The effect of writing after reading on college nursing students' factual knowledge and synthesis of knowledge.

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate the effect of writing after reading on factual knowledge and synthesis of knowledge. College sophomore nursing students (N = 118) were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a control group which read, reviewed, but did no writing; a notetaking group; or an essay writing group. A 10-item multiple-choice test of factual knowledge was given to all subjects immediately after completing each reading and writing task and again 7 days later. At the later time, each student also wrote an essay to demonstrate synthesis of knowledge. Seven days later, students repeated the same reading and writing activities with a second text. Results of ANOVA showed that notetaking was significantly better than essay writing or no writing for recall of facts. Essay writing, on the other hand, helped students synthesize better than notetaking. However, there was no difference between essay writing and no writing on synthesis of knowledge.