Innovative Methods and Practices of Academic Writing and Writing Instruction
LECTURE, NOTES AND PEER FEEDBACK ENHANCE THE LEARNING TAKING PLACE IN LECTURES AND INDUCE HIGHERORDER THINKING SKILLS
Roman Banzer
University of Liechtenstein, Vaduz
Writing has long been associated with promoting learning. Mueller & Oppenheimer (2014) have recently investigated the benefits of writing lecture notes by hand over using laptops. They claim that laptop notes result in “shallower processing” of information and lower students’ performance on conceptual tasks. Despite their findings it can be assumed that any notetaking, no matter whether on laptop or longhand, predominantly requires the learning activity of “summarizing”, which is a lowerorder thinking skill. In order to transgress this lowerorder cognitive demand associated with notetaking, this paper aims to combine Mueller & Oppenheimer’s approach with peer feedback (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). It investigates whether and to which extent the integration of peer feedback in lectures can promote higherorder thinking skills. To investigate this question, we use the following method. Tested at University of Liechtenstein 2 groups of students, N= 80 One: take summaries of lectures Two: give peer feedback on lecture summaries. Expected findings: Peer feedback can enhance the learning taking place in lectures and induce higherorder thinking skills on levels of “analysis” and “evaluation” if the criteria and questions guiding feedback are directed towards these skills .
References
Hattie, J. & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77 (1), 81–112.
Mueller, P. A. & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking. Psychological science, 25 (6), 1159–1168.