I have long been uncomfortable with anything that would discourage students from taking notes in class, such as commercial note-taking services. As I argued a half dozen years ago in these pages (Issue 6), I believe that students who take notes in class and review them later learn more and retain more than those who don't. More senses get in the act-not just sight and sound, but the cognitive process of summarizing the key points and the physical process of writing them down. Granted, some students may not be especially good at note-taking, but a surrogate note-taker could be worse.

That's just my opinion based on years of experience. But as it turns out, there have been dozens of studies examining the link between note-taking and student learning, published mostly in ed-psych journals. Even with no expertise in this field, one can get the flavor of the research and its relevance for teaching. Like most researchers, psychologists have not resolved all the issues, but they have sorted enough out to offer us some guidance.

Below are thumbnail findings from a dozen studies, most based on controlled experiments (names in parentheses refer to bibliographical entries on the back page).

• Students who took notes processed information better than did students who didn't take notes (McIntyre).
• Students were seven times more likely to recall information a week later if it had been recorded in their notes (Howe).
• Students benefited when the classroom environment allowed time for processing information while taking notes (Anderson and Armbruster).
• Note-taking itself "enhances organizational processing of lecture information" (Einstein, et al., p. 522).
• Students learned better when they took notes in their own words using their own system for encoding information (Fisher).
• Students who took notes verbatim scored lower on comprehensive tests than those who tried to integrate information in the process (Bretzing).
• Students required to enter notes on every screen during computer-based instruction took longer but scored significantly higher on a post-test than did those in a control group that didn't take notes or in another group where note-taking was at each student's discretion (Armel and Shrock).
• The process of taking notes itself did less to enhance recall than reviewing notes later (Henk and Stahl).
• The benefits of note-taking flowed more from the review of those notes later than from the act of note-taking itself. Reviewing notes seemed to trigger for students relevant parts of the lecture (Carter and Van Matre).
• Students who wrote brief summaries of lecture material during four-minute breaks within the lecture showed significant improvement in understanding compared to other groups of students (Davis and Hult).
• Reorganizing notes while reviewing them led to higher test achievement (Kiewra).
• Although there was no link between a student's academic background and the likelihood of using commercial note-taking services, using such services had a negative effect on academic performance, based on a sample of about 1,200 students at a Midwestern research university (Puttin and Coppola)

Let's face it, taking notes in class, particularly notes that add value through synthesis, is more work than not taking notes. Students, like the rest of us, would rather avoid this work, particularly if the cost of sitting back during class seems low. As instructors, we seem to be more caring and we become more popular when we offer our notes online or welcome note-taking services. It seems to be win-win.

Note-taking services argue, as does the UCLA bookstore, that "Our service encourages students to pay greater attention to lectures rather than worrying about taking down every detail." Another argument is that some students just aren't good at taking notes. But note-taking, like any skill, must be practiced to be developed. Letting students off the hook with commercial note-taking services or with lecture notes that we provide short-circuits an important learning step.

In the fall of 1999, there were a dozen online outfits that sold class notes. Operations such as Versity.com, StudentU.com, Allstudents.com, and Study24-7.com bought notes from students, paying about $200 and up for a term, then posted them on a Web site with the idea of making money from advertising. The process was expensive and subject to objections from some instructors, and even the threat of law suits about intellectual property. Most of these note-taking sites have now fallen victim to the dot-com flameout. What's more, last September California passed a law barring the sale of lecture notes without the instructor's consent. Still, many such services continue off-line, either operating through the campus bookstore or as separate enterprises, such as Class Notes at Penn State and the University of Colorado.

The late Paul Heyne at one time allowed a note-taking service in his principles class at the University of Washington. But he stopped it once he became convinced it was hurting the class as a whole.

Return to Contents of Issue 20, Spring 2001

The best mantra for clear writing is still "Omit needless words!" a phrase immortalized in The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. The rule is echoed in Deirdre McCloskey's Writing of Economics, and in Stephen King's current nonfiction bestseller, On Writing: A Memoir. King argues that the rule applies with equal force to fiction -- "The effect of judicious cutting is immediate and often amazing -- literary Viagra" (p. 179). He even passes along a formula, which he claims fueled his career: "2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%" (p. 178).

