By Emily Winters
One of the most important skills that a college student should learn is how to take effective notes. Taking effective notes, whether while you read course material or while you are sitting in the classroom listening to the professor’s lecture, will help you in the future to study for tests or write papers. Overall, effective note taking will help you remember and process large amounts of information at one time.
Taking notes during lectures can be overwhelming. Maybe you feel like the professor is not staying on the slideshow long enough, or they are talking too fast, and you are worried that if you stop writing to raise your hand and ask the professor to repeat themselves, you’d have missed more information.
An important thing to remember during these times of stress and scramble is that your textbook and reading materials are your friends! Reviewing the textbook before the lecture will give you baseline knowledge and foundational definitions that will ground the professor’s lecture and help you stay on track rather than getting lost in information overload. Also, often, professors will upload their slideshows online to Canvas or other services. Given this, during class, you can concentrate on what the professor is saying rather than focusing on copying down the slideshow’s information word by word.
Lastly, while taking notes during lecture - and while you are reading - prioritize words or concepts that are repeated. In many cases, these words or phrases - acting like “signposts” in a way - are signaling the main idea of the reading or the lecture.
Many of these tips apply to note taking while reading as well. Reading notes are meant to help you later - and only you! Therefore, prioritize taking breaks from reading to add your own interpretations and thoughts to your notes. These notes can help you synthesize this information into your own papers and assignments later on. Also, because these notes are for you, feel free to use shorthand that you can understand (this applies to in-class note taking as well)!
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Now that I have shared some basic note taking tips and tricks, let’s dig a little deeper into some note taking styles!
The Cornell Method
Created in the 1950’s by - you guessed it! - a professor from Cornell University, there is a good chance that you have heard of this method before. Some benefits to using this method include: effectively organizing your information and practicing active recall even as you take notes, practicing paraphrasing and summarizing, and identifying main ideas and important details as you take notes. The outline format pushes you to be selective about which information you record.
Here is an example outline using the Cornell Method (taken from this helpful website):
The Outline Method
The Outline Method is my personal favorite. Use different levels (using bullet points and the “tab” key to indent to different levels) to indicate main ideas and evidence/ sub points! This is a very visual way of organizing your notes. For me, I also add a color component to my note taking layering. When I read the textbook or scholarly articles, I take my initial notes in black ink. My own personal thoughts I add on top in a different pen color, like green. Then when I go to class and we discuss the readings, I use a different color, like orange, to add more comments and clarifications in the margins.
Here is a visual example of the outline method:
Image taken from https://englishonthego.com.br/note-taking-style/.
Morse Code Method
Do you feel like it takes you a frustrating amount of time to read articles or books for your courses? One method that might help with this is the Morse Code Method!
The Morse Code Method works like this: as you read, put a “dot” next to a sentence that contains a main idea, and put a “dash” next to sections with details that support the “dot!” After you have finished reading, go back and paraphrase each dot and dash, writing down your summaries into a notebook or typing them into a document.
This method has several advantages, including its built-in paraphrasing. Paraphrasing, in comparison with copying sentences or concepts word for word, encourages you to understand and process the material. In order to effectively summarize a statement or concept, you have to understand it! Also, this method encourages you to keep track of useful page numbers, which will help you find direct quotations and the page numbers to cite them when crafting papers.
QEC Method
“QEC” stands for “Question - Evidence - Conclusion!” To use this note taking method, divide your paper into three sections, using the headings “Question,” “Evidence,” and “Conclusion.” This, as you can see, differs from some of the other formats we have been discussing, many of which have only two sections and not three.
As you take notes during lecture or reading, you should filter the information into these three categories! Of course, you may be thinking that it will be impossible to have the time to form questions about the lectures as you are trying to keep up with the professor! Not a problem. The “question” can also serve as a helpful way to process the information after a lecture by asking yourself the questions that could lead to those conclusions, or if the evidence and conclusions leave anything to be desired or leave you curious, you can add a question about it in the
appropriate section!
Visit here for more information on the Q/E/C method!
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In conclusion, I hope that these note taking tips and methods were helpful to you as you prepare for the final push of the semester! Have a great break everyone, and as always, visit us on the second floor of Armitage Hall or open a chat with us by clicking the button on the lower right of the page.
Did we miss any important note taking methods? Let us know by opening a chat!
P.S. Are you wondering if you should take notes in class by hand or using your computer? Computer Science professor Cal Newport, in his book How to Become a Straight-A Student, stresses the importance of taking lecture notes on a computer because you can type faster than you write. However, at the same time, it is proven that taking notes by hand helps you process and retain more information! So, in the end, how you take your notes depends on personal preference!
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