Notetaking Tips

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While you'll have to decide which tool or method best suits your note-taking preferences, here are some tips you should keep in mind regardless of how you take your notes. Researchers have found that paying attention to these things before you take notes, while your take notes, and after you take notes will help you internalize, retain, and recall information.

Before Taking Notes

 

  • Read your Previous Notes
    • Research shows that reviewing your notes helps you learn and retain information. While you review, identify difficult concepts. You could meet with your instructor to get clarification or do additional research online. Concepts often build upon one another from week to week.
  • Survey the New Content
    • Ask yourself: What are the connections between this new content and previous material? Recognizing these connections can clue you into the big ideas for the week.

 
While Taking Notes

 

  • Don't Write Everything Down
    • Trying to capture everything that a lecturer says, or copying every word verbatim from a slide is great practice in copying information, but it does little to help your brain process that information. Summarizing, paraphrasing, using concept maps, and creating diagrams does more to help that information stick.
  • More is Not Always Better
    • Many online learners have great typing skills. If this is you, typing notes may help you capture more information. Typing may be a good strategy to use when listening to a live lecture. Many students can capture more information when typing, but research has found that typing works best when students have to remember lower level information. If your course requires you to memorize and recall a lot of information, typing may be the best method. However, if you want to conceptualize information or think critically about content, Mueller and Oppenheimer's (2014) research suggests that writing by hand or developing concept maps might be a better technique. You'll learn about concept maps on an upcoming page.
  • Use Your Own Words
    • Just writing down what's in a book or what your instructor puts on slides may not help you remember as much as using your own words to summarize information. And if you're not sure of something, write yourself a question so that you can be sure to follow up later with deeper reading or a question for your instructor.
  • Use Organizational Strategies
    • While you write notes, consider doing the following:
      • Abbreviate long words. Some of your courses may use a lot of long words or jargon. Develop abbreviations for words you find yourself writing a lot.
      • Take notes in different colors to highlight important points.
      • Add examples to clarify abstract ideas.
      • Pay particular attention to and make notes on
        • definitions,
        • repeated information,
        • charts or graphs, and
        • examples.

 
After Taking Notes

 

  • Review Notes Regularly
    • This may seem like common sense, but students who review their notes after taking them do better on exams and papers. And don't limit yourself to reviewing just before an exam. The more often you review your notes, the better. Set time aside in your schedule for reviewing what you've written before tackling homework.
  • Compare Your Notes with Instructor-Provided Resources
    • Comparing what you've written to instructor slides and study guides can help you determine how well you're taking notes. What have you missed? How do you and the instructor differ in how you explain concepts? Are any of your notes extraneous?
  • Revise Your Notes
    • One powerful action you can take after you've written your notes is to revise them. According to Luo et al. (2016), "revisers recorded more additional notes and achieved somewhat higher scores" (p. 45).
  • Explain Difficult Concepts to Someone Else
    • Talking through concepts, especially with someone who isn't a student in the course, will help you retain information and organize your ideas.