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Notetaking across the lifespan

I have spent considerable time in the past year reviewing the literature on personal note-taking and trying to identify what is substance and what is hype. My interest is based on personal experience as a 40-year academic attempting to track my reading of many books and journal articles recognizing that in my discipline anchoring arguments and methods to previous reports is essential in research and teaching, present initiatives that seem to be triggered by a couple of influential books (Ahrens and Forte), involvement with a reading group interested in knowledge management (Making History), and my largely unsuccessful search for research associated with PKM systems and applications.

I have a reasonable background for analyzing and commenting in this area. I can argue that I have deep knowledge of student note-taking which is certainly a reasonable background for expanding into related areas. I have read the literature on student note-taking for decades and have been actively involved in research and writing projects on related topics. While this background offers an understanding of the cognitive processes involved in successful note generation and note study processes, using this background to write about personal knowledge management (PKM) and the successful use of digital tools designed to implement PKM strategies has revealed limitations in generalizing from classroom note-taking to what I have come to describe as adult note-taking. All I mean by this distinction is that taking notes when not in the role of a student is different in some important ways.

My general summary of differences might be captured in the following statement based on the classic distinction used to identify and study the benefits of taking notes. Note-taking is typically described as having two stages – a recording stage and a study stage. Benefits are typically argued to result from generative activities and retrieval effectiveness. With lecture and content-related notes taken by students, the recording stage is mostly about getting as much down as possible (storage) in order to have an accurate and complete record available (retrieval) for processes to improve retention and understanding. Thinking is more of a generative process than is retention. Outside of formal educational settings, adults engage in note-taking with somewhat different goals. Within the model I have described, the generative component increases in value and is more involved in both the encoding and the review stages of note activity. I am not suggesting this suggestion is ideal, but I think it is accurate. Educators likely prefer that their students place greater emphasis on personal understanding which is what comes with greater generative processing, but only part of such underperformance can be blamed on students. I believe there is a maxim suggesting that “what is tested is what is learned”. Some additional thoughts may offer additional insights

I have identified unique distinctions between the knowledge base associated with student note use and some hypothetical knowledge base that would be ideal for my more present interests. What I mean by this is that properties associated with nonclassroom note-taking and note use lack a research base. There are certainly books and many YouTube or Substack proposals for strategies to improve knowledge-based productivity, but there is very little that evaluates these strategies – lots of hype, many products, and little data.

Understanding the basics of notetaking and note use is of some value, but distinctions that can be identified with present externalized personal knowledge management systems and some of the related goals for use point to some obvious voids in the research concerning the effectiveness of strategies of application. Here are some differences I believe are important. First, student notetaking must deal with the reality that what is to be known (or at least tested) is defined by someone else. Goals of the processes involved in taking notes must be subservient to this reality and this prioritizes certain unique goals. What are the priorities of the information presenter? What are my tasks as a learner following from my understanding of such goals?

One reality of student note-taking is that generating a useful record for later review depends on an imperfect understanding of what must be retained. In recognition of this challenge and understanding the limits of cognition especially in a real-time lecture setting, getting as much down on paper or screen as possible is a reasonable response. More thoughtful and time-demanding prioritization and even the determination of the accuracy of what was recorded may have to be put off until the study/review stage. Some students may recognize the need to take the subsequent step of comparing notes with others to fill in gaps or correct misunderstandings. Some may not realize that this remediation would be helpful or not bother with the extra effort required.

A second distinction concerns the time frame involved and the implications this time frame may have for initial processing. A student’s perceived time frame for priority payoffs (test scores, superior paper construction) tends to be relatively short. A student might vaguely understand that knowledge acquired from his or her high school or college classes is useful throughout life, but he or she is likely to be focused on the next graded activity. The artifacts created to facilitate study or project activities are typically discarded once a course has been completed. As an adult, my time perspective is more undefined and part of my motivation is to create a system of external storage intended to be valuable over a much longer time frame and that recognizes I will likely face limited recall of the context within which the stored information was acquired. As a consequence, the record I choose to create must include more of the context making delayed understanding requires.

There are likely many other significant differences, but my point here is simply to argue that the vast literature associated with student note-taking leaves significant gaps that would guide “adult” self-guided note-taking and note use. We seem to be at a stage in which the statement that phrase “more or at least some research is required” should be included in more commentary on PKM. I use this phrase as commonly included in research to indicate that researchers/authors understand what they have studied has important limitations when it comes to established validity.

Here is an example of a research question I would like answered. It relates to the strategy of taking Smart Notes a strategy proposed by Ahrens. I think of a smart note in my own way as writing earlier in the process of content creation. So, instead of reading, highlighting, and copying key ideas into a notebook and then waiting months or years before trying to make sense of the notebook entries, smart notes are written based on personal understanding to generate a note that contains enough context that it would stand alone as a representation of a useful idea after an extended period of time. It should be useful to self or to someone else with a reasonable background. Ahrens describes several types of notes including fleeting notes and smart notes. The difference in these two representations is the personalization of completeness of the idea represented as a smart note. A fleeting note might meet the demands of quick immediate storage and the smart note is more carefully constructed to be meaningful.
I think of fleeting notes as serving a similar purpose as highlighting – selection without personalization.

