Types of Notes

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Have you ever sat down in class, pulled out some paper, and stared at it, wondering how to write down all this information? Have you ever wondered if there is a right or wrong way to be taking notes? (The answer is no, by the way.) Do you simply scribble down everything the professor says, and then realize later that your notes have no semblance of organization to them?

Let’s talk about notes today. There are two main types of notes: traditional notes, and graphic organizers.

Traditional Notes

These kinds of notes are what students usually think of when they start taking notes in class. Typically done on a sheet of lined paper or on the computer, traditional notes are basically lines of text. There are, however, a couple of different formats to consider.

List

Many students just start writing down points in a list. For some situations, this may work. I prefer to still indent and use different kinds of bullet points, but the majority of my notes in class are a simple list style. If the professor is disorganized or hard to follow, this may be the best style of note-taking. (Also see graphic organizers below.) A good strategy would be to go back to those notes after class and see if there is a good way to reorganize them into an outline.

Outline

Strict outline-formatted notes are hard to do during a lecture, although they work very well when taking notes on a book. The outline format uses Roman numerals, letters, and numbers combined with indentation to show a hierarchy of ideas. Titles, headings, and subheadings in textbooks make it very easy to see the hierarchy, but most professors don’t teach with headings and subheadings. (Some Powerpoint-adept professors can actually incorporate this into their lessons, but it is usually still difficult to follow.) Outlines are great for reviewing your notes later though, as they force your brain to make the hierarchical connections itself.

Cornell

Cornell notes have both a way to find information quickly, and an incentive to review your notes later built in to their format. For Cornell notes, first draw a horizontal line about two inches from the bottom of the paper. Then draw a vertical line about two inches from the left side of the paper. In the large space remaining, take notes. Usually the list style works well for Cornell notes.

After class, review your notes. Find key words or points in your notes and write prompts in the two-inch area you marked off on the left side of the page. These can be questions that you might see on an exam, or just a key word that your notes define. Review these keys regularly, and make sure you can answer the question/define the term without looking back at your original notes.

On the bottom of the page, write down the main topics that the professor covered. Later, you can flip through the notes quickly, scanning the bottom of the page to find the one with the equation you need.

Summary

Writing summaries is another way to ensure that information has been recorded, and is especially useful in situations where you already know the material. Sometimes this can be in a class that is a referesher course of a previously-studied topic, and sometimes it can simply be when the professor reviews last session’s topic at the beginning of the day. Summarizing this topic allows you to make the connection to today’s lecture, so your brain will remember the new information better.

To summarize a section, find the main idea and the major supporting details, and write a paragraph including this information. Be sure your paragraph accurately describes the professor’s point. Also make sure that your summary does not include too much detail, or too little.

Graphic Organizers

Basically, a graphic organizer is a picture. It helps the brain connect information in new ways, which in turn helps retention.

Web/Mind Map

As I mentioned recently, I have just discovered how useful mind maps can be. Simply writing down words and thinking about how concepts are related to each other can be a useful study tool. The points should spider out from a main topic, getting more detailed the further away from the topic they are.

Venn Diagram

These are a very common graphic organizer, and can be seen everywhere from middle-school English classes to college-level Business courses. Venn diagrams are the ones with the interlocking circles. Each circle represents a concept, and the parts that overlap contain the similarities between the two concepts, while the other parts show the differences. Venn diagrams are very useful anytime a speaker mentions that something is going to be compared or contrasted.

Charts and Tables

General charts and tables have many uses for organizing information. The most common time charts and tables are seen in classroom notes is when the professor puts one up and all the students copy it down. Also try to keep an eye out for other information that would go well in a table or chart, and make one up yourself.

Flowchart

Flowcharts are seen often in the technology and business worlds, although they can be useful for many other things as well. They are used to show sequences of concepts. If something is happening in a certain order, then, show it with a simple flowchart. This can be as easy as drawing arrows from one phrase to the next. Your brain associates those arrows with direction, so it follows the order that you set forth.

As always, when taking notes in class, try to keep in mind that there may be a better way to organize the information. If you don’t have time in class to put them in that better-organized form, do it after class.

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