Effects of Writing Summaries as a Generative Learning Activity during Note Taking

Abstract

Two experimental conditions of note taking in lecture sections of Introductory Psychology were compared for their relative effectiveness as generative-learning activities. The summary group students took notes during a 21-min lecture and wrote three lecture summaries during 4-min pauses. The pause group students took notes during lecture but only reviewed their notes during the pauses. The control group students took notes without pauses. Immediately following the lecture, students took a posttest, 12 days later they responded to a free-recall question and took another posttest. Although the pause and control groups did not differ on any measure, the summary group scored significantly higher than the control group on the free-recall question and 12-day posttest, suggesting that summary writing during lecture results in more durable learning.