hypertext and the study strategies of preservice teachers: Issues in instructional hypertext design

It is a methodological challenge to study students ’ review of their lecture notes. First, the quality of their notes may vary considerably. Second, students review their notes with little monitoring or feedback. A hypertext program monitored the lecture note review strategies of individuals and dyads follow-ing two lectures about tests and measurements. It noted which concepts students sought at what level of detail, which content themes they favored, and which relationships among topics they pursued. Dyads ’ strategies were more comprehensive than the individuals ’ and were more directed at extract-ing elaborative and hierarchically structured information. The study repli-cated earlier findings that students did not learn well from lectures. This study also demonstrated how computers may aid in data collection in educational settings. Lectures communicate substantial amounts of information in a short time to many students [l, 21. Unfortunately, the format places the student in an essentially passive role [3, 4, 5, 61. Students record only about 30 percent of the ideas presented in a lecture [7]. In particular, they fail to record subordinate information [8]. Students may take poor notes because of limited working-memory capacity, poor strategies for note-taking, or because of a false sense of familiarity with the material. Although taking notes during lectures facilitates learning [9, 101, reviewing the notes is a step critical to subsequent test performance [ll]. Students who do not review notes taken in class do not perform as well on tests as those students wh