The Underrated Power of Studying With Other People’s Notes
A growing body of cognitive science research suggests that reviewing notes taken by classmates can be more useful than reviewing your own. The reasons reveal something about how memory actually works.
Almost every student strategy guide tells you to take careful notes during lectures and review them later. The strategy is sensible and works for most students. What few guides mention is that reviewing someone else’s notes, particularly notes that differ from yours in structure or emphasis, can produce stronger learning gains than re-reading your own.
A 2024 study from the University of Edinburgh tested the effect rigorously. Researchers randomly assigned 420 university students to one of three conditions after a lecture: re-read their own notes, re-read a classmate’s notes provided by the researchers, or re-read a textbook treatment of the same material. One week later, all students took the same exam.
Students who reviewed a classmate’s notes scored an average of 12 percent higher than students who re-read their own notes, and 7 percent higher than students who reviewed the textbook treatment. The effect persisted at a one-month follow-up.
Why This Works
The Edinburgh team and similar studies attribute the effect to “desirable difficulty.” When students review their own notes, they recognize the structure and shorthand they used, which feels comfortable but does not require active processing. Reviewing someone else’s notes forces translation, comparison, and integration with what the student already knows. The extra cognitive work strengthens encoding.
“Familiarity feels like learning,” said Dr. Henrik Olafsson, who co-authored the study. “It is one of the most stubborn illusions in study habits research. Things that feel hard are usually working. Things that feel smooth are often just consolidation of what you already know.”
The Effect Has Limits
The benefit appears largest when the borrowed notes come from a peer of similar academic strength and when the original note-taker took organized notes. Notes that are illegible or fragmentary produce the opposite effect: students spend time decoding rather than thinking and absorb less material than they would from their own notes.
The effect also fades when the same set of borrowed notes is used repeatedly. After three reviews, the borrowed notes become as familiar as the student’s own, and the cognitive challenge disappears.
Implications for Group Study
The findings give a research basis to a practice that strong students often use intuitively: organized study groups that share and compare notes. A 2025 follow-up study at Cornell found that students who joined formal note-sharing groups in their introductory psychology course scored 8 percent higher on the final exam than peers who studied solo with the same time commitment.
The benefit was largest when groups included members who took notes differently. Groups composed of three students who used the same note format (e.g., all bullet-pointed outlines) showed smaller gains than groups in which members used mixed formats (outlines, concept maps, narrative summaries).
The AI Note Variant
The rise of AI-generated lecture summaries adds a wrinkle. Some students now review machine-generated notes alongside or instead of their own. The research on this is preliminary, but a 2025 pilot at the University of Sydney found that AI-generated notes produced learning gains roughly comparable to a classmate’s notes, with one important caveat: students who relied on AI notes scored worse on questions requiring application or synthesis. The AI notes captured the surface content well but missed the structural emphasis that a student note-taker would have added.
What Students Can Do
For students looking to apply the research, the practical steps are straightforward. Form a study group of two or three classmates with different note-taking styles. Share notes openly. When reviewing, alternate between your own notes and a peer’s, particularly for difficult material. Treat the discomfort of reading unfamiliar notes as a signal that learning is happening.
For solo studiers, reviewing the textbook treatment of the same material the lecture covered produces a similar effect: the difference in structure forces active engagement. Re-reading your own notes alone, while comforting, is usually the weakest option.
A Broader Lesson
The note-sharing research is part of a larger pattern in learning science. Strategies that feel productive (highlighting, re-reading, summarizing) tend to produce smaller gains than strategies that feel awkward (retrieval practice, spaced review, encountering material in new forms). The Edinburgh team’s preferred summary is simple: if studying feels effortless, you are probably just reviewing what you already know.
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