Providing Study Notes: Comparison of Three Types of Notes for Review

College students viewed a 19-min videotaped lecture and were not allowed to take notes. One week later, these students were provided with one of three different forms of study notes for review: a complete text, a linear outline, or a matrix. Students in a control group were given no notes and reviewed mentally. After review, all students completed three different performance tests. Results from all three tests indicated that reviewing any of the three forms of provided notes significantly raised performance beyond that of the no-notes control group. This finding confirmed the importance of the external storage function of note taking for various forms of provided notes. In addition, the outline and matrix notes generally produced higher recall performance than did the text notes, but only the matrix notes produced higher transfer performance than did the text notes. These differences were explained in relation to the forming of internal connections in memory.