Writing with economy -- conveying ideas using the fewest possible words -- should appeal to economists. Careful pruning sharpens the focus, reduces the reader's effort, increases the reader's productivity, and thereby increases the writer's probability of getting read. Less is more.

For centuries, the scarcity of space on the printed page has reinforced the need to write with economy. But the Internet, by liberating words from paper, has softened one constraint that kept a lid on needless words.

What does all this have to do with teaching? Based on my survey, the last issue of The Teaching Economist reported some attractive features of several dozen course syllabi available online. What I didn't report at the time was that some online syllabi are numbingly verbose and badly in need of editing. Here's an example: "Be fully prepared on the day of the examination for any type of examination. Therefore, students must be fully prepared on the day of the examination for any type of an examination." Say what? One syllabus took 443 words to explain grading options. Despite the length -- or perhaps because of it -- the options still seemed confusing to me after two readings.

I recently heard an economist marveling at the Web's potential, since it offers an infinite supply of space to cover any topic. That may be true, but as Herbert Simon warned years ago, "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." I can't prove it, but I'll bet there is an inverse relation between the length of a syllabus and the percentage of students in the class who actually read it.

Not only are some online syllabi puffy, they are marred by poor grammar and bad spelling. For example, one syllabus notes "Upon completion of this course the student should have the following competentcies" (one competency the student may not develop is the correct spelling of "competencies").

Sloppy writing is not a victimless crime. A poorly written syllabus needlessly taxes student comprehension and offers a bad example for the student's own writing. We don't necessarily expect well-crafted prose from online course materials, but in an era of spell checkers and online-grammarians, we should be able to get the mechanics straight.

For years I have limited the syllabus in my large principles class to a single typed page. Keeping matters to a page has been a challenge, but it saves trees, avoids staples, and reduces problems of missing or lost pages. Despite the brevity, I believe my syllabus includes all essential information, including assignments for each class.

Take a look at your course syllabus and see if you can't prune it 10%. I'll bet you can, and I'll bet it will become clearer. The effort to omit needless words smokes out our carelessness with the written word. We should exercise more care with material we write for students than with what we write for colleagues. Easy reading is hard writing.

Return to Contents of Issue 20, Spring 2001

Years ago The Teaching Economist first discussed online paper mills that sell research to college students. That's old news. But one site that recycles papers from one course to another offers some curious information. The Evil House of Cheat (http://www.cheathouse.com) bills itself as "The perfect site for research, late assignments and general reference." As a come-on to justify its $10 annual subscription fee, the site provides a paper's pedigree, including its title, the student-author's comment on the paper, the grade it received, and in some cases the instructor's written comments.

The "Economics" portion of the site lists about 300 papers. Some student comments say a lot. To wit, "Took me two and a half hours to complete" (for a paper that earned an A-). "Actually wrote in high school but edited for college level" (what sort of metamorphosis was that?). And the paper Money: The Root of All Evil "was written for English class and I didn't have to use resources" (isn't that an economist's dream-production without resources?). On a paper entitled A Theory of Growth, the student comments "I really didn't understand the essay. I had a past TA write it for me. Don't ask me how." Another student said the paper entitled the Theory of Economics was "boring." I'll bet it was.

The comments from instructors were generally positive, which we might expect since students self-selected whatever comments they submitted to the site. But I especially liked some of the backhanded compliments from instructors, such as "Good paraphrasing," "Language was only problem," and my favorite, "Nicely typed."

Invariably instructors thought the papers too short, with comments such as "Good, otherwise too short," "needs to be lengthened," "needs to be longer," and "Just a bit short." Not a single instructor wrote that a paper was too long. But I would wager that many of them were too long for what they had to say. By telling students to stretch it out, aren't we sending the wrong message -- the equivalent of "Add needless words"?

Return to Contents of Issue 20, Spring 2001