The Cornell Note-taking System (2001)
lsc.cornell.edu
lsc.cornell.edu
My approach is:
* Take lecture notes during the lecture, pausing the lecture to really understand everything (active listening). I never re-watch a lecture (takes too long), so I make sure the lecture notes have all info needed to review for an exam.
* Before an exam review all lecture notes.
That is about all I need to ace pretty much any exam that is about information retention.
If the exam requires real understanding and thought (algorithms, math), then the best way to prep is doing lots of practice. No note-taking system is going to help you there, it will only waste your time.
no doubt in 2001 we had maybe <1% classes available as pre-recorded. this seems like a good foundational approach, better than "just take notes and pause". What if you are in- you know- an actual lecture? I took copious notes but had no review process or built in repetition (which this does).
Bar that, I recommend what you do is record the lecture audio while jotting down the major points (note taking apps like Notability work great for this). After the lecture re-review the audio, make sure you understand everything thoroughly, adding any additional notes that are required. This requires having to go through the lecture twice. If you are comfortable in the subject you can probably take sufficient notes during the lecture without having to listen to it again. Then before the exam, go through your notes and make sure you understand it.
But, then, I've realised that this is from Cornell, and the note taking system here is for students noting lectures.
As time goes on, I refined the page. We all travel a bit, so I added a section for "where's the staff this week."
I liked this idea so much that I've created similar templates for each of my regular meetings. A project control meeting has a different format than a staff meeting.
I'm very interested in ways to improve my meeting notes, and it sounds like you've already done a fair bit of testing on your templates.
The biggest tip I can suggest is to create the template with a pen, instead of making a formal template on the computer and printing it out. Iteration is your friend in this case.
And the very important star for things I don’t want to forget or that are important.
Most people just interrupt because they are afraid they’ll forget and must bring up their very important point right now.
I also sometimes make a diagram showing the seating arrangement of everyone in the meeting so I can know who was present and refer to them by name if I’m unfamiliar with them.
Another note taking trick I use is to use circled numbers to refer to things elsewhere on this page or other pages.
Most important of all is that I never use a notebook with rippable paper; these notebooks are important documents I keep with me forever. Every page gets a page number and the date at the top. I reserve the first page of each notebook for a table of contents. Whenever something happens that I might need to refer to later I put it and its page number in the table of contents. Many table of contents entries end up with many page numbers after them, such as pages with T-shirt ideas, game ideas, and haikus. Because of this system I can say “see #3 on 2016-05-24” and go right to something I noted years ago. I go through about one notebook per year and have them going back a long time.
https://www.training.nih.gov/assets/Lab_Notebook_508_(new).p...
Bulletjournal is a bit heavy weight. But maybe BulletJournal is meant to be an example what you can personalize to meet your own preference.
So I use a lot of paper, and look forward to the day that I can really use my method virtually. But the time it saves helping me learn stuff (by making it super easy to do a quiz-like review) keeps me coming back.
Here's a guideline to what freshman can expect throughout their college years: Each unit of credit requires 2 to 3 hours of outside classwork per week. So, a student carrying 15 credit hours should plan to spend 30 to 45 hours each week studying beyond the classroom.
If a student has 3-4 classes a day, they can't reasonably spend 9-12 hours working solely on digesting those lectures that day. They'll have homework at the very least, likely some ongoing projects, normal human activities -- not to mention that in the US they probably also have a part-time (or full time) job.
Maybe we are talking about the same thing but maybe not. Most recommendations that I see (including the official one from the college where I work) say 2-3 hours outside class for every hour inside class. Maybe not the same day, but if you have a week with 3 hourly classes then the recommendation calls for 6-9 additional hours spent that week digesting the material of those class hours.
I like this explanation better (gives a better visual of how it's useful):
https://stanford.box.com/shared/static/olhy2yxfjwfw9ozflf4g....
(In case you don't trust "box.com", the PDF is linked in the "Tools" footer here: https://duckstop.stanford.edu/blog-category/note-taking)
I say "form of the system", because I wasn't as formal with it, and didn't do the "bottom page summary" - but it still worked well for note taking; I think the very act of doing these notes "hands on" helped with deeper understanding and retaining of the material.
On a side note - one other thing I learned from that class was to never again take a MOOC course on the first iteration; you are essentially the "guinea pig" experiment for beta testing it, and that can be a frustrating experience at times.
Just listening doesn't work as well for most people.
Most people find it helpful. If I had a coworker on a team in a dev meeting, and they didn't take any notes, though, I'd be super suspicious they weren't going to retain all the important parts.
Personally I think it takes more than a note taking process, there has to be some personal intrinsic motivation to understand and a genuine desire to know. Otherwise its just test cramming and will be forgotton soon after.
In my experience we often missed things, because there was too much info, so it was very hard to copy the info and pay attention at the same time.
It would have been much better to get a copy of the notes beforehand and add only my observations, making it personal.
At that point, I can refactor my notes including the professor's outline, adding details I missed or elaborating on parts of the outline that might have been sparse.
I went back to college late in life and now with cellphones and cloud storage people often recorded lectures with permission. One person used OBS most others used their mobile phone's note recorder app. Many used Microsoft OneNote (free Office 365 with tuition) to record and photos of whiteboard notes and diagrams. OneNote can OCR the text and even adjust skew of the image.
I still wrote my own notes though at first hand written because I wrote in cursive which is far faster than block printing. But I was persuaded by the masses typed my notes into a document on my laptop. I regret that now because I noticed a significant difference in retention between hand-written versus typed. When I wrote by hand I recalled much more of the material.
And take this with a grain of salt because I'm friggin' old.
Exactly, that's why I said everyone should get a copy of the official notes beforehand and write down their own notes on them.
It's much more efficient than slavishly copying everything you hear, making it harder to pay attention.
I like this tip, it seems handy.