One of the biggest skills that you will need to build when you go to university is the skill of taking notes during lectures. Good note-taking skills can be really helpful when you’re in university as it allows for you to keep your information organized and it can significantly help you in your success as a student, no matter what major you’ve opted to choose. A lot of times, high school note-taking skills are not great preparations for college and university courses, but there are some ways that you can learn how to take notes that are helpful.
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Why Do You Need to Take Notes?
If you go to a lecture and you think “I don’t need to take notes, I’ll remember this info,” you should probably rethink that idea. Although some people do find it easy to not take notes, taking notes ultimately is very helpful.
First, you’ll actually be able to retain information when you take notes. By writing things down, you’ll recall where you’ve written pieces of information and have already been exposed to the ideas, so you won’t have to learn everything from scratch.
Second, taking notes helps with forcing you to stay engaged with the lecture. You will be listening actively to the professor so that you can actually take notes, so therefore, you’ll be more engaged and thus more focused.
Third, having good notes helps with your review and studying. When you go to actually study for your exams and practice your retention of the information, you’ll realize that good notes can really make life easier for you and can make the amount of time you spend on studying much more beneficial.
Ultimately, taking notes is a good practice to have when it comes to academics and I think that it’s very valuable to know how to do it properly.
How to Take Effective Notes
Before Your Lecture
Before you go to your lecture, there are some things that you can do so that you’ll be ready to listen and take notes in class.
First, you can read the textbook material or if the professor has posted lecture notes online, you can read those ahead of time. Basically, you want to just briefly go through the notes and try to get an understanding of what your professor will be going through so that you’re not trying to figure out everything on the spot.
You can also create an outline for the lecture if you want to fill out with notes, but this may not be necessary depending on how your notes are structured. When I was in university, many of my professors gave us outlines or they’d post the slides ahead of time. Not all of them do this, but if you have access to the slides, you might want to create an outline based on the slides so that you can write your notes into the outline.
The last thing you want to do before class is to basically setup how you will be taking notes. There are different methods, such as taking notes on a laptop by typing them out or by handwriting your notes. Ultimately, this depends on you as a person and what you prefer. I personally had an iPad with an Apple Pencil and a Logitech K380 Keyboard so I could switch between typing for text-heavy notes and handwriting for things like math and graphs.
If you want some recommendations for note taking apps on the iPad, check out this post!
Chose a Method for Note Taking
If you personally don’t have a set method for how you want to take notes, there are many methods that are tried, true, and tested out there and have been trusted by many. I personally didn’t have a specific method for taking notes and I came up with one that worked for me, but I’ve tried a few before and I know that some people benefit from having a structure to their notes that they can just follow every time.
Cornell Method
The Cornell Method is probably the most known and one of the most popular out there. This is basically where you condense and organize notes down by splitting a page into three sections: A left-hand narrow cue column, a wide right-hand note-taking column, and a summary section at the bottom.
The middle section is basically where you take your detailed notes, the left side is where you jot down questions, keywords, or “cues” when you’re studying, and the summary basically forces you to sum everything up and prove your understanding of what was written on the page.
Outline Method
The next method I want to talk about is the outline method. This is basically the most common note-taking skill and the one that I employed the most. This is when you structure a format for your notes using headings and subheadings. This method is great for lectures that have a clear structure and it’s especially good because it works for many different subjects out there.
Your headings are basically the main topic and the subheadings are the subtopics that go under the main topics. You fill out the information under the subheadings or the main heading if you don’t have any subheadings.
This is an example from one of my notes from a course I took:
From the picture you can clearly see what the main headings are and then the subheadings as well as what the notes and information under them are.
Mapping Method
If you’re more of a visual person and you like having drawings to help you with notes, then you probably want to take a look at the mapping method. This is basically a method where you create a diagram and this diagram has a central concept in the middle of the page. From there, you branch out and add detailed information and ideas as well as what connections exist between the branches. It’s a really good one for visual people, I’d say.