So, this idea seems reasonable and I can create such notes, store them within a knowledge management system such as Obsidian, tag and cross-link them, and review them periodically waiting for the day I might use the idea in something I write. Obsidian also automatically stores the highlights I have taken reading Kindle books or journal article pdfs (transferred to Obsidian using Readwise). Here is a question related to these two options – smart notes or highlights. Using search in Obsidian, I can locate either Smart Notes or highlights related to search terms I provide. The highlights are typically not interconnected, but I can use the links automatically stored with each highlight back to the place in the original document where I highlighted the original content. While smart notes sound useful are they really worth the extra time? Should I just spend my time searching for highlights that are related to what I want to write about and then quickly review the original documents should I need to refresh my understanding when a highlight seems to identify a useful idea I needed to refresh in my mind.

There are many similar questions I can generate related to the storage and thinking systems that have been proposed by PKM advocates. Do these strategies actually deliver improved content production?

Important research questions about any type of long-term benefits come with several challenges. Again, I cannot presently provide extensive analysis, but here are a couple of examples. The classic experimental/control group methodology is very difficult to implement. The development of second brain methods (external collections of notes implementing the various methods for tagging, linking, secondary reworking and other strategies) are developed and applied over years rather than weeks or months. Holding a research project together over such a period of time is difficult and costly. I have been unable to find such examples.

The time frame issue is compounded by the reality of technology. The pace of questions raised by ever-changing methods seems nearly incompatible with straightforward experimental/control methods. The tools and questions of interest change faster than the methods of answering these questions can provide results.

I keep looking for research I can use to shape my thinking and writing. My frustration was one of the motives for this post. I had hopes when I encountered a notice announcing a new book – Digital writing technologies in higher education. This was one of those resources including multiple authors who proposed individual chapters. In the editors’ forward, the expectations for each chapter are provided and each chapter is to include a section on the related research. There was not much there in the chapters I have read to this point, but the “more research is needed” statement appeared repeatedly. By the way, the book I mentioned allows the free download of chapters as pdfs and anyone interested in this general field should take a look.

More research is needed. I will summarize relevant studies when they appear.

Citations mentioned:

Ahrens, S. (2017). How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking–for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Sönke Ahrens.

Forte, T. (2022). Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential. Simon and Schuster.

Kruse, O., Rapp, C., Anson, C. M., Benetos, K., Cotos, E., Devitt, A., & Shibani, A. (Eds.). (2023). Digital Writing Technologies in Higher Education: Theory, Research, and Practice. Springer Nature.

Follow bloggers for a deeper context

I have had at least one blog since 2002. Since that time, I have also had control of the server on which my blog and other content I created was stored. At the beginning of this period of time, I worked at a university and was able to run a server through the university network. This translates as I had a dedicated IP for my site and once someone found my content and bookmarked the site, the site would always be available at that address. I can’t remember the exact address, but it did indicate my server was identified as a part of the more general university network.

When I began to generate free content I intended to supplement the textbook my wife and I had written through what was originally Houghton-Mifflin, I decided it might appear that even though the content I was offering was free to any viewer, it might seem I was using university resources to benefit me financially and so I began renting server space. I have continued to host my content through Bluehost since that time. This company provides services at multiple levels. My blogs make use of WordPress, but I have a general account because I use Bluehost for content other than blogs.

I spend about $200 a year for the server space and the cost of two domains (learningaloud and curmudgeonspeaks). I include this financial information because part of the issue of how you provide online content has a financial component. Among the financial issues are whether you want to make money and whether you want to minimize personal costs. None of the content on my server is behind a paywall and there are Google ads on some of my content. The income from ad clickthroughs is less than $25 a year. So, I must recognize that my site is a hobby and the inclusion of ads is pretty much a matter of personal curiosity. I follow the analytics my site generates as part of this hobby. The activity level the site generates is sufficient to maintain my interest, but has declined in this last decade. I attribute this decline to moving from having textbooks sold through a textbook company to self-publishing via Amazon. My motives for this transition have been documented in my blog posts and were related to my interest in investigating a different model for textbooks that combined a smaller and less expensive book with online resources.

I am writing this post partly as an extension of a previous post that considered cross-posting my blog content to Medium and Substack. One way to look at the purpose of this post might be to explore the question of why with the availability of services such as Medium and Substack (and other outlets) would anyone want to continue to pay to host personal content. I am not alone in asking this question. My take is related to, but not equivalent to the concept of COPE (compose once publish everywhere), but focuses on different values and factors.

I find that a core belief I have about having a location where you store and host your own content has considerable overlap with my beliefs concerning the value of books. I believe book authors and content providers bring a perspective and context to their creative work that is not maintained in pieces of content experienced in isolation. You might argue that this is fine because as a consumer you will build your own understanding based on the elements of information you pick up from multiple authors. I agree you might and probably should do this. However, models of understanding are transferable and can be used to build on and contrast with personal efforts to develop understanding.

