Effect of Preference for Assigned Lecture Notes on Student Achievement

College students were assigned to either take their own personal notes or to use full or partial notes that had been distributed to them while listening to a lecture in order to determine the effect of using a preferred or nonpreferred lecture note method on multiple- choice and essay test scores and on post-lecture note preference. The use of personal or partial notes resulted in higher scores on the essay test and students preferring personal or partial notes scored better on the multiple-choice exam suggesting the importance of personally encoding notes. Partial notes preference was most popular both before and after the lecture.