Jessica Pleuss, assistant professor of psychology at Morningside College, and two students recently presented research at the Association for Psychological Science’s annual convention in San Francisco.

Jessica Pleuss	Chelsey Harvey	Elizabeth White

Jessica Pleuss, assistant professor of psychology at Morningside College, and two students recently presented research at the Association for Psychological Science’s annual convention in San Francisco.

One poster, presented with student Chelsey Harvey of Goldfield, Iowa, showed their findings on whether better note-takers do better in class. They found that some aspects of note-taking quality, like content and elaboration, were positively associated with higher grades, but other aspects, like organization, were not.

Another poster, presented with student Elizabeth White of Altoona, Iowa, showed their findings on how the presence of visual aids, specifically what the teacher wrote on the white board, impacted the notes students took. They found that students wrote down an average of 45 percent of what the teacher wrote on the white board. Pleuss will be conducting a follow-up study this year examining visual aids and note-taking more thoroughly. 

Pleuss came to Morningside College in fall of 2012. She received her doctorate in child psychology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.