Yes, this sounds pretty abstract and vague. Think of what I describe as a model as a way of understanding – how you see things working and what causes what to happen. Ways of understanding (models) can be general and specific and they can be complete or incomplete. Sometimes we have flawed ways of understanding that seem to work in some situations, but we may at some point find our way of understanding does not work in others. We can be convinced we have things figured out when this is really not the case and only when we try our models in actual situations or compare them to the models of others with different and perhaps more experience that we see a bigger picture.

I have generated thousands of posts over the 20+ years I have been involved in blogging. I am certain some of my posts are naive and wrong and some may be inconsistent. Like a book, the collection does emphasize a limited set of ideas and provides connections among these ideas. These posts are tagged and organized so any interested party can explore related ideas to explore the broader context of my ideas. You just don’t get this with the selection of posts I add to Substack or Medium.

The Power of Collaboration: Enhancing Your Note-Taking Experience

This post is intended to be the final contribution in my series of posts describing generative activities and classroom applications. My previous contributions identified two hierarchical systems, SOI (selective, organizing, integrative) and ICAP (interactive, constructive, active, passive), proposing more and less powerful activities for influencing learning effectiveness. Both systems propose collaborative activities to be potentially most effective. Several of my posts have concerned how taking notes can improve achievement so I decided to conclude this series with a focus on collaborative notetaking.

Before I address the topic of collaboration, it may be helpful to provide a more general background on how educational psychologists and researchers such as me describe the process of taking notes. First, we differentiate the overall process into a storage and a retrieval phase. I assume this is obvious. A learner takes notes at one time to improve performance of some type at a later time. Second, we identify what might be accomplished during each stage. What is recorded during the storage phase determines what is available during the retrieval (study) phase. Learners may differ in how completely and how effectively they record key ideas so both completeness and quality of what is recorded could be important. The idea of a generative activity also proposes that the process of taking notes (whether available for review or not) might be helpful because of the cognitive activities that are involved. By extension, an instructor could prepare a quality set of notes and give them to students so they don’t have to take notes themselves. It matters if having personally taken notes is key to effectiveness. So attempts to determine if taking notes yourself has some unique value are useful.

Again, the importance of a retrieval and a study phase probably seems obvious. But again, there are important wrinkles that could be important. Does it matter if you review your own notes in comparison to expert notes? When in the time period between taking notes and the attempt to use knowledge should notes be reviewed? How many times and in what ways should this external record be used for review?

How might collaboration impact these processes? Some of the ways in which collaboration might modify notetaking are generative and some not. Collaboration could mean that others record notes you miss or record some things more accurately than you and access to their notes would allow you to achieve a more complete and a more accurate representation of the content. Maybe you just miss some things or misunderstand some things. When you have help, maybe you can record less and think more during the reception phase reducing the working memory demands of taking notes. These factors could be important if you don’t “slack off” knowing that you have some way to augment your own optimal efforts. These advantages are not generative. Collaboration could also involve actual interaction. Learners could discuss their understanding in reviewing their composite notes adding additional processing to what individuals might do on their own. This is what generative notetaking really proposes.

There are lots of other variations in notetaking that might be important and could be beneficial or harmful. There are postprocessing variations other than talking through notes with other students. Some systems (e.g., Cornell notes) propose a system of postprocessing?—?a secondary process of commenting on notes. Other ways of working with notes taken (Smart notes) also can be applied as part of the retrieval/study stage.

Another interesting proposal challenges the way we tend to think about taking in information during a live lecture. With asynchronous presentations that were increasingly common during the pandemic and also a way to think about the advantages of a flipped classroom, content is experienced in a recorded format. A learner or a small group of learners can control the pace of the presentation by simply stopping the playback of a video or even repeating segments of a recording reducing the working memory and note creation challenges of keeping up. With recorded content, a small group of students can even discuss as they record notes making the process more generative.

I have several motives in presenting notetaking in this way. First, I wanted those who think the processes are simple and fixed to think again. Second, I wanted to set you up for arguing that while determining if collaboration helps or not is pretty straightforward, understanding why what is observed in a dependent variable is not obvious. For example, if collaboration improves achievement, does this happen because the combination of notes is more complete and accurate or because the process of students working together led to some unique processing that would not have occurred without the interaction. Some have even observed that collaboration led to better quiz performance, but poorer implementation of the skills being taught (Fanguy, et al. 2021). These authors argued that the processing required of individual learners varied as a function of whether they had to depend entirely on their own notes. Deep understanding required for application might suffer when responsibility was shared.

I have concluded based on a review of most of the studies on collaborative notetaking that teasing apart the potential benefits does not presently allow clear conclusions. The core problem is that it is difficult to document how much actual interaction occurs and what are the characteristics of such interactions. Fanguy, et al. (2023) offer some interesting suggestions for how interaction might be operationalized, but few studies have included such data. So while studies do demonstrate the positive impact of collaborative notes (e.g. Baldwin, et al. 2019), the mechanisms responsible are unclear.

