Traditionally, classroom testing is utilized and viewed as a way to measure students’ knowledge of material. However, research has shown that test taking also enhances long-term learning and retention of material, a phenomenon known as the testing effect. Across settings, research has found that compared to rereading or repeated reviewing, repeated testing leads to poorer performance on immediate tests, but stronger long-term learning of material on delayed tests. These results have been produced with various materials, such as prose passages, word-pair associates, and educational materials such as textbook chapters. However, the testing effect has not been examined in relation to student-generated materials, such as lecture notes. Lecture notetaking is widely embraced in postsecondary education. Both taking and reviewing notes have significant benefits on students’ academic and test performance. However, it is a complex cognitive task, which often results in students taking poor or incomplete notes and thus, limiting the benefits of notetaking and note review. There are many interventions to support students in taking better notes, but there is limited research on the effectiveness of the types of strategies used to review notes. This dissertation examined the effects of different note reviewing strategies on test performance: repeated review, self-testing, and rewriting. In two experiments, 69 and 117 undergraduate students watched a recorded lecture while taking notes. Students then studied the notes through the use of repeated review (reread), self-testing (repeated recall), or rewriting before taking either an immediate or delayed final multiple-choice test on the materials. The independent variables included study method (repeated review/reread vs. self-testing/repeated recall vs. rewriting) and time of test (immediate vs. delayed). The delayed variables included total test score, memory item performance, and inference item performance. Due to attrition in participants in Study 1, only study method was analyzed. Results of these studies did not find a testing effect. There was only a significant main effect of study method on the total test and inference items in Study 1, in which the repeated review group performed significantly better on the immediate test than the self-testing and the rewriting groups. There was no significant main effect of study method for Study 2. Instead, there was a significant main effect of time across the three dependent variables. Students performed significantly better on the immediate test than the delayed test. There was no significant study method x time of test interaction. These studies also examined whether quality and quantity of students’ notes had an effect on test performance. Three covariates were examined: note themes, number of propositions, and number of main ideas. In Study 1, number of propositions and number of main ideas were significantly related to all dependent variables. In Study 2, the results were mixed. Number of propositions and main ideas were significantly related to total test performance and memory items, but not inference items. However, for number of main ideas, there was a trend that approached conventional significance for inference items. Results also examined the effects of the notes taken during the study trials on test performance. In Study 1, the number of propositions recalled by students in the self-testing group was predictive of performance only on the total test score. The number of main ideas and propositions generated by students in the rewriting group were not significantly related to test performance. Results were similarly mixed in Study 2. Number of propositions and main ideas recalled by students in the self-testing group were not significantly related to test performance. In contrast, number of main ideas included in students’ notes in the rewriting group was related to performance on memory items and the total test items. Future research should continue to explore the testing effect in conjunction with note taking.

This development project originated in response to the enormous daily increase of information that becomes available on the internet as a result of social media activities. Twitter, a quintessential example of social media, can also be considered a framework for collaborative note-taking. The October 2010 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provided an interesting example of distributed collaborative note-taking as thousands of Twitter users took notes on the conference addresses. The result was a collection of 26,479 tweets. The purpose of this project is to describe a novel information visualization algorithm that generates a centralized visual representation of the conference tweets to facilitate absorption of the ideas presented therein. This algorithm could feasibly be used in many other massively distributed collaborative note-taking activities. It is hoped that this algorithm, as well as the variant approaches that it may inspire, will assist larger groups to deal with the potential information overload that can arise in these collaborative note-taking activities.

The purpose of this study was to discover the impact of counselors' note-taking on their interview recall, clinical judgment, and general judgment of clients. The notes taken by the subjects were analyzed to discover the role that notes play in the counseling process. Thirteen master's students in the Rehabilitation Counseling program were recruited as participants. The results indicate that counselors' note-taking does not enhance their ability to recall but reviewing complete notes does. In addition, counselors' capability of clinical judgment is not different whether they take notes and review, take notes but do not review, do not take notes, or review complete notes. There is no evidence showing that note-taking helps or impedes counselors from making accurate clinical judgment. The qualitative analysis of the notes indicates that subjects do not take notes with observable organization and enough content. Thus, the result suggests that counselors do not spend much cognitive effort on taking notes and do not utilize note-taking as a strategy to manage information. Moreover, when subjects refrain from taking notes, they can perform on recall and clinical judgment as well as when they take notes in the session and when they review complete notes. Thus, it is suggested that novice counselors would be better off not taking notes if they cannot take complete notes. However, there is also some evidence suggesting that counselors may perceive the client differently when they do not take notes in the session. The results suggest that counselor educators can develop strategies for counselors-in-training to create complete notes. Future research can recruit experienced counselors as participants for comparison.

