Comparison of Self-Questioning, Summarizing, and Notetaking-Review as Strategies for Learning From Lectures

Underprepared college students in three conditions viewed a lecture, took notes, and then engaged in their respective study strategies. Those trained in questioning generated (and answered) their own questions based on the lecture, those trained in summarizing wrote original summaries of the lecture, and those in an untrained control group simply reviewed their lecture notes. At immediate testing, summarizers recalled more of the lecture content than did self-questioners, who in turn outperformed notetaking-reviewers. On a retention test of lecture content one week later, the self-questioners performed somewhat better than the summarizers and significantly better than the notetaking-reviewers. Self questioners’ and summarizers’ lecture notes contained more ideas from the lecture than did those of the notetaking-review students. Use of these generative study strategies appears to enhance learning from lectures by improving encoding both during the lecture and following the lecture; and for long-term retention of lecture material, self-questioning may be a more effective study strategy than summarizing.