Millions of students enter college every year with a new academic world to tackle. Freshman go headfirst into lectures without any direction on how to fully grasp the information handed to them.
According to a study conducted by the University of San Francisco, students were 1.5 times more likely to fail a lecture class compared to an active learning class. It can be especially hard when lecture PowerPoints are not available online.
This is done because professors want their students to be proactive in active learning. Although, for people just leaving high school, people may not know where to start.
Wendy Scott is a retired English professor who has taught at Buffalo State University. She has taught a variety of subjects such as literature, English second language, freshman and advanced writing classes. She is now a tutor in Writing Support Services at Buffalo State.
Scott states how the essence of note taking is to understand the purpose and importance of the information given to you. It is extremely important to make sure you are fully listening first. Note taking is like many things in life, it takes repetition to get good at it.
“Obviously, there is no right way to format notes, it is important to get the foundations down first,” Scott says.
Listening and making sure you can point out what information is the most important in a lecture will make the note taking process much easier. When these two key skills are established, you can find what methods work best for you.
Scott says how there are great benefits to writing things down on paper. Although, it is best to use whatever works best for you during a lecture. If you are a faster typer than writer, you will be better off bringing your laptop to class rather than a notebook.
After a student finds their basic grounding on note taking, it’s best to run with a note taking strategy that will help them succeed. Each student learns in different ways and often requires different pieces of visual, textual and auditory information.
An example of a note taking strategy for visual learners is dual coding theory. This theory combines written notes with visual elements such as sketches and diagrams. A tactic for auditory learners is transcribing definitions into audio.
This can be achieved using digital tools or recorded with the student’s voice. For textual learners, there is the Cornell note-taking method. This method helps organize texts in a way which helps recall information in an effortless fashion. This is achieved by blocking information into different cues and summarizing them on each page.
