Even though technologies are developing at lightning speed, note-taking still plays a crucial role in enhancing learning outcomes for students and educators.
At the times when I just started my learning path as a student, it was tough to imagine any method of taking notes, other than rapidly putting them down by hand during lectures. We even invented somewhat of an abbreviation glossary to make our writing fast and conclusive. Then we passed our notes on to younger generations and were happy to feel helpful. Even though technologies are developing at lightning speed, note-taking still plays a crucial role in enhancing learning outcomes for students and educators. Let’s explore the secrets of traditional note-taking, its strategies and benefits, and also learn first-hand about incredible digital tools to optimize this essential skill.
What is Note-Taking?
Note-taking is a way of recording or capturing key information from various educational resources or making your own notes on the go. It is done in a brief but quite inclusive format for future reference and comprehension. Note-taking skills are foundational to personal knowledge development.
How Does Note-Taking Affect Education?
Note-taking habits vary from person to person. For some people, information retention or a new project can be challenging unless they take some notes on paper. Others, on the contrary, prefer using relevant apps on computers or smartphones for note-taking.
All note-taking methods are good! However, some experts say that the handwritten way of note-taking is more effective. Psychologists from Princeton University and CSU have conducted an interesting survey that positions a laptop as the worst tool for note-taking during lectures or lessons. Do you think it is because of numerous distracting factors, like internet or social network access and games? Not exactly. The answer is deeper! The advantage of handwritten note-taking lies in its comprehension speed. When you write, you automatically slow down the perception speed of new information. When the note-taking process takes longer, it allows you to memorize larger data. This is how it works. If your typing speed is high enough, you’ll be able to put down whatever you hear word-to-word.
But typing doesn’t mean learning. Your brain is by no means involved in learning, as long as you just type what the lecturer says. All the information will leak from your mind, as soon as you close the document and proceed to another task. Handwritten note-taking requires active brain work, indicating the importance of thinking over the received data.
However, like anything in our lives, the other side of the story always exists. Handwritten note-taking has several areas for improvement (e.g., slowing down the overall learning flow is one of the main disadvantages), and can easily give way to innovative inventions that tend to simplify various processes. Apps, extensions, AI-powered assistants - these handy tools are worthy of becoming inseparable partners in any educational journey.
Note-taking is an essential aspect of formal classroom learning and online learning environments. It keeps students on their toes, facilitates brain activity, and improves learning outcomes.
Advantages of Note-Taking in Education
To prove the point of note-taking importance, let’s list the advantages of this skill.
Enhanced Retention: This is the most fundamental benefit of note-taking in terms of its impact on memory. The ability to pick, organize, and summarize the necessary information helps the human mind keep the data for a long time. You can take a photo of a material and have it at your fingertips, but still, multiple tasks performed by your brain appear more effective for retention.
Organized Learning: Students often deal with complex tasks, so having a certain structure for note-taking will help classify and combine information for clearer understanding afterward. Every learner has their idea of organizing notes, and, yes, some find chaos pretty organized (don’t judge anyone).
Active listening and comprehension: To take notes, you need to participate actively during lectures. Therefore, being active means listening, identifying, and consolidating key points into notes. These skills lead to deeper comprehension and the development of critical thinking.
Creativity and goal tracking: Note-taking skills allow one to put down creative ideas for an upcoming project or meeting, follow up on the tasks and objectives, and track one’s progress.
Minimization of distractions: Note-taking requires strong attention to detail, so there is very little chance for you to be distracted by checking your phone or stuffing your head with irrelevant things. Staying focused on note-taking tasks will result in productivity.
Note-Taking for Students
Note-taking is a common practice for every student, whether attending studies in person or e-learning. Students take notes when watching videos, listening to the lecturer, or working on a project. The main purpose is to keep the information in mind and develop the so-called external storage function, as well as simplify the learning process. The more notes you take, the more information you can remember. Learners often support their notes with doodles, abbreviations, and special symbols. The selection of such techniques is individual, but it helps establish a connection between ideas, boosts creativity and critical thinking, and keeps the brain working. Also, digital note-taking is an excellent tool for collaborative learning and knowledge sharing, because your handwriting may not always be readable.
To summarize, the art of note-taking has a specific strategy, and we’ll get back to this point in a while.
Note-Taking for Teachers
Yes, educators do take notes as well! They practice note-taking to plan a lesson structure, prioritize tasks for a productive teaching process, track student progress, put down ideas for the future, and so on. Every successful teacher follows certain steps to make sure content delivery is attractive for learners. Note-taking for educators improves competence and qualification and ensures practical readiness for an upcoming teaching session.
Like every industry, education also forges ahead by attracting specialists from various spheres, from psychology to neuroscience. Together, they are developing and implementing handy tools for learning management systems, that will take the educational process to the next level.
Effective Note-Taking Methods
Cornell Method
Walter Pauk, a professor at Cornell University, invented this method in the 1950s. The idea of the Cornell method lies in dividing the paper into a note-taking template with key sections: the notes column, the cue column, and the summary section. As a note-taker, you can cover any of the columns with your hand, or whatever, and focus on the one that is currently important, thus systemizing your learning process. This method can be effective for lectures, especially when students want to participate in discussions rather than focusing on copying notes.
Pros
An organized layout helps establish connections between points for future recall and use.
The sectioning principle improves engagement in the material by adding tips or keywords. It boosts active learning.
