Instructors regularly assign textbook readings and encourage students to take notes on those readings. Despite this being standard preparation for many courses, there has been little scholarship on how much this pre-lecture preparation helps students learn. Using a panel data set that leverages student fixed effects, the impact that reading the text and taking notes has on quizzes and exams in an Introduction to Microeconomics course is quantified. I find that taking a page of pre-lecture notes and reading the text increases quiz grades by up to a standard deviation. With regard to exams, when students take notes on the textbook their scores also increase, in some cases by a full letter grade. These results show even a small amount of preparation can have a significant impact on student achievement.

讲师定期分配教科书读物，并鼓励学生记下这些读物。尽管这是许多课程的标准准备，但关于这种课前准备对学生学习有多大的帮助，几乎没有奖学金。使用利用学生固定效应的面板数据集，可以量化阅读文本和做笔记对《微观经济学概论》课程中的测验和考试的影响。我发现，通过听一页课前笔记并阅读课文，可以将测验成绩提高多达一个标准偏差。关于考试，当学生在教科书上做笔记时，他们的分数也会提高，在某些情况下会提高整个字母的分数。这些结果表明，即使少量的准备工作也会对学生的成绩产生重大影响。