I am working on a paper on college student use of online lecture notes. This is the kind of work that I do. Studies of note taking and note reviewing were big back in the 1970s and 1980s (I am an old guy). The work seemed to offer some interesting possibilities for what might happen if students were provided notes to guide their processing during lectures and in later review sessions. The research area seemed to dry up after a time — perhaps because there seemed no practical way to deliver on the ideas. Few instructors/departments want to bear the cost and time demands of preparing and distributing notes. The Internet offers a way to handle these concerns and tools like Blackboard or WebCT make the delivery of PowerPoint presentations or word processor documents easy to accomplish. So I think lots of instructors are providing notes.
When I talk with others about this topic, the reaction I often get is — I don??t want my students to stop coming to class. Most instructors probably feel that at least some students will skip because notes are available, but like a friend of mine says – that??s an empirical question. Educational practices that have the potential to benefit learners, but also have the potential to be abused are not unique. So – do you make notes available because some students may benefit or do you ignore the opportunity because other students may skip? Sounds like a great research topic to me.