Both electronic note-taking (typing) and traditional note-taking (handwriting) are being utilized by college students to retain information. The effects of the method of note-taking and note-taking context were examined to determine if handwriting or typing notes and whether a lecture context or a textbook-reading context influenced retention. Pitzer College and Scripps College students were assigned to either handwrite or type notes on a piece of academic material presented in either a lecture or textbook context and were given a test to assess their retention. The results demonstrated that there was a significant main effect for typing notes such that typing notes produced higher retention scores than handwriting notes. The results also indicated that there was an interaction between method of note-taking and context such that the lowest scores were achieved in the condition in which participants handwrote notes during a lecture. In total, these findings suggest that typing as a method of note-taking may by an influential factor in memory retention, particularly in a lecture context.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 232-236). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate and describe several aspects of English as a second language (ESL) note-taking in response to lectures. The objective of this study was to analyze note-taking production. In addition, the study had hoped to trace note-taking progress as it correlated with language proficiency progress, but due to circumstances beyond the control of the researcher this idea had to be abandoned. Instead, the study focused on the first six weeks of a learner's academic semester in the target language.The researcher observed twenty students in order to obtain insights into the note-taking production of low ESL students in response to lectures. The methods used were: class observation, notebook collection, a two-part questionnaire, and a follow-up questionnaire. It was found that in the first six weeks of academic study, this group of low ESL students had difficulty taking notes due, largely, to language proficiency problems, such as the rate of delivery. Other reasons why the students had difficulties taking notes included their lack of formal training in note-taking and the fact that they were not using special strategies and skills. Thus, all this study can say about note-taking in second language acquisition is that it is difficult for low ESL students. / Department of English

Thesis (Ph. D)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-194).

Interpreting studies has so far tended to concentrate on simultaneous interpreting over the consecutive mode. Note-taking – an integral part of consecutive interpreting – has therefore received very little scholarly attention. As an indispensable tool in consecutive interpreting, note-taking plays an important role in supporting the interpreter’s memory. This study argues, however, that the interpreter's notes should not be viewed merely as a memory storage tool, but as a third visual language with its own logic and meaning-making practices that need interpreting. The way in which interpreters read their notes is explored here from the perspective of Social Semiotics for two reasons. Firstly, Social Semiotics conceptualises signs as meaning-making resources which are realized in specific communicative contexts to convey specific communicative intentions – unlike previous approaches to note-taking, that have tended to categorise signs as static constituents of relatively finite sign codes. Secondly, Social Semiotics not only accounts for how written language is used in notes, but also how the pictorial component of communication is encoded and interpreted through interpreter’s notes. The interpreter, as a viewer, has to make use of semiotic resources deployed in the notes in order to reconstruct the information given by the speaker and to produce the target speech for the audience. Therefore, the interpreters’ note-reading stage, based on the interaction between signs, can be conceptualised by reference to the concept of visual grammar. This study draws on visual grammar (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006) to analyse interpreter’s notes with a view to gaining a better understanding of how linguistic and visual semiotic resources are deployed in the process of note-taking. Insight into interpreters’ meaning-making practices and note-taking patterns is gained through an experimental study of the notes produced by nine qualified, practising conference interpreters, during a consecutive interpreting task from English into Chinese. The patterns identified in my data set are then compared with the established prescriptive approaches to note-taking training – which are typically based on relatively stable correspondences between note-taking signs/symbols and their meaning. The analysis focuses on certain elements of the source speech (concepts that can be noted down through the use of vectors, geometrical shapes, specific classificational structures, margin, and salience) as reflected in the notes. The way in which interpreters read their notes involves the interaction between two core modes, such as image and language, and a range of sub-modes, such as vectors, geometrical shapes, composition, framing, salience and calligraphy. The results of the analysis indicate that the way in which interpreters arrange the contents of their notes reflects the depth of the information processing effort required by the note-taking process. The findings suggest that the narrative structure in notes seems to assist interpreters in retrieving information at a micro, lexical level, whereas the visual structure would appear to assist interpreters in retrieving information at a macro, contextual level, e.g. in representing the hierarchies of information value, constructing the structure of rendition, and showing the importance of specific signs.

The master's thesis is a theoretical and empirical study about the interpreter's notes in consecutive interpreting. The study mainly deals with the note-taking language and the effect of the interpreter's experience on the choice of note-taking language. In literature, many authors have already thoroughly studied note-taking. In the second half of the 20th century, three traditional interpreting schools emerged. Several authors created their own note-taking systems. Since then, there hasn't been a consensus among experts on the choice of the note-taking language. Some recommend using the source language, some prefer the target language and many experts are in favor of using both. Main approaches to note-taking and reasons why to use either the source language or the target language are listed in the theoretical part. The theoretical part also covers empirical research on the choice of note-taking language. Compared to the high amount of theoretical publications on note-taking, only few empirical studies were carried out, studying the choice of note-taking language. Despite its small scale, the thesis thus seeks to follow in the footsteps of previous empirical researchers and verify, by the means of an experiment, claimings of theoreticians. The experiment studying the effect of the interpreter's...