Hello everyone,
I was wondering if anyone could give me some insight as to how I should most effectively take notes in class. Just a little background, I am going to be an Econ and finance major and I have a 12.9 iPad Pro and MacBook Pro. I was wondering what you have found to be successful as well as any advice that you may have.
Thanks in advance!
It might be different for each class. Handouts might be distributed or class notes might be online for printing out ahead of time. You might write notes on these. In econ or finance, it would be awkward to type in graphs or formulas on your computer while the prof is talking. Paper and pen might be best for some classes.
Writing down your notes helps you absorb them better than typing into a computer.
This is what professors recommend:
the Cornell Note Taking Method (https://www.umfk.edu/learning_center/studying_tips/notes/) and help students practice the all-important summarize (reduce if you care about the 5 R’s), reflect, and review parts of using notes effectively. Many students need to be told that the note-taking process doesn’t end when class does. Students can be encouraged to experiment with other types of note-taking to find one that works for the individual students, but few students can learn without taking any notes.
You can model for students the SQ3R method of reading (http://www.studygs.net/texred2.htm) and point out how it works better than highlighting, underlining, or other popular, easy techniques that result in low learning for most people (http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/journals/pspi/learning-techniques.html). Again, various types of reading strategies exist so students should experiment, but students do need to be able to learn from reading written materials. Learning to read technical material effectively often means writing questions to bring to class.
On Mac and iPad, I really like the app Notability. You can type, handwrite, draw, add photos, and annotate PDF documents. It will record audio from lectures and when you tap on different parts of the notes it will play the audio from that point in time. For digital note-taking it is pretty spectacular.
That being said, my strong preference is to take notes manually whenever I can. I remember and retain a lot more information that way. My primary notetaking tool is a binder full of different kinds of paper: blank, ruled, graph, etc.
Typically I either do notes entirely by hand, or do a hybrid approach.
For the hybrid method I just set up Notability to record a lecture, but I take my notes by hand as usual. Then if there is a moment in the lecture I know I will want to review, I’ll type a single word into Notability to bookmark that point.
Hoping you buy/bought the pencil to go along with your ipad pro. I can’t say enough good things about notability but I am personally moving to one note because it integrates better over all my equipment which includes windows machines
I did get the pencil with the iPad. I was thinking of using notability to take notes & record audio and then use the Mac to do more heavy duty tasks such as essays.
Sounds like you are set. Start your audio recording, add handwritten notes with your pen as the lecture progresses. Take pictures of handouts or white/chalk boards