LEARNING FROM LECTURES - EFFECTS OF COOPERATIVE REVIEW

We examined the effects of cooperative and individual review of lectur e material on subsequent free-recall performance. College students lis tened to a prerecorded lecture in one of four experimental conditions: (a) individual notetakers who reviewed their notes individually after the lecture; (b) dyads who took notes during the lecture with the exp ectation of cooperatively reviewing the material after the lecture; (c ) dyads in which one partner listened to the lecture without taking no tes and subsequently summarized the information to a partner who took notes during the lecture; and (d) dyads whose members took notes indiv idually without expecting to review cooperatively but who did in fact review cooperatively after the lecture. Students who expected to revie w individually but did so cooperatively out-performed students who rev iewed alone. Dyad partners who did not take notes but cooperatively re viewed performed as well as partners who took notes and individuals wh o took notes and reviewed individually. The results suggest that coope rative review can be an effective element of the lecture method of ins truction.