy and physiology…

The fields of cognitive psychology and behavior analysis have undertaken separate investigations into effective learning strategies. These studies have led to several recommendations from both fields regarding teaching techniques that have been shown to enhance student performance. While cognitive psychology and behavior analysis have studied…

Learning within first-year biology is about inquiry, but in this content-heavy science students can easily fall into the trap of parrot-fashion learning. This study investigates the influence of lecturers' expectation of students in meaning making on the nature of their slides and the quality of students' note-making. Data were collected by…

This research examined, through a basic qualitative approach, how sixth-grade mathematics teachers and their students in a New York inner-city middle school experienced the implementation of three "Classroom Instruction that Works" (CITW) instructional strategies namely, summarizing and note-taking, cooperative learning, and generating…

The aim of the study presented in this paper was to compare undergraduate students' information comprehension under conditions where they took notes in longhand during traditional lectures and lectures given through slides. A quasi-experimental approach was adopted to collect the data from 42 participants enrolled in a compulsory course at a state…

The authors investigated the effects of a 5-week note-taking skills instructional program on note-taking and reading comprehension performance of elementary students. The participants included 349 fourth-grade students from 2 elementary schools in Taiwan. The Note-Taking Instruction group received approximately 40 min of note-taking skills…

The use of diagrams in learning and communication is generally considered efficacious and an important skill to cultivate, especially among science students. At the same time, previous research has revealed many problems in student diagram use, including a lack of spontaneity in such use, but the extent to which these problems persist into the…

Problem Statement: Students spend a considerable amount of their time studying from textbooks, which play an important role in their learning activities. The strategies students use to learn work as guides, requiring them to mentally process, make sense of and internalize information offered to them during the instructional process. Of these,…

Many educators distribute either complete or incomplete handouts so students can follow along with their lectures. This research examines a teaching system that combines computer-generated graphics presentations and detailed outline handouts with blanks added. An experiment found that this system produced significantly higher short-term recall of…

Notetaking is important for recording and remembering class content in most university courses. Despite the importance of this behavior, however, students are often poor notetakers. This study compared undergraduates' notes after traditional lecture, lecture with slides, and lecture with slides plus guided notes. Data on the percentages of…

One of the most effective ways to implement the research-based instructional strategies from Classroom Instruction That Works is to use them with educational technologies, such as word processing and spreadsheet applications, multimedia, data collection tools, communication software, and the Internet. This book shows you how and gives you hundreds…

A study using 10 University of South Africa education graduates investigated how students experience two very different textbooks. Results suggest that the students' personal circumstances dictated their approaches to instructional texts. Other factors included English language proficiency; textual features (advance organizers, visual aids,…