One additional factor is likely quite significant. Group comparisons between individual and collaborative notetaking ignore the individual nature of contributions within the collaborative groups (Fanguy, et al., 2023). No matter the nature of the inputs, we all learn as individuals and without a mechanism for identifying the type and extent of individual involvement, group comparisons will always be somewhat deficient. Even if group differences can be demonstrated, some within a group may benefit and some may not. The typical ending for many research articles?—?more research is needed?—?clearly applies to this topic.

One final point, I can and will suggest several digital collaborative tools for those of you who are interested, but I also caution that it is important to understand the purpose and hence perhaps the the strategies of notetaking that are to be recommended. As an academic, I studied student notetaking as would be applied to improve performance on future examinations. In my own work as an academic, I was and continue to be interested in the way I can take notes myself. There are several important differences in these circumstances. A student needs to understand the priorities of the course and instructor as would be relevant to an upcoming examination or writing project to take the most useful notes. Complete notes when requirements are unknown would seem a reasonable goal. My own goals are more self-imposed, but also are to record information that would potentially be useful over a much longer span of time. Capturing what seem to be important ideas in a form that will make sense to me several years in the future seems a different task.

Recommendations:

Google docs?—?collaborative notetaking may work with tools already familiar to educators. Multiple studies I have reviewed were conducted by assigning small groups of students (say 4–5) to a common Google doc file.

Hypothes.is?—?Hypothesis is a free tool that has been around for a while and is increasingly integrated into many LMSs used in higher ed. The tool is flexible allowing annotations and highlights to be publicly shared or shared with a designated group.

Glasp?—?Glasp is a recent entry to this category and is the tool I use for my own work. I like the tool because it is flexible in ways similar to Hypothesis and allows me to export the content I generate for long-term use in other Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) systems.

References:

Baldwin Matthew, P., Mik, F., & Costley Jamie, H. (2019). The effects of collaborative note-taking in flipped learning contexts. Journal of Language and Education, (4), 20.

Fanguy, M., Baldwin, M., Shmeleva, E., Lee, K., & Costley, J. (2021). How collaboration influences the effect of note-taking on writing performance and recall of contents. Interactive Learning Environments, 1–15.

Fanguy, M., Costley, J., Courtney, M., & Lee, K. (2023). Analyzing collaborative note-taking behaviors and their relationship with student learning through the collaborative encoding-storage paradigm. Interactive Learning Environments, 1–15.

Note-taking as a generative activity

When explaining it helps to have examples both for personal understanding and for communication. My more recent interest in long-term notes has provided a useful example that relates well to my long/term interest in generative activities. This specific collection of note collection activities is convenient because the activities are similar yet illustrate important differences. Notetaking is also an activity most have applied and comments on variations in how the activity can be applied are relatable contributing to my efforts to communicate. My more general goal is to help educators understand the purpose behind the assignments or study suggestions they make.

Generative activities are external tasks learners engage in that encourage productive cognitive behaviors. External tasks to influence thinking activities. Several researchers have identified hierarchies that attempt to explain the benefits of the external tasks and differentiate the less and more powerful activities.

Two examples of hierarchies include the proposals of Chi (2009) and Fiorella and Mayer (2016)

Chi (2009) proposed the SOI framework – selective, organizing, and interactive.

Fiorella and Mayer (2016) proposed a similar ICAP framework (reversed here to show the parallels with Chi) – passive, active, constructive, interactive.

Some further clarification may be necessary. Selective seems self-explanatory. When reading selective is the active process of identifying important material. Constructive, when applied to taking notes, has a specific meaning. It implies the integration of new information with what one already knows. For example, thinking of an example (something you already know) associated with a concept or principle just learned creates a new representation. The learner is putting things together or finding applications. Interactive as defined here is a social process. It could relate to processes such as might be involved in cooperative learning. Both parties or even a larger group combine their individual understandings to create a superior composite.

I am relating these hierarchies to note-taking activities as might be explained by Aherns (2022). This author described notetaking in a little different way than might be assumed to apply in a school or college setting. I like to think of it as taking notes for the long term. This might describe the purpose I have for taking notes. I am not taking notes for an exam in a couple of weeks or at the end of the semester. I am not taking notes to write a paper for my instructor. I am engaging in reading for purposes that might be realized in a few years. I want my notes to be useful when in the future I have a need for the information I understood when the note was created, but may not be remembered when that information would be valuable.

I am extending Aherns a bit here, but a sequence based on his writing might include the following:

Reading
Highlighting/ fleeting notes
Smart note
Collaborative note

Here are some clarifications of these terms. Reading (or listening) is the lowest stage and involves the exposure to information. Fleeting notes involve the recording of information with little elaboration. Students tend to take this type of notes while listening to a lecture possibly because they must get the information down while the lecturer continues to speak. Highlighting is similar in that it involves selection with little additional processing. Smart notes is Ahern’s term for notes that I remember him describing as providing sufficient context that a note would make sense to me in the future. In other words, this type of note must stand alone as a useful resource. Such notes would also be understandable by others with reasonable background knowledge.