Faster highlighting of major ideas from a lecture with poor structure helps summarize and review the information.
Cons
Some people may find this method time-consuming. It takes more effort and time to identify key points, summarize and review them regularly, and use the overall information accordingly.
When put down on paper (if compared to the digital variant), this method may seem messy due to space shortage.
It is challenging to pick up the main points and classify them properly if the lecturer’s speed is high.
Outlining Method
The outlining method is one of the most famous and popular methods among students. It supposes a certain structure of arranging notes and separating them with bullet points or numbers to visually outline the main ideas and details. An idea or a topic starts with a title on the left side of the page, then comes a subtitle with its component points and subpoints - with every new line keeping it more to the right side. By the way, a traditional, simple PowerPoint presentation is introduced in an outlining format.
Pros
This method is perfect for simplifying complex information, especially if a course consists of clear sections and allows a heading-subheading structure.
Bulleting, numbering, arrows - whatever suits you better - help demonstrate relationships between concepts.
The outlining method is convenient for online learners who prefer taking notes on their devices.
Cons
When outlining, students usually write down the lecturer’s speech without adding their ideas. This method won’t work if the lecture speed is high, and there is a lack of a structured flow.
According to surveys, the outlining method is not suitable for STEM subjects, because here, students are likely to put down some formulas and calculations.
Mind Mapping
Mind mapping (similar to concept mapping) is a powerful technique for taking notes. It looks like a map with a central piece, i.e., the idea or topic, and multiple branches or sub-branches around it, flowing out of the center and demonstrating relationships. It is a graphic picture of content delivered in a lecture, which can be a diagram or a flowchart, aiding in complete understanding and creative thinking. Mind maps are perfect for team-building events, project presentations, business or career planning, time management, and community strategy visualization.
Pros
The mapping method enhances creativity and memorization. Design tricks like color blocks and images allow us to visually highlight the priority of ideas and connections between them.
An attractively organized graphical map boosts productivity and inspires learning.
Mind maps help you save time when revising information before an exam or a quiz. Due to their structure, one can easily focus on the major points.
This method is good for analytical thinking, i.e., you can split complicated issues into mini-related pieces and use graphics to relate them.
Adding more components, rearranging, and editing mind maps is easy in a digital format on a PC or a smartphone.
Cons
Mind mapping may not be suitable if you have many ideas and try to fit them into one picture. It will cause messiness and lead to a lack of focus.
The mind-mapping method usually requires more time and effort to get the most out of it.
Sketchnoting
The term ‘sketchnoting’ belongs to designer and author Michael Rohde, who found traditional note-taking boring and decided to combine it with doodling. This method is popular among educators and learners because it offers a unique way of organizing information on a page. Sketchnoters use arrows, boxes, circles, and doodles alongside the text part. The sketchnothing method is good either for group presentations or for personal use. Surveys show that it is easier for us to process a ‘skechnote’ page than a line-by-line note. So for any situation where our mind tends to distract, sketchnotes are a perfect solution.
Pros
Such visual cues as coloring, doodling, or stickers boost mental associations and help engage multiple senses.
This method is perfect for those having learning difficulties, e.g., with dyslexia or ADHD.
Sketchnoting promotes self-reflection and personal growth.
Cons
Sketchnoting can be time-consuming since you may not manage to illustrate your notes if the lecture is fast. It requires time to be organized.
It can’t be suitable for all types of learning, because, in some situations, you need to take detailed notes to learn the material.
Note-Taking Tips for Better Comprehension
Note-taking is a general practice and not just used in learning. For example, I take notes to shortlist my goals, create shopping lists, tasks for the day, a message draft to be sent, etc. In some cases, we adhere to traditional note-taking methods, while other circumstances require us to use collaborative notes. Despite the preferences, we need to have a better idea of how to use note-taking efficiently. So let’s look through some tips together:
Choose Your Style: Now that you have an overall view of note-taking methods, it’s time to experiment with each to find the one that suits you best.
No need to put down every word: The idea of taking notes is to capture the key points and then be able to build a summary of the topic. Very detailed writing will leave you behind. Prioritize the facts by paying attention to such sentences as “The most important part/thing is…”.
Use symbols and abbreviations: Decide which symbols to insert to shorten the most commonly used words or phrases. Use abbreviations, especially when taking notes on a topic full of familiar terminology.
Review and revise your notes: Get a jump on your notes as soon as possible and regularly review or edit them to retain the information for a longer time.
Improve your handwriting, but don’t focus on spelling and grammar: Make sure your handwriting is readable because it will cause you more inconvenience and effort to guess what lies underneath. Correct writing is a plus, but don’t waste time recalling grammar rules.
Be active: Listen carefully, ask questions, and seek answers to get a deeper insight into the material.
Use Note-Taking Apps: Don’t ignore technology. Support your note-taking skills with apps and tools (e.g., Saima); they’ll help you streamline the process of taking notes.
Conclusion
As you see, note-taking is a unique set of skills, and, if used properly, it will help facilitate the learning process. There isn’t an ideal method that will work for all. But we can at least choose between scribbling on paper or using digital note-taking apps.
Modern technologies are constantly developing new ways to engage in online learning. All of the above-described methods have their digital equivalents for the convenience of remote learners, and all are available to you.
Effective note-taking plays a significant role when it comes to academic success. Both students and educators will definitely benefit from adopting appropriate methods and strategies.