# Educational effectiveness of notebooks for reflecting on lectures in dental pharmacology

## TL;DR

The study shows that taking lecture notes helps students learn dental pharmacology, especially during early learning stages and for essay tests.

## Contribution

This study demonstrates the educational effectiveness of lecture notes in dental pharmacology learning, particularly during encoding and recall phases.

## Key findings

- Note evaluation scores correlated positively with multiple-choice test scores in both tests.
- Essay test scores correlated with note scores only when notes were allowed during the test.
- Lecture notes function as external memory storage and aid in content recall.

## Abstract

In Japanese education system, learning the basic dentistry mainly consists of lectures using PowerPoint without active learning. Presentation-based learning is problematic because students are passive participants, thereby necessitating content review to improve the learning effects. Summarizing lecture contents through notes is considered an effective learning method. However, it remains unclear whether use of notes translates to improved test scores. The present study aimed to evaluate notes taken by students during lectures, analyze the relationships between lecture note evaluation scores and test scores, and present considerations for the use and effects of lecture notes in learning.

New learners of dental pharmacology were asked to summarize the contents of lectures and practicum sessions on pharmacology in lecture notes. After all lectures and practicum sessions had been completed, multiple-choice objective tests (answer sheets) and essay tests were performed twice each as learning evaluations. Students were allowed to use their lecture notes in the first essay test but not in the second test. The evaluation scores for the lecture notes were recorded, and the relationships with the test scores were analyzed using regression and correlation analyses.

For the multiple-choice objective test, positive relationships were confirmed between the note evaluation scores and the test scores for both the first and second tests. Meanwhile, in the essay test, a positive relationship was only confirmed for the first test when the use of lecture notes was allowed. These findings demonstrate that lecture notes are an effective learning method during the first stage of the “memory-creation process” of learning (study), namely the “encoding” stage. The findings further indicate that, in terms of documenting one’s thoughts, lecture notes functioned as an “external storage device” for memory and that such notes were important for “recalling” learning content.

Active use of lecture notes in multiple-choice objective tests, such as the national examination for Japanese dental practitioners, is an effective learning method. In addition, use of lecture notes during essay tests is an effective method for evaluating students’ ability to compose logical sentences and text by recalling learning content.