As you sit in class, a seminar, a workshop, or a TED talk, one of the most effective ways of retaining the information you hear from the lecture is to take notes.
We should never overestimate our own memory because more often than not, the moment we step out from the room, our brains will have forgotten the bulk of what we saw and heard during the lecture.
But even if we do take notes, are we doing it properly? Have you ever had the experience of simply copying what your professor's slides say word for word? If you don't know by now, that's not necessarily the most efficient way of taking notes.
In order to find out what is the most effective and efficient way of taking notes, a research team conducted a study asking students what their methods and preferences were in terms of taking notes. Led by Kayla Morehead, these are the results from their survey:
According to Morehead’s team, the evidence, though complex and mixed, suggests overall that it is better to take notes with pen and paper rather than typing on a laptop (laptops can distract the note-taker and those sat near them, and note-book notes tend to be more varied and less verbatim).
Another key finding in the psychology literature is that it’s better to use your notes to organise the information you’re learning about, rather than to simply record what you hear verbatim. Nearly 60 per cent of the sample said they organised their notes, meaning a sizeable minority were following a sub-optimal strategy.
When it comes to learning from one’s notes, passively re-reading is an extremely popular strategy, even though it’s more effective to use the notes to test yourself. Over 90 per cent of the current sample said they spent time re-reading while about half tested themselves.
(Image credit: Miguel Henriques/Unsplash)
Most would only ask once.
My notes would include the date, topic, and whatever key words, phrases, names, dates, figures, and side comments I thought might be useful. Most fellow students were somewhat appalled that they would write several pages of almost verbatim lines from the lectures and I would sketch out a couple of pages of cryptic entries. Whatever it took to jog my memory or remind me to look up later ended up in my notes. Rarely any more than that.
The bottom line is find out what works for you.
Now lecturers are using Powerpoint presentation, I guess you don't even need to decide what is important.