It is important to recognize that learner engagement in generative activities involves potential rather than guaranteed benefits. Roscoe and Chi offer an interesting way of describing potential. They were writing about peer teaching as a generative activity, but the distinction they identify makes sense when applied to other activities. Their distinction is between knowledge telling and knowledge building. If learners are asked to explain a concept to a peer or summarize a concept as a note, they can repeat what they heard or read or they can interpret what they have heard or read in generating an output. Similarly, learners can merge their notes with a peer or they can compare and contrast their notes resulting in deeper processing of the content.

Because most generative activities involve the production of a product, educators can review these products from time to time to evaluate how active learners are being in thinking about what they are learning.

Insights

A few additional comments to consider as a summary. These ideas are interesting and quite concrete. In addition, the analyses are realistic in recognizing that positive results are not automatic.

First, what may seem to be a similar activity may have different consequences as a function of the kind of thinking applied

Second, it is what the student does in completing a generative task that results in learning not just the task assigned.

References

Ahrens, S. (2022). How to take smart notes: One simple technique to boost writing, learning and thinking.

Chi, M. T. (2009). Active?constructive?interactive: A conceptual framework for differentiating learning activities. Topics in cognitive science, 1(1), 73-105.

Fiorella, L., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). Eight ways to promote generative learning. Educational Psychology Review, 28(4), 717-741.

Roscoe, R. D., & Chi, M. T. H. (2007b). Understanding tutor learning: Knowledge-building and knowledge-telling in peer tutors’ explanations and questions. Review of Educational Research, 77, 534–574.

Digital for serious reading tasks

I keep encountering colleagues who disagree with me on the value of relying on digital content (e.g., Kindle books, pdfs of journal articles) rather than content they collect on paper. I agree that their large home and office libraries are visually attractive and their stuffed chair with reading lamp looks very inviting. They may even have a highlighter and note cards available to identify and collect important ideas they encounter. A cup of coffee, some quiet music in the background, and they seem to think they are set to be productive.

I have only one of my computers, a large monitor when working at my desk, and a cup of coffee. The advantages I want to promote here are related to my processing of content I access in a digital format. What you can’t see looking at my workspace whether it happens to be located in my home or at a coffee shop is the collection of hundreds of digital books and the hundreds of downloaded pdfs I have collected and can access from any locate when I have an Internet connection. I can work with digital content from my home office without a connection, but I prefer to have a connection to optimize the use of the tools that I apply.

For me, the difference between reading for pleasure and reading for productivity is meaningful. I listen to audiobooks for pleasure. I guess that is a digital approach as well and it functions whether in my home, on a walk, or in the car. For productivity, I read to take in information I think useful to understand my world and to inform my writing about topics mostly related to the educational uses of technology. I think of reading as a process that includes activities intended to make available the ideas that I encounter in what I read and in my reactions to this content in the future. Future uses frequently but not exclusively now involve writing something. At one point when I was a full-time educator I engaged in other additional forms of communication, but in retirement, I mostly write.

My area of professional expertise informs how I work. I studied learning and cognition with an emphasis on individual differences in learning and the topics of notetaking and study behavior. One way to explain my present preoccupations might be to suggest I am now interested in studying and notetaking to accomplish self-defined goals to be pursued over an extended period of time. Instead of preparing to demonstrate what I know about topics assigned to me and with priorities established by someone else with the time span of a week or at most a couple of months, I now pursue general interests of my own preparing to take on tasks I can only describe in vague terms now but tasks that may become quite specific in a year or more. How do I accumulate useful information that I can find and interpret when a specific production goal becomes immediate? The commitment I have made to consume and process digital content is based on these goals and insights.

What follows identifies the tools I presently use, the activities involved as I make use of each tool, and the interconnections among these tools and the artifacts I use each tool to produce.

Step 1 – reading.

In my professional work, I made a distinction between reading and studying. This was more for theoretical and explanatory reasons because most learners do not neatly divide the two activities. Some read a little, reread, and take notes continuously. Some read and then read again assuming I guess that a second reading accomplishes the goals of what I think of as studying. Some read and highlight and review their highlights at a later time. There are many other possibilities. I think of reading as the initial exposure to information much like listening to a lecture is an initial exposure to information. Anything that follows the initial exposure, even if interspersed with other periods of initial exposure, is studying.

My tools – Present tools/services related to this stage of processing – Kindle for books and Highlights (Mac app) for PDFs. Other tools are used for content I find online, but most of my actual productive activity focuses on books and journal articles

Step 2 – initial processing (initial studying)

While reading, I use highlighting to identify content I may later find useful and I take notes (annotation as these notes are connected to the book or pdf). Over time, I found it valuable to generate more notes. Unlike the highlights, the notes help me understand why content I found interesting at the time of reading might have future usefulness.

