Note Taking - An Art

 Note Taking - An Art

Note Taking is an art, there’s no rigid right or wrong. Everyone has their own way of taking notes, and different things work for different people. The skill of note taking also requires years of practice to hone. There are many broad categories of note taking, along with several media to do so.

Methods of Note Taking

• Outlining Method

• Mapping Method

• Charting Method

• Sentence Method

• Cornell Method

Outlining Method:

Dash or indented outlining is the easiest and usually best except for some science classes such as physics or math.

• The information which is most general begins at the left with each more specific group of facts indented with spaces to the right.

• The relationships between the different parts are carried out through indenting.

• No numbers, letters, or Roman numerals are needed.

This visually depicts the hierarchy of the topics, making it easily digestible.

Example:

Mapping Method:

Mapping is a method that uses comprehension/concentration skills and evolves in a note-taking form which relates each fact or idea to every other fact or idea. It borrows from ‘Graph Theory’ of Mathematics and Computer Science, where each topic is a Node  and the Edges are the relationships between the topics. Mapping is a graphic representation of the content of a lecture. It is a method that maximizes active participation, affords immediate knowledge as to its understanding, and emphasizes critical thinking. 

This format helps you to visually track your lecture regardless of conditions. Little thinking is needed and relationships can easily be seen.

When to Use: Use when the lecture content is heavy and well-organized. May also be used effectively when you have a guest lecturer and have no idea how the lecture is going to be presented. Also useful when brainstorming ideas.

Charting Method

If the lecture format is distinct (such as chronological), you may set up your paper by drawing columns and labeling appropriate headings in a table.

Advantages: 

• Helps you track conversation and dialogues where you would normally be confused and lose out on relevant content. 

• Reduces the amount of writing necessary. 

• Provides an easy review mechanism for both memorization of facts and study of comparisons and relationships.

Disadvantages:

• Table needs to prepared beforehand

• Content of Lecture needs to follow strict pattern

• No creative freedom

When to Use: 

• Test will focus on both facts and relationships. 

• The Content is heavy and presented fast. 

• You want to reduce the amount of time you spend editing and reviewing at test time. 

• You want to get an overview of the whole course on one big paper sequence.

• Content is easy to generalise into bins without much variance.

Sentence Method

Pretty Simple and Intuitive Method. Steps are:

• Define topic

• Condense point

• Write a sentence on point. Single sentence for single point.

• Repeat 

Useful when the lecturer is fast and/or the structure of the syllabus is not known beforehand.

Advantages:

• Makes it easy to summarise hard to digest topics in easy to grasp sentences.

• Easy to categorise topics into categories and revise the chapters

• Mostly used in lectures.

Cornell Method

The Cornell Notes system (also Cornell note-taking system, Cornell method, or Cornell way) is a note-taking system devised in the 1950s by Walter Pauk, an education professor at Cornell University. 

Walter Pauk

The Cornell method provides a systematic format for condensing and organizing notes. This system of taking notes is designed for use by a high school or college level student. There are several ways of taking notes, but one of the most common is the "two-column" notes style. The student divides the paper into two columns: the note-taking column (usually on the right) is twice the size of the questions/keyword column, which is on the left. The student leaves open five to seven lines, or about two inches (5 cm), at the bottom of the page for summary.

• Notes from a lecture or text are written in the note-taking column; notes usually consist of the main ideas of the text or lecture, and longer ideas are paraphrased. 

• Long sentences are avoided; symbols or abbreviations are used instead. 

• To assist with future reviews, relevant questions or keywords (which should be recorded as soon as possible, so that the lecture and questions will be fresh in the student's mind) are written in the left-hand keyword column. 

• Later, summary of the page is written on the bottom part of the page

• Title of the topic(s) covered is written at the top of the page

Advantages:

• Very easy to summarize the contents of the page in an instant and revise

• Finding, organizing, and filing the sheets is easy due to the title at top

• Cues at the left make the user question the content taught and cause active learning instead of passive learning.

Example:

Media of Note Taking

• Physical (Pen and Paper)

• Digitally Captured

• Digitally Saved / Backup

• Multimodal

Physical Notes

One of the most prevalent modes of taking notes for the last millenia. Be it on papyrus, clay tablets, or lately, on paper. The act of taking notes physically with our wrist is proven scientifically to be more effective for remembering the content. 

Taking Notes on a laptop is pretty common nowadays, but if you’re looking to actually master the material, typing notes is actually not the best way to do that. Recent studies from psychologists and neuroscientists alike have found that handwriting is king for effective learning. 

It has to do with how the brain processes different inputs of information. More specifically, it matters whether you transcribe a speaker’s content digitally — or instead capture its essence on paper. 

