Students and faculty have disparate opinions on how complete lecture materials should be to optimize learning. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of lecture handout completeness and content area on Doctor of Physical Therapy student recall/retention in foundation level courses. These findings suggest there may not be a best practice for lecture slide completeness and may be course/content dependent. In this study students performed better with complete handouts in physiology and research courses and with less complete handouts in biomechanics.