My tools – Present tools/services related to this stage of processing – Kindle for books and Highlights (Mac app) for PDFs. Yes, these are the same tools I identified in step 1. However, the integration of these dual roles is accurate as both functions are available within the same tools. One additional benefit of reading and annotating using the same tool and applied to the same content is the preservation of context. The digital tools I use can be integrated in ways that allow both forward and backward connections. If at a later stage in the approach I describe I want to reexamine the context in which I identified an idea, I can move between tools in an efficient way.

Step 3 – delayed processing (delayed studying)

Here I list tools I would use for accepting the highlights and notes output from Step 2 as isolated from the original text. I also include tools I would use for reworking notes to make them more interpretable when isolated from context, adding tags to stored material, adding links to establish connections among elements of information, and initial summaries written based on other stored information. I like a term I picked up from my reading of material related to what has become known as personal knowledge management (PKM). A smart note is a note written with enough information that it will be personally meaningful and would be meaningful to another individual with a reasonable background at a later point in time.

My tools – Readwise to isolate and review highlights and notes from Kindle. Obsidian to store highlights and notes, add annotations to notes, create links between notes, and generate some note-related summaries an comments. I use several AI extensions within Obsidian to “interact” with my stored content and draft some content. Presently, I use Smart Connections as my go-to AI tool. I write some more finished pieces in Google Docs.

Step 4 – sharing

As a retired academic, I no longer am involved in publishing to scientific journals or through textbook companies. My primary outlet for what I write are WordPress blogs I post through server space that I rent (LearningAloud). A cross-post a few of my blog entries to Substack and Medium.

My tools – I write in Google docs and then copy and paste to upload content to the outlets I use.

Obsidian as the hub

Here are a couple of images that may help explain the workflow I have described. The images show how Obsidian stores the input from the tools used to isolate highlights and notes from full-text sources.

As notes are added to Obsidian, I organize them into folders. An extension I have added to Obsidian creates an index of the content within each folder, but at some point the volume of content is best explored using search.

Here is what a “smart note” I have created in Obsidian looks like. The idea of a smart note is to capture an idea that would be meaningful at a later date without additional content. Included in this note is a citation for the idea, tags I have established that can be used to find related material and a link.

This is an example of a “note” Obsidian automatically generated based on book notes and highlights sent by Readwise. I can add tags and links to this corpus of material to create connections I think might be useful. The box identifies a link stored with the content that will take me back to Kindle and the location of the note or highlight. These links are useful for recovering the original context in which the note existed.

Here is a video explaining how my process works.

So, the argument I am making here is that digital tools provide significant advantages not considered in single-function comparisons between paper and screen. Digital is simply more efficient and efficacious for projects that develop over a period of time.

What is generative learning?

Many of the recommendations I make for classroom and even nonschool-affiliated learning strategies are based in my understanding of generative learning. I have described a specific activity as generative in previous things I have written, but I don’t think I have ever made the effort to provide what I mean by generative. I decided I would give this background now both to explain what the term implies to me and to have something I can refer to in the future.

My applied work in educational psychology is based in cognitive psychology. Cognition is just a way of understanding thinking. Unless someone is really interested in digging into the field, I think it helps if I make an effort to translate some of the core ideas. There is always a danger making the complex simple is a bad idea and my efforts at simplification are off target, but I do it anyway. Think of thinking in terms of mental actions. Assume that learners have at their disposal mental actions they can use to accomplish the thinking and learning tasks they encounter. Learners may differ in which actions are selected to tackle a given task, how skillfully the tools are applied, and how effectively they evaluate the outcome of tool application to determine whether or not more needs to be done.

Here are four actions with a description of the task to which each would typically be applied:

Attend – maintain certain ideas in consciousness (also called working memory)
Find and retrieve – locate what is already stored (also known as long-term memory) and attend to this content
Link – establish connections between information units stored in long-term memory or that content active in working memory
Elaborate – create or discover new knowledge from the logical and purposeful combination of active and stored memory components
Evaluate – determine whether a cognitive task has been completed successfully

We can often take control and apply these activities without assistance, but motivation or lack of awareness of what activities might be useful can result in important activities not happening. Generative activities (Wittrock, 1974, 1990) are external to the internal mental activities of the learner but can make predictable internal activities more likely to occur. Questions about something a student is trying to learn make a good example. A question is external to the thinking of a learner. However, if I ask a question and you cannot answer, attempting to answer this question should have required you to evaluate your understanding. In attempting to answer my question, you have also probably made the effort to find and retrieve information. One related thing to consider – generative activities may encourage activities that are redundant with activities a learner have initiated on her own. This probably does no harm, but it also might be described as busy work. Cognitive activity is always the mental work of the learner with others only able to manipulate such behaviors indirectly and with less precision than a competent and motivated learner could do for themself.

What are some examples of generative activities? Fiorella and Mayer (2016) have identified a list of eight general categories most educators can probably turn into specific tasks. These categories include:

Summarizing
Mapping
Drawing
Imagining
Self-Testing
Self-Explaining
Teaching
Enacting

Summarizing – To summarize, students think about what they have just learned and then rephrase the most important information in their own words.

Mapping – Mapping is the process of converting words into a visual representation. Mind maps, tables, diagrams, and graphs are all common examples.

