Note-taking

Advantages:

1. Simplicity: The list method is straightforward, making it a comfortable starting point for students unfamiliar with other note-taking techniques.
2. Flexible structure: The list method doesn’t demand hierarchical organization, making it adaptable for fast-paced lectures or discussions without a clear hierarchy.
3. Active engagement: List-making requires attention and promotes engagement with the material being presented.
4. Visual clarity: Lists present information in a clear and readable format.

Disadvantages:

1. Lack of hierarchy: Since lists generally lack the hierarchical structure of other methods, students may have difficulty distinguishing between main ideas and supporting details.
2. Excessive writing: This method can lead to an overemphasis on writing, potentially causing students to miss important points as they struggle to note down everything.
3. Limited information processing: The list method focuses more on capturing as much of the lecture as possible in real-time rather than processing and understanding the material, which may affect long-term retention and understanding.

Advantages:

1. Organized structure: The outline method presents a hierarchy of information, which allows students to distinguish between main ideas, supporting details, and minor points.
2. Effective review: The structured format simplifies the revision process, making it easier for students to locate specific pieces of information.
3. Promotes understanding: By requiring students to categorize information according to its importance, the outlining method facilitates a deeper understanding of the material.
4. Adaptability: Outlines can be expanded or modified to accommodate additional details or subpoints that emerge during a lecture or while studying.

Disadvantages:

1. Requires concentration: The outline method requires active engagement and the ability to understand and categorize information in real time, which may be difficult during fast-paced lectures.
2. Hierarchy anxiety: Students may struggle with determining the level of importance of specific pieces of information.
3. Lack of flexibility: This method can be hard to adapt for discussions or lectures that don’t follow a clear hierarchy of learning concepts. Outlines are less effective for subjects that involve complex interrelationships between concepts.
4. Time-consuming: It may take more time to create an outline than it would to take notes in other methodologies.

Advantages:

1. Visual learning: Concept maps appeal to visual learners, as this method can help students see connections between ideas more clearly.
2. Creative engagement: Concept maps can be more engaging and creative than linear note-taking styles, which may increase student interest and information recall.
3. Flexible structure: Concept maps are easily expandable and adaptable, allowing for the addition of new information or connections as understanding deepens.
4. Facilitates understanding: By mapping the relationship between ideas, this method can aid in understanding complex concepts and structures.

Disadvantages:

1. Time-consuming: Creating a detailed concept map can be more time-consuming than other note-taking methods, which is especially challenging during a fast-paced lecture.
2. Challenging for complex topics: It can be challenging to create a concept map for topics with complex interrelations or without a clear structure.
3. Requires space: Concept mapping requires more space than linear methods, which can be a disadvantage when space is limited.

Advantages:

1. Organized structure: The Cornell Method provides a clear and organized structure that can help students locate and review information.
2. Active engagement: This method encourages active engagement, as it involves generating questions and summarizing information.
3. Facilitates review: This format is excellent for review, with cues and questions serving as prompts for active recall of information.
4. Efficient: The Cornell method facilitates efficiency, as it encourages concise note-taking, which minimizes the risk of including unnecessary information in one’s notes.

Disadvantages:

1. Requires discipline: The Cornell Method demands discipline in maintaining the structure and in consistently developing cues and summaries.
2. Time-consuming: The method can be time-consuming, particularly the process of generating cues and summaries.
3. Lack of flexibility: This method might be less suitable for lectures or discussions that don’t follow a linear or hierarchical structure, as it doesn’t readily allow for visual mapping of information.

Advantages:

1. Organized and concise: The charting method provides a clear, concise layout that facilitates easy review of information.
2. Comparison and contrasting: This method works well for showing relationships, such as comparing and contrasting different ideas or concepts.
3. Visual: Charting offers a visual representation of information that can be beneficial for visual learners.

Disadvantages:

1. Not well-suited for fast-paced lectures: Charting can be challenging to use, as creating and filling in a chart takes time.
2. Requires prior knowledge: This method works best when you know ahead of time what categories will be useful.
3. Limited details: Charting might not be suitable for capturing extensive details or complex concepts that don’t fit neatly into the table’s structure.

Collaborative note-taking is a pedagogical strategy where students take notes on the same material and then share, compare, and consolidate their notes. This method fosters collective learning and knowledge dissemination, while simultaneously calling on individual students to document, share, compare, and consolidate their insights on the same material. The collaborative and individual aspects enhance the depth and breadth of the information documented.

Collaborative note-taking works best in learning situations with group activities and discussions, such as study groups, project-based learning, or cooperative learning environments. It can also be beneficial in large lectures where a lot of information is being shared, as it increases the likelihood of capturing all important points.

Please visit the HOW section of this teaching guide to learn more about how and when to implement collaborative note-taking in your classroom.

