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Guided notes for university mathematics and their impact on students’ note-taking behaviour

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Abstract

This paper reports findings from a case study of the impact that teaching using guided notes has on university mathematics students’ note-taking behaviour. Whereas previous research indicates that students do not appreciate the importance of lecturers’ non-written comments and record in their notes only what is written on the board when taught with the traditional chalk and talk method, some students in our study recorded the non-written comments as well as some of their own links between sections of the lecture. We did not, however, find students’ attitude towards those comments to be different from what previous research found. We conclude that guided notes can be an appropriate way of teaching university mathematics but on their own cannot make the pedagogical intentions of the lecturer clearer to the students. We also found that the educational environment plays a big part for all aspects of student learning, including decisions related to note-taking during lectures.

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Notes

  1. The term lecturer indicates university staff with teaching and research duties in the UK.

  2. Guided Notes are also called skeleton notes or gappy notes. In this paper, we will use the term guided notes, but in the interview extracts the terms skeleton notes or gappy notes may also be used.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mathematics Education Centre, Loughborough University, Loughborough, LE11 3TU, UK

    Paola Iannone & Dominic Miller

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  1. Paola Iannone
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  2. Dominic Miller
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Correspondence to Paola Iannone.

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Iannone, P., Miller, D. Guided notes for university mathematics and their impact on students’ note-taking behaviour. Educ Stud Math 101, 387–404 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-018-9872-x

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