Drawing – Drawing is a great way to help your students learn more deeply about the material you are teaching. When students draw, they have to think about what information to include, what to leave out, and how to best represent it visually.

Imagining – Forming a mental representation of new information is surprisingly beneficial for learning. An example is tasking your students to imagine the process of digestion by creating mental pictures of each step.

Self-testing – Self-testing is a highly effective learning method. Educators likely recognize that retrieval practice (self-testing) is presently receiving a lot of attention. Some examples of self-testing include using flashcards and quizzes.

Self-explaining – Self-explaining requires students to recall new information and explain it in their own words. This helps students to understand the material better and to avoid simply repeating back what they have read or heard.

Teaching – Peer teaching is another active strategy requiring the recall and translation of what has been learned to present to others. Teaching involves preparation, delivery, and interaction related to the content to be learned. Most educators intuitively appreciate the unique requirements of teaching and recognize that learning for the self and to inform others involve different activities.

Enacting – I think demonstrating is an acceptable way to explain what the researchers meant by enacting.

Generative learning is a powerful approach to education that encourages learners to actively engage with the material, creating new knowledge and connections. This method, grounded in the work of Fiorella and Mayer (2016), and Brod (2021), among others, is centered around the idea that learning is not a passive process, but an active one that involves the learner in the creation of their own understanding.

The strategies I have listed require learners to select and organize relevant information, elaborate on the material based on personal knowledge, and integrate new information with existing knowledge.

Summarization, for instance, involves concisely stating the main ideas from a lesson in one’s own words. This goes beyond copying words or phrases verbatim from the lesson; rather, it involves selecting the most relevant information from the lesson, organizing it into a coherent structure such as an outline, and integrating it with students’ prior knowledge.

Teaching involves selecting the most relevant information to include in one’s explanation, organizing the material into a coherent structure that can be understood by others, and elaborating on the material by incorporating one’s existing knowledge.

Generative learning is not just about the creation of new content. Brod (2021) emphasizes that generative learning requires the production of a meaningful product that goes beyond the information that is an input. This means that activities like highlighting, which do not result in new content, are not considered generative.

Generative learning strategies are not just for students. They can be used by anyone looking to deepen their understanding of a topic. For example, if you’re reading a book or article, try summarizing the main points in your own words, or explaining the concepts to someone else. You might be surprised at how much more you understand the material!

Fiorella and Mayer (2016) offer one additional observation related to these eight types of activity. Four strategies (summarizing, mapping, drawing, and imagining) involve changing the input into a different form of representation.

The other four strategies (self-testing, self-explaining, teaching, and answering practice questions) require additional elaboration. This distinction contrasts ”knowledge-building” and ” knowledge-telling” (e.g., Roscoe and Chi, 2007). Knowledge telling is regarded as the weak form involving a restatement of what is known with limited activation of other existing knowledge (e.g., attempts to generate examples from personal experience) and less extensive monitoring of understanding. In knowledge-building, the strong form, the learner adds to core ideas from existing personal knowledge and in doing to reflects on the core ideas in greater depth resulting in more effective comprehension monitoring.

One additional comment about the eight categories is that the categories were explained by the scholars identifying this category system in terms what the learner could do. While learners could certainly decide to do these things without guidance, it is probably more likely that these external tasks are recommended or assigned by an educator.

What I have described to this point is how I would likely cover this topic in an educational setting. This approach would be designed to be true to what I believe to be the origins of the ideas and learners can then apply what they find useful. Given this background, my own research and practice have both focused on a subset of this list of activities and have taken the general idea of using external tasks to encourage desirable mental activities to recommend activities that share characteristics with the tasks mentioned. I have focused on questions, summarization, teaching, and self-explaining and proposed applications that have included peer tutoring and collaborative notetaking, writing across the curriculum, computer-enabled study environments that involve testing associated with accuracy prediction and data collection that feeds the identification of specific areas needed more work back to students, and the technology-based collection and exploration of notes over extended periods of time to improve personal productivity (smart notes and personal knowledge management). Thinking of external activities that efficiently encourage important cognitive activities has proven a productive way to both think about learning and what tasks may be helpful in helping students learn.

References:

Brod, G. (2021). Generative learning: Which strategies for what age? Educational Psychology Review, 33(4), 1295-1318.

Fiorella, L., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). Eight ways to promote generative learning. Educational Psychology Review, 28(4), 717-741.

Roscoe, R. D. & Chi, M.T. (2007). Understanding tutor learning: Knowledge-building and knowledge-telling in peer tutors’ explanations and questions. Review of Educational Research, 77, 534-574.

Wittrock, M.C. (1974). Learning as a generative process. Educational Psychologist, 11, 87-95.

Wittrock, M.C. (1990). Generative processes of comprehension. Educational Psychologist, 24, 345-376.

Modern Languages Association Paper on AI and Writing Instruction

We have passed mid-summer and educators are beginning to think about their fall classes if they have been doing so for some time. AI is one of those innovations that may be dominating the thinking of some. Do I ignore AI or address it directly? What am I going to do about cheating? Are there specific tools or tactics I should be teaching (or avoiding)?

