Can a Collaborative Note-taking Method Facilitate External Connections between Lecture Material and Students’ Prior Knowledge: An Experimental Study

Abstract

The authors designed a collaborative note-taking method and experimentally examined whether it could facilitate external connections between lecture material and students’ prior knowledge. Results showed no significant difference in the number of external connections between the Pairs condition and the Singles condition. However, significant difference was observed in their variance values. Hence, the Pairs condition was divided into two: those who succeeded in making external connections through collaborative note-taking (high-performance group) and those who were not successful (low-performance group). Analysis of notes of the high-performance pairs showed that the Note-Takers in those pairs were good at recording important points of the lecture in a sentence form, and that the Note-Monitors had rich background knowledge and experience and other flexible relating skills. In conclusion, the authors present three different approaches for improving the collaborative note-taking method.