Guided Notes in Adult Ed Classes

A guided note is a page with the structure already on it and blanks where the student writes the step, the term, or the evidence. It is not a filled handout, and it is not a blank notebook.

• The student still writes.

• The page holds the order.

No published trial tests guided notes in a GED© and HiSET© class. The closest evidence is from college and other adult classes.

Larwin and Larwin (2013) pooled postsecondary studies covering 1,529 students. Guided notes had a moderate effect on achievement, d = 0.55. The average student with guided notes scored above about 72 percent of students taking their own notes or using full printed notes. Twenty-one of 27 effects were positive. Larwin & Larwin, 2013.

Biggers and Luo (2020) reviewed 22 studies of guided notes with adult learners from 2009 to 2019. Students rated them well. Gains showed up most on complex content. Online or paper did not change the result. Of 17 studies that compared guided notes with full notes or no notes, 15 found better learning. Biggers & Luo, 2020.

Chen, Teo, and Zhou (2016) gave one college class outline notes plus guided blanks and another class outline notes only. The guided-notes class took better notes on a delayed check and scored higher right after the lesson and later. Chen, Teo, & Zhou, 2016.

Konrad, Joseph, and Eveleigh (2009) framed the same tool as a way to raise active responding during a teacher-led lesson, rather than as a copy of the lecture. Konrad, Joseph, & Eveleigh, 2009.

Math is the clearest fit. A GED© and HiSET© item is a chain: circle the job, copy the numbers, do one step, rewrite the line. A stressed adult drops the chain. A guided note keeps the next blank in view. That matches the finding that guided notes help more when the content is complex, not when the student only copies a definition. Full printed notes do not do this job. Larwin and Larwin found guided notes beat both student-made notes and professor-printed full notes. The blank is the point.

Word problems add a reading load. Ginsburg (2022) notes that high-school-equivalency and placement tests are full of them, and that unfamiliar contexts raise anxiety before any calculation. A guided note can hold Three Reads as three labeled blanks: story, quantities, question. Ginsburg, 2022.

The same page works for the reading tests. GED Science and Social Studies are reading-for-information tests: a passage, a graphic, a question about evidence. Language Arts reading is the same skill on literary and informational text. Useful blanks are the claim, two pieces of evidence with paragraph numbers, the graphic’s point, and the answer in the student’s words. A science stem with a data table is the kind of complex content where the adult-learner review found gains. Writing can use a shorter frame: thesis, two reasons, one quoted line, closing sentence. The student writes the paragraph off the plan.

Limits

• These studies were done in college and other adult classes, not in a GED or HiSET class. The idea fits, but it has not been tested on those exams

  
  

• Guided notes also do not help every student. In the Larwin and Larwin review, five of the results went the other way. Those were usually classes where students already took solid notes on their own, or where a full printed handout was enough.

• “Already hold the steps” means the student can keep the order without the page doing it. On a math item, that student circles the word, copies the numbers, and does the next job without looking back at a checklist. They know that divide comes before the multiply on the right, or that the missing score is the needed total minus the scores they already have. On a reading item, they can name the claim, point to the evidence, and answer without a blank for each job.

  
  

• Use the page when the item is crowded: several steps, a word problem, a passage plus a table. A student who cannot hold the steps loses the order halfway through and does the second job first, or forgets what the question asked. The blanks are for that student. For the student who already holds the steps, the blanks are an extra task.

References

Biggers, B., & Luo, T. (2020). Guiding students to success: A systematic review of research on guided notes as an instructional strategy from 2009–2019. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 17(3). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1264517.pdf

Chen, P. H., Teo, T., & Zhou, M. (2016). Effects of guided notes on enhancing college students’ lecture note-taking quality and learning performance. Current Psychology, 36, 719–732. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-016-9459-6

Ginsburg, L. (2022). Mathematical word problems in adult education: What the research says. Adult Literacy Education, 4(3), 66–71. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1369748.pdf

Konrad, M., Joseph, L. M., & Eveleigh, E. (2009). A meta-analytic review of guided notes. Education and Treatment of Children, 32(3), 421–444. https://doi.org/10.1353/etc.0.0066

Larwin, K. H., & Larwin, D. A. (2013). The impact of guided notes on post-secondary student achievement: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 25(1), 47–58. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1016535.pdf