CB>  I am wondering how you would feel about a student whose note-taking
CB>  caused a drop in grades?
I believe I know what you're getting at...sometimes it is not possible
to both take down notes and listen to and understand the discussion at
hand. In such a class, I could see in some cases, notes causing a student
to perform more poorly than were s/he to not take notes.
I like to think that this doesn't happen too much in my class. As I
stated before, I pause often to allow the students time to copy down the
examples. I try very hard to have copying time not overlap with discussion
time of the examples. If a student is listening to the discussion, and then
I want to turn the scroll on the overhead machine, or erase the board, I
try to remember to ask, "May I erase this example now?" or "Is it OK for me
to turn the roll?". I have told my students, and written in my handout
that I give on my class policies and procedures, that the best way to
slow the teacher down, if the discussion is proceeding at too rapid a pace,
is to ask a question, even if all the question is, is "could you explain
that example again?" or "could you please slow down?" or "could you give
me another minute to copy that?" and when the students make such requests
I do my best to honor them.
To the best of my knowledge, I've never had a student who did more poorly
by taking notes than had s/he not taken notes.  of course, I've
conducted no scientific studies with control groups! 
When I take courses at the university myself (I'm currently enrolled in
a grad level stat course entitled "Queueing Theory"), I will frequently
ask the instructor to repeat an explanation if I couldn't listen to it
while I was copying down the notes. I don't DARE go home without the notes,
and at the same time, I feel that I deserve to hear and understand the
explanation during class time, since I'm paying my $400 for the course and
putting in my 4 hours of class time per week.
CB>  I found out, almost too late, that taking notes generally caused me to
CB>  score one grade lower.  I wonder what you would do in such a case.
To what do you attribute this? I find it hard to imagine most of my students
being able to remember sufficient detail of the problems worked in class
when they get home to do the homework. I usually do different examples than
those in the text, and usually the text has an insufficient number of
examples for most students to figure out how to do every type of homework
problem assigned.
Sheila
 * SLMR 2.1a *
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