I've done these workshops for quite some time. I talk about the ideas of taking notes and the importance of re-copying and condensing. As a historian, I use a segment of one of my lectures - literally a paragraph of text -- and deliver it as I would in a class. The lecture paragraph is shown on a powerpoint slide (they don't need to write it down, although they can). I use a very obscure topic (Spinning Bees from colonial America) and then I show them a slide of how I might condense those notes (taking out sentence structure, concentrating on main points/new terms). I then show them another shorter version that we all go over. I then take away the notes and quiz them and they are always able to respond to the questions.
OK, in reality it's a bit of a parlour trick as dealing with the info that soon makes it pretty easy to keep it in mind - however, it demonstrates the process and I have yet to have a group I've done this with (been doing it probably 25 years) where they have not been impressed with/proud of their ability to recall.
Make it better/more meaningful by delivering the lecture and having them take notes. Give them five minutes to condense it (after you describe what they should do), have them discuss what they came up with and then quiz. But I've found, over the years, it seems to be just as effective skipping that hands on step. I have no data to say which is better, though, as I have never measured this - just my observations on 25 years of delivering this workshop.
Hope this helps.
Mike
Michael B. Kassel, Ph. D.Tutorial Coordinator
Student Success Center
285 University Pavilion
(810) 766-6773