I personally never really used this because I’m an impatient person that just wanted to get her notes done, but I think this is a valuable one too!
Sentence Method
If you’re in a class where the lecture is more or less not very organized and it’s just pretty much your professor talking for the length of time, then you probably won’t be able to create a very organized structure to your notes.
This is perfectly fine, but you’ll have to adjust your note-taking strategies in this case. The sentence method basically just involves you writing down what your professor says and splitting the new thoughts and ideas and facts into sentences.
This is a great method for getting ideas down quickly, but you might want to consider organizing your notes by yourself later so that it makes more sense when you go to study.
Stay Focused on the Key Info
While you are in a lecture, you should definitely try to focus on what the professor is saying and you should try to listen in for key information rather than just writing everything down. Often, professors will be clear on information that they really want you to know and sometimes they’ll outright tell you that you’ll have questions about a certain topic on your exams. That’s why listening is important, as you may miss this crucial piece of info!
You also want to identify the main ideas and not focus on the smallest of details because a lot of small details can be unimportant and you may miss out on the main ideas.
Saving time is also important when it comes to writing notes and so you want to take advantage of abbreviations and symbols in order to save time. Instead of writing “and” you might want to use “+” or “&” and maybe instead of writing “with” you want to write “w/” and similar abbreviations.
You also don’t want to get caught up on gaps in your notes. You’ll miss information naturally, so you can ask a classmate for the details or you can look at the textbook to fill out that sort of information. Some professors move really fast and others move slow, so adjust how you write your notes and the speed you keep up with depending on how they are as a teacher.
Organization is Key!
Organization is a big deal when it comes to notes and making your notes actually useful. If your notes are not very organized, then you’ll find it hard to study from them later when you have an exam coming up.
You can stay organized by doing this like this:
- Keep things in order and grouped together by topic
- Add the date and page numbers in case something gets misplaced
- Utilize color to highlight key information to call it out to your mind
- You also want to include some blank space maybe in the margins so you can add any extra info or notes in case you forgot something
Revise After the Lecture
A method I’ve seen people use for easier retention is to revise immediately after the lecture, which can help you because you’ll be able to solidify the information better and reinforce the material in your memory.
You can also create flashcards based on the notes after the lecture is over so that you can study those instead of the notes themselves. I know that some people benefit more from flashcards than they do from just a sheet of notes. I personally didn’t use flashcards a lot, but I think that they’re helpful in some cases.
You can also meet up with some classmates and discuss the lecture and try to help each other understand what you learned about in the lecture. The others might have picked up on information you missed out on, so it can be helpful.
Take Advantage of Technology
Technology is a great way to make taking your notes much easier and you can take advantage of many tools provided alongside technology to simplify the note taking process. First, you can take advantage of note apps like Goodnotes or OneNote (check out this post for more info on these apps) since they allow you to keep everything organized in one place, have many tools to make note-taking efficient and easier, and more.
If you can, you might want to consider recording your lectures as you can listen to anything you missed later. However, some professors might not allow this so you want to be sure to ask for permission.
If you prefer handwriting your notes but you don’t want to have to carry around a bunch of notebooks and pens then consider getting a tablet and stylus. I have made a list recommending tablets for writers, but you can check that out too because your needs as a student aren’t too different from writers!
Active Learning
One way you can enhance your notes is to practice active learning. This is where you try to focus on the professor’s words and ask questions so that you can further your learning. You also want to try and actively paraphrase information as you listen to it in your own words so that you can process the information from your own perspective and actually understand it better.
Additionally, you want to adapt your style to each lecture and class as different professors and different courses will have different requirements and needs, so you need to be aware of this sort of situation.
Conclusion
A big part of the university experience is learning how to take notes, how to maximize the efficiency of note-taking, and how to ensure that your notes are actually helpful for your studies so that you can ace your exams. There are quite a lot of methods out there, but you should take some time in your first semester to learn more about your style, your methods, and what works for you.
Before you head on out, be sure to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga, and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter so you can get updates on all my latest WIPs, book releases, posts and more!