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Study methods

How to get a handle on note-taking technique

En person der tager noter
Notes are an important tool for understanding both lectures and the syllabus in higher education. But note-taking is not a simple task that anyone can just figure out from the start, but a skill that needs to be learned. Here are some good tips on how to take the best notes.

Table of Contents

  • Taking good notes is not a self-evident practice
  • The researcher’s best advice for taking good notes
  • It takes effort to make good notes
  • Learn to learn
Note techniques

Taking good notes is not a self-evident practice

Your notebooks all look alike and you forgot to write the dates at the top of the paper. On the computer, the notes are also a mess; a long document for each subject.

The exam is approaching, and now you have to spend all your time understanding your crow’s feet and getting a handle on your digital notes. Perhaps this is a scenario you recognize?

It is a skill to be good at taking notes and being able to multitask is not the best strategy for you to learn, and there is a very natural reason for that.

Marianne Hagelia is the author of the book, Digital Study Techniques and a researcher at Østfold University College in Norway. She points out:

We know from research that writing and listening at the same time is not very smart, because we humans cannot manage both things at once.
Marianne Hagelia, researcher

But also on a more human level, there are challenges in taking good notes which can make it difficult.

It’s about structure and discipline.

When you have finished the lecture, it is important that you go through the notes and clean them up. What often happens is that the students scribble while listening more or less unconsciously, and when the lecture is over, they go out for lunch, and then they forget all about it for the exam.
Marianne Hagelia

The researcher's best advice for taking good notes

Repitition

It takes effort to make good notes

After all, notes are about helping to remember new information. As a student, you have to remember points from lectures and you have to remember texts.

For over 100 years, people have had knowledge of how important it is to repeat your learning immediately after you have acquired it. The German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus described back in 1888 how a large part of new information goes straight into the oblivion box, if you do not deal with it immediately after you have received the information. For example through notes.

Ebbinghaus calls it “the forgetting curve”, and if you are interested you can look up the graph yourself. The main thing you need to know is that a remarkable amount is lost even if you review your notes just a day after a lecture.

Hagelias therefore encourages you to get the note-taking technique in place and write down questions for each lecture.

It may feel like extra work, but it's an investment that pays off because you remember far more if you have a well-functioning note system.
Lectures are often thematically connected, but there can be a gap of several days between them. Therefore, it is important to ask questions about what you have learned, so that you can discuss it with your fellow students and bring it forward to the next lecture.
Marianne Hagelia

Learn to learn

Marianne Hagelia believes that the ability to learn is an overlooked skill in both the Danish and Norwegian education systems.

Schools do not teach enough how to learn best. They only focus on the content itself. But learning to learn is more important now than ever before.
Marianne Hagelia

The ability to critically and reflectively sort through information is, according to Hagelia, an essential skill in a time when fake news and misinformation are prevalent.

Curiosity and the ability to learn new things are the foundation for a well-functioning democracy, the professor believes.

So no; notes are not just notes. Good luck with the note taking technique.

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