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Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Take Notes In the Modern Classroom?
Krau Ming writes "After about eight years spent in research, I've made the decision to go back to school — medical school. When I last spent the bulk of my days sitting in lectures, I took notes with paper, and if the professor wasn't technologically impaired, he/she would have posted powerpoint slides as a PDF online for us to print and make our notes on. Since it has been so long, I am looking for some options other than the ol' pen and paper. Is there an effective way of taking notes with a laptop? What about tablet options? Are there note-taking programs that can handle a variety of file types (eg: electronic textbooks, powerpoint slides, PDFs)? Or should I just sleep in and get the lectures posted online and delay learning the course material until the exam (kidding)?"
If it were me, I'd stick to good ol' fashioned carbon on paper. I find my ability to retain information increases greatly if I write it down myself, manually.
Of course, YMMV, not everybody learns the same way.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Sorry to discourage you, but I have found that using pen and paper is the best way to take notes. Why? Maybe it helps your brain process what your trying to learn. It could be that it is distraction free. I know that it is the simplest way to take notes, and often times, the simplest is the best.
I have a child about to attend college in the fall. I've already told her to take more notes on paper than with the laptop she's going to get soon. Why? I pulled out my chemistry, calc, and Pascal notes from college courses taken over 20 years ago and showed them to her. One look at them and she understood what I was talking about.
Drawings for chem experiments, flowcharts with notation for my programs, and clear notes with plenty of examples from calc made her understand. The stuff I did with paper and pencil back then would not be easy to replicate as quickly with a laptop. She understands now.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
In the past my job was teaching students about note-taking. I haven't read the current research in a while, at least more than for fun, but here's the upshot as I know it. Take notes. Pencil and paper is probably best because it's the least prone to break and because it can be the most free-form. But the tool is not as important as what you do with it. Don't be slavish. Just take down the high points. Use the recto and the verso. The recto is for in-class, the "note-taking"; the verso is for after class, the "note-taking" most students don't do. This is for notes in which you interpret, summarize, and clarify. Basically it's for reprocessing and setting-up for further review. Then review material frequently at irregular intervals. In a given study session, work on the verso for that day, then review material from the same day a week ago and the same day from one month ago. Also, the best time to study is just prior to some sleep, either the night's sleep or a nap of at least 15-20 minutes. Now, in my experience, many students will respond: Oh no Dr. C____, I'm special/different/exceptional. I'll be more blunt here, in the interest of space: no you're not. At least there are no studies suggesting that any other methods than I've described are more effective. Feel free to supplement with tape-recordings, etc. But remember the main ideas of limited recording, reinterpretation, and frequent review at irregular interviews. (An added brief note: the research is building that, with very, very few exceptions, no one is a "visual" or "verbal" learner; that's mostly 70s touch-feely bullshit. But most people do learn well if they use multiple media for information storage and retrieval. This could be as simple as notes with words and diagrams. And that brings me back to the pencil and the paper.)
Focus on trying to understand what is being said rather than distracting yourself with trying to record a summary or the highlights. If there's something you need clarified or that doesn't seem to fit to you, ask about it. You'll be solidifying your own understanding of the material and probably helping about a few other students in the same position as you. Other reference resources such as passed out notes or a textbook will be available to you that you can peruse in your own time.
Anyone suggesting using a laptop should be shot. Transcribing your professors words into verbatim text is NOT learning. The laptop fails in the lecture hall for many reasons. It is difficult to inject your own thoughts about the subject matter when you are too busy trying to get every last word the professor is saying, and it is far to tempting to do so. You cannot easily switch to a "drawing" function to draw down diagrams or annotate your notes. Also they are loud, large and annoying hearing the clicking of keys everywhere. If you are taking notes using a laptop, you are not taking good notes, period.
Anyone suggesting using an iPad with stylus should be shot. Steve Job's made it very clear that Apple tablets are not supposed to use pen input, and so pen input on the iPad is a shitty experience. The input resolution of the iPad is way too low, so you can't take anything better then grade school looking chalk lines and Fisher Price looking diagrams. iPad's on screen keyboard is horrible for any kind of note taking.
Most "other" tablets have failed to include decent handwriting tools. Pen input on tablets is too slow and inaccurate to match pen/paper experience. Electronic Pen input forces you to compromise, either due to the lousiness of the hardware or the shiftiness of the software.
Best experience is to use good ol' fashioned pen and paper. Why:
Slows you down, makes you think about what is being said rather then madly transcribing words. Using pen and paper you should be putting your OWN thoughts and words down about the subject matter, not someone else's.
Easy to draw/diagram/annotate. In a math/science course, you will dump using a laptop or tablet simply because the subject matter is just not easy to transcribe to text.
Easy to annotate after the fact. If the professor linked a point previously made it is very easy to go back with pen and paper to add additional notes at the point they where taken.
I have lousy hand writing so I always took notes twice, once in the lecture hall and then would spend a little bit of time after class cleaning up the notes. Forced me to think twice about the lecture and so could add/update the notes.
When I took hand written notes, I actually could remember when points where made and easily find them, even weeks or months later. Using a laptop I found one page looked exactly like another so trying to find some point made during a lecture 3 months ago was impossible.
While their is a certain appeal of using technology to take lecture notes, realize that the lecture process has not changed in hundreds of years. A boring old fart droning on about largely irrelevant information doesn't require 21st century note taking tech.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.