How to benefit from a video lecture in a distance learning environment: Take notes and keep them!

Note-taking is considered a very common and promising learning strategy to benefit from university lectures. However, there are open research questions as to whether note-taking also supports learning from prerecorded video lectures in an authentic and ecologically valid distance learning environment. Unlike in previous research, we thus applied authentic field conditions combining five aspects typical for online university lectures: (a) asynchronous distance learning, (b) a 45-min unsegmented psychology video lecture, (c) no instructional support such as prompts, (d) no submission of notes, and (e) a delayed posttest after five weeks. We conducted an online field experiment involving 61 psychology and teacher students at a German university (44 female; M age = 22.63 years) who learned from an authentic prerecorded psychology video lecture on the topic Cognitive Apprenticeship . According to the experimental condition, participants did or did not receive a note-taking request before the video lecture. We asked participants whether they actually took notes. Note-takers ( n = 33) reported stronger learning engagement than the non-note-takers ( n = 28). In a subsequent posttest about the lecture’s content, note-taking showed benefits on declarative but not conceptual knowledge. After five weeks, however, the note-takers outperformed the non-note-takers on conceptual knowledge. This effect was predicted by note-keeping behavior and interim engagement between the lecture and delayed posttest. Overall, our findings provide ecologically valid empirical support of how beneficial it is for students to take notes during asynchronous video lectures. Finally, for a lasting effect on conceptual knowledge, it is advisable to keep those notes and engage with the content.