Creating Handouts That Facilitate Learning:

SUMMARYThe academic movements of active learning and abilities-based education have caused many instructors to evaluate their activities in the classroom. One activity that receives inadequate attention is the creation and use of handouts for the purpose of facilitating learning. The psychological processes of encoding and elaboration are helpful in understanding how information is stored and recalled from memory and how the processes of note-taking and review can facilitate storage and recall. Once the overall purpose of the learning experience is determined and the structure selected, layout guidelines can be used to maximize the appeal of the handout. This review of these issues creates a concise guide that is useful in constructing handouts that will maximize the instructor's opportunity to facilitate students' acquisition of information presented.