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What’s the Eberly Center reading and thinking about this month?

The Research and Scholarship Digest, published the first Monday of each month, consists of short summaries of recently peer-reviewed studies on teaching and learning topics. This digest offers a view into what we are reading and thinking about at the Eberly Center that:

• adds to our understanding of how students learn
• is potentially generalizable across teaching contexts in higher education
• provokes reflection on implications for our teaching and educational development practices.

We hope the readers of this digest will find it a useful resource for staying in-tune with the rapidly expanding education research literature.

Shimko, G. A., Fyfe, E. R., & James, K. H. (2025). A classroom study on notetaking modalities and inattentive attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 39(4), e70105. 

This study investigated the notetaking habits of college students and the encoding benefits of different notetaking modalities, especially for students with ADHD symptoms. 229 students enrolled in an Introductory to Psychology course were asked during normal class activities to take notes on the lecture in their preferred modality. After class, they were asked to complete a survey on their note-taking modality and levels of distraction during note-taking. During the next class session, students were given a pop quiz on the topics of the previous lecture. They were then asked to complete a survey on their ADHD symptomology, with students able to self-report a previous diagnosis as well as complete the Adult ADHD Self Report Rating Scale. Researchers found that students taking notes on their laptop reported higher levels of being distracted during the lecture than students who took notes by hand. There was no relationship between chosen note-taking modality and ADHD symptoms. However, students with inattentive ADHD symptoms performed best when taking notes on a tablet. One of the most interesting findings was that as inattentive ADHD symptoms increase, learning benefits of handwritten notetaking decrease.

Thormodsæter, R. S., Ballen, C. J., Fagbodun, S., Foster-Hartnett, D., García-Ojeda, M. E., Gonsar, N., ... & Cotner, S. (2026). Can we mitigate the impacts of test anxiety through reappraisal interventions? A replication study in science courses across multiple institution types in the United States. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 25(1), ar9.

Research on cognitive reappraisal interventions mitigating test anxiety in higher education has found positive results in some studies, but these authors sought to replicate this finding on a larger scale and across multiple institution types. Using the intervention protocol from a previous study (Jamieson et al., 2016), researchers collected data  from 12 STEM courses across seven different institutions (n=771 students). State and trait-level test anxiety were measured using surveys at multiple time points throughout the semester. Students all took their first exam in the course without any intervention, and for the second exam, they were randomly assigned to receive either the cognitive reappraisal or placebo intervention. Results showed that, indeed, both trait and state level test anxiety were negatively associated with final course grade and performance on the first exam, respectively, and this association varied by demographic factors. Results also showed that, controlling for pre-intervention levels of anxiety, there was no significant impact of the intervention on post-intervention anxiety for both state and trait measures, and this effect did not vary by institution type or other demographic factors.The authors thoroughly outline limitations and discuss the interpretation of null results. All study measures, intervention materials, and additional analysis details are included in the supplementary materials document.