Advantages:

• Better Understanding of the Contents

Typing usually is super fast, letting us capture the lecture contents verbatim. Handwriting forces us to summarise, and hence, understand the content. Paper notetakers’ brains are working to digest, summarize, and capture the heart of the information. This, in turn, promotes understanding and retention.

• Hand written notes also have a personal touch, which helps retention of information easily when glanced upon, whereas typed notes look robotic and monotonous.

Reference: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0096-3445.130.3.520

• Good for the brain

Hand-writing stimulates neural pathways of the brain which typing doesn’t. Repeated triggers of said pathways help keep the brain active and healthy. Writing, whether for notes or at leisure, is thus a mental exercise one cannot skip.

“The more you use those neural pathways, the better it is for your overall brain health. The phrases “lifelong learning” and “use it or lose it” are never more true than with your brain. Both activities ward off debilitating diseases like Alzheimer’s and keep your cognitive abilities strong.”

Reference: https://www.geriatricinhomecare.com/benefits-reading-writing-dementia/

Disadvantages:

• Organizing - Paper usually tends to be vulnerable to the forces of the real world. It may get wet, lost, burnt, or chewed by your dog.

• Illegibility - although it adds the personal touch, a doctor’s handwriting is seldom useful in dire situations.

• Hard for automated and digital analysis - Although OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology is getting better day by day with the help of AI, most of the time it is not perfect. So using digital tools for editing, summarising, and analysing notes can't always work with physical handwriting.

• Logistical Difficulties - Smudging, Bleeding, Running out of ink/paper, physical accidents, etc.

Digitally Captured

Notes captured using technology are digital captured notes. 

• Typed notes on phone / laptop

• Drawn on a tablet

• Photo of the notes written on paper (Scan) using phone / camera / scanner

• Audio / Video recording of the lecture ( hard to do in India )

• Digital Reference Content like PDFs, LMS lessons, Youtube Videos.

These types of notes usually take up space on the user’s device.

Advantages:

• Easy to type notes quickly

• Easy to store/backup using digital storing media

• Easy to analyse using digital tools

• Easy to collaborate with others using digital sharing media

Disadvantages:

• Easy to forget the content

• Too many software / services to choose from (decision fatigue and FOMO)

• Out of sight, out of mind

Examples of Softwares:

• Document Editor (Microsoft Word / Google Docs / WPS Office)

  
  

• Drawing Apps (Notability, Paint)

• Scanning Apps (Adobe Scan, TapScanner)

  
  

• Audio/Video Recorders

• Audio Transcribers (Otter / Google TTS)

  
  

Digitally Saved

 

Contents, regardless of their way of capture, stored digitally are digitally saved notes.

They can be saved locally on one’s device or on the cloud.

Digitally Saved Notes are the most productive and useful in a student’s life. As most people have multiple devices (phone, laptop, PC) it's easy to lose track which file is stored where. Cloud Storage, paired with cross platform support, creates a seamless and delightful experience of storing, backing up, and collaborating with notes. Several popular notes and organization apps are cloud based. 

Examples:

• Evernote / Google Keep / Microsoft OneNote / Apple Notes - They let you type, draw on screen, attach multimedia files like image, video, audio , create checkboxes and tasks, etc

  
  
  
  

• Notion - It provides components such as notes, databases, kanban boards, wikis, calendars and reminders. Users can connect these components to create their own systems for knowledge management, note taking, data management, project management, among others. It lets you create arbitrary tree of pages and databases, linking to each other, creating a very powerful platform

  
  
  
  

• Google Tasks  - Lets you create lists of tasks to be done, and an easy way to check them.

• Google Calendar - The best way of organizing your day / month by using the method of Calendar Blocking.

  
  

Multimodal Notes

One of the ways digital notes differ dramatically from paper notes lies in the ability to capture information in multiple forms. With most tools (Notability, OneNote, Evernote, etc.), students can not only capture typed and handwritten notes but also incorporate photos, audio and even video. These versatile capabilities allow students to customize their note taking process to meet their learning needs. Consider these possibilities:

• Students may take notes on paper, add photos of those papers into a digital notebook, synthesize their thinking with audio or written notes, and then tag their digital notes for later retrieval.

• Students might use audio syncing -- a feature that records audio and then digitally syncs it with whatever the student writes or types -- to capture the context of the class discussion or lecture. When reviewing their notes, students could click or tap on their notes and then jump directly to that point in the audio recording.

• Teachers might provide students with their presentation slides or other note taking guides as PDF files. Now, students can focus on taking notes — using any modality — for synthesis, elaboration, reflection or analysis rather than in an attempt to capture content verbatim.

Note Taking is an art, have fun personalizing, experimenting with, and practising it.