If you think I have the answers, it is time to move on to another writer. I have been using AI a lot myself and I have been doing my best to locate and review articles on AI in classrooms. I have made a few personal decisions and I have written about them in previous posts. I have decided for now my own work will make use of AI tools that allow me to focus AI on content I designate. So, I am using tools that require that I submit a pdf to be the target of my prompts or that work within a note-taking system I use and can be focused on my own notes and highlights. This works for me. I don’t get assigned tasks from someone else that I must submit to be evaluated. My productivity goals and thoughts about why I benefit from writing guide my choices. Educators may have similar goals for their own work, but also are looking to develop the skills of their students and it is this responsibility that makes things much more complex.

Here is a resource that may be useful. It is not heavy on specific recipes for the use of AI in your classroom, but may be useful if you want a good explanation of just what generative large language model AI services are and an analysis of concerns and opportunities for the application of such services by those who teach writing. If I were to quibble with the authors, it would involve failing to pay enough attention to what I would describe as writing to learn and learning to write. I apologize for that turn of a phrase, but it is one in my bag I like to pull out. My work has often involved researching and proposing the classroom use of generative learning activities. I like to describe generative activities as external tasks intended to encourage productive internal (cognitive) behaviors. So, tasks a learner performs that require productive thinking activities a learner may or may not exercise on their own. Writing to learn is an example and it is based on the expectation that writing requires organization and communication of information you have or can acquire as a benefit to understanding, retention, or application in a way that might not occur if you just tried to think about this information. By definition, it is labor (thinking) intensive and may not be the most efficient way to accomplish understanding, retention, and application. It works because the tasks involved in writing to communicate require work focused on the manipulation of the to-be-learned content. Here is my thought related to AI – tools that make the processes of organization and description less labor intensive may eliminate the cognitive work that may be productive in the process of learning. Producing a better written product or writing more efficiently are different goals. Offloading subcomponents of writing may be helpful in writing and the purposeful control of this offloading may help develop the skills of writing. Hopefully, this differentiation makes some sense and is meaningful.

So, what do those who study the development of writing skills have to say about AI. The source I am recommending here was developed by experts from the task force associated with the Modern Languages Association charged with developing a working paper on AI and writing instruction. As I have explained already this product steers clear of specific classroom recipes, but identifies legitimate concerns, likely benefits, and proposed actions to benefit writing educators. I will summarize these areas, but encourage writing people review this document. It is not unnecessarily lengthy and to my eye represents a balanced analysis.

The advantages of AI for writing are as follows:

Personalized feedback and support for language learners: AI can provide personalized feedback to language learners, helping them to improve their writing skills. This can be especially helpful for students who are struggling with a particular aspect of writing, such as grammar or punctuation.
Ability to analyze large amounts of text for literary scholars: AI can analyze large amounts of text, helping literary scholars to identify patterns and trends. This can be helpful for research and for understanding the development of literature over time.
Ability to assist students with tasks such as generating ideas, organizing their thoughts, and identifying errors in their writing: AI can assist students with tasks such as generating ideas, organizing their thoughts, and identifying errors in their writing. This can help students to improve their writing skills and to produce higher-quality work.
Potential to democratize writing and make it more accessible to a wider range of learners: AI has the potential to democratize writing and make it more accessible to a wider range of learners. This is because AI can provide personalized feedback and support, and can assist students with tasks such as generating ideas and organizing their thoughts.

The disadvantages of AI for writing are as follows:

Risk that students may rely too heavily on AI-generated outputs and miss out on important writing, reading, and thinking practice: There is a risk that students may rely too heavily on AI-generated outputs and miss out on important writing, reading, and thinking practice. This is because AI can generate text that is grammatically correct and that sounds good, but that may not be accurate or well-informed.
Risk that students may submit AI-generated work as their own, which could lead to issues with academic integrity: There is also a risk that students may submit AI-generated work as their own, which could lead to issues with academic integrity. This is because AI can generate text that is indistinguishable from human-written text.
Potential for bias in AI systems: Finally, there is the potential for bias in AI systems. This is because AI systems are trained on data that is collected from the real world, and this data may be biased. This means that AI systems may generate text that is biased, which could have negative consequences for students and for society as a whole.

The MLA also provided the following policy recommendations.

Writing instructors should recognize that there may be equity issues in the use of AI tools and work to provide equal access to all students.
Writing instructors should engage in ongoing professional development to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in AI and writing instruction.
Writing instructors should collaborate with colleagues, students, and other stakeholders to ensure that the use of AI in writing instruction is effective and ethical.
Writing instructors must emphasize the ethical responsibility that comes with the use of AI tools and spend time with students to consider the misrepresentation of authorship.

Source:

MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI Working Paper: Overview of the Issues, Statement of Principles, and Recommendations. Available online: https://hcommons.org/app/uploads/sites/1003160/2023/07/MLA-CCCC-Joint-Task-Force-on-Writing-and-AI-Working-Paper-1.pdf