Effective Note-Taking

Note-taking is one of the most important skills a student can develop. Good notes can help you remember what was said in lectures and allow you to study facts and concepts well after the class ends.

It may also be useful to take notes while studying: writing down questions or thoughts that occur to you while reading allows you to connect and interact with the text and information more dynamically.ⁱ

While gathering research, keeping clear notes can help guard against accidental plagiarism. If your notes are specific about where you got the article or citation, this will enable you to find it again within your research materials and cite it correctly. Write down the source of the work and all of the needed information (full title, author name, journal name, page numbers, date, etc.) in order to have a complete and accurate citation.

There are many different note-taking methods, and each has its benefits.

Hand-written notes—This is generally considered to be the best way to take notes, especially for class lectures. The physical act of writing makes for better recall of information later on, while typing out word for word what is being said in a lecture typically means the brain will have less engagement with the information.ⁱⁱ Many different studies have compared typed note-taking to handwritten notes, with the latter coming out on top. Check out the links below to read more about the benefits of hand-written notes:

The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking. Pam A. Mueller & Daniel M. Oppenheimer. Psychological Science. June 2014

Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology. John Dunlosky et al. Association for Psychological Science. January 2013

A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop—Scientific American

Taking Notes? Bring a Pen, Skip the Computer—The Boston Globe

Typed notes—It is often faster and easier to type notes during lectures, and it allows for exact transcription of what was said or written on the board in class. Electronically formatted notes are more portable and easily carried and shared across devices, and one can quickly find needed terms or specific notes by keyword searching in the document or device.

Evernote: This free, highly useful app syncs across all your devices and enables document organizing and searching as well as easy sharing with classmates and colleagues.

Google Docs/Drive: You need a Google account to use these, which are like Word documents that aren’t locked to one computer. Google Docs are automatically backed up in the cloud, and their multi-user feature is excellent for group papers and projects.

Want the convenience of digital notes with the memory-boosting benefits of handwriting? Take handwritten notes on your tablet with a stylus, or use a scanning app on your smartphone or tablet to convert a page of handwritten notes into a PDF.

[i] Robinson, S. (2014, January 22). ARTH 203: Early Renaissance Art & Architecture—Library Assignment. Denison LibGuides. Retrieved from http://libguides.denison.edu/

[ii] May, C. (2014, June 3). A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop. Scientific American. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-n...