While there are numerous ways to assign collaborative note-taking in your course, the two most common are rotational and role based:

• Rotational Note-Taking: Assign a different student each class session to be the designated note-taker, sharing their notes with the class afterward. This ensures everyone gets the opportunity to focus on the lecture without taking notes.
• Role-Based Note-Taking: Assign specific roles and responsibilities to each member of a note-taking team to ensure comprehensive coverage of lectures or study materials. For example:
  • Summarizer: One person captures and summarizes questions and answers discussed during class.
  • Detailer: Another student focuses on listing key terms, relevant people, and crucial dates.
  • Connector: A third individual draws connections to previous readings, discussions, or relevant external materials.

Students 

1. Improve Note-taking Skills: Guided notes nudge students toward important content, which helps ensure students produce complete and accurate lecture notes. Guided notes can bridge the gap between students with differing note-taking skills, which is  especially beneficial for non-native speakers and students with learning disabilities. While tailored to support those who may struggle, guided notes are beneficial for all students, simplifying the identification of critical information during lectures.
2. Promote Active Engagement: To complete guided notes, students must actively engage with lecture content through listening, observing, thinking, and writing. This enables students to more easily identify crucial information, thereby aiding comprehension and retention.
3. Facilitate Classroom Interaction: Guided notes encourage students to ask more questions and make more comments during lectures (Austin et al., in press), thus creating a more interactive learning environment.
4. Boost Academic Performance: Studies show that students using guided notes achieve higher test scores than those taking their own notes (Austin et al., 2022; Heward,1994; Lazarus, 1993).
5. Function as Advanced Organizers: Guided notes, when reviewed prior to lectures, offer students a preview of the topics to be covered, which can enhance their understanding of the material presented.
6.  Relieve Anxiety: Guided notes build a sense of reassurance and confidence in students, as the guided notes reinforce which concepts have been covered in class, a video, or other instructional materials. This lessens students’ concerns that unexpected topics will appear on assessments and promotes a more predictable and consistent learning experience. (To learn more about assessments, please visit CATE’s assessment and grading practices teaching guide landing page)

Instructors 

1. Maintain Lecture Flow: Guided notes can help instructors maintain the planned flow of the lecture, ensuring it adheres to the intended content and sequence.
2. Manage Lecture Content: Guided notes compel instructors to prioritize and limit their lecture content. By identifying what is truly essential for students to learn, instructors can ensure maximum student comprehension and retention.
3. Streamline Exam Preparation: The content of guided notes can be easily converted into test or exam questions.
4. Enhance Student Satisfaction: Students generally appreciate the effort that instructors put into preparing guided notes, often leading to positive evaluation ratings.

Studies show that collaborative note-taking:

• Produces Learning Gains: Collaborative note-taking leads to more learning gains for students than taking notes independently (Chen & Yu 2019; Harbin, 2020). This is because students interact with one another about note content more frequently when taking notes collaboratively, which may aid them in understanding the content more thoroughly.
• Reduces Cognitive Strain: Because the task of note-taking is shared among group members, the effort of attempting to write while listening is reduced for each student. This may enable students to grasp content more comprehensively (Kirschner, Sweller, Kirschner, Zambrano, & J., 2018).
• Promotes Peer Learning: Encourages students to view one another as resources, which can aid in preparing for exams and assignments.The process of revising notes with peers and adding more information has been shown to lead to the creation of higher-quality, more complete notes (Luo, Kiewra, & Samuelson, 2016).

• Fosters Inclusivity: Levels the playing field, especially for students with varying prior preparation.
• Enhances Classroom Engagement: Shared responsibilities lead to richer discussions and classroom participation.
• Provides students more Comprehensive Coverage: When multiple people take notes, the group is more likely to capture all the relevant information.Collaborative note-takers are likely to notice and correct incorrect or incomplete information in the notes taken by group members, thereby improving the accuracy and completeness of the notes as a whole (Kam et al., 2005).
• Offers Different Perspectives: Each note-taker may focus on different aspects or interpret information in a unique way, leading to a richer understanding of the topic.

In this section, we provide specific suggestions for enhancing students’ note-taking skills when viewing videos or listening to audio recordings.

• Watch the Video Once without Taking Notes: Encourage students to watch the video once without taking notes to grasp the overall concept. This can help them understand the main ideas and details better when they watch it again for note-taking.
• Pause and Play: One of the advantages of videos is that students can pause and play the video. They should be encouraged to utilize the pause function to ensure they don’t miss any important points while taking notes.

• Use Video Features: If the video has closed captions or a transcript, students can use these to help with their note-taking. They can also slow down the video speed if it’s too fast for them.
• Take Screenshots: If the video has important graphics or slides, students can take screenshots for reference. These can be included in their notes as visual aids.
• Summarize: After watching each section, students should write a short summary of the key points. This will help understanding and provide a quick review source later.
• Note the Timestamp: While writing notes, students should include the video timestamp for important points. This way, they can easily revisit specific parts of the video for clarification.

Students may be uncertain as to which note-taking method they should use. While there’s no universally perfect method, guiding students based on their preferences and learning context can lead to more effective note-taking.

• Assess the Learning Context: If the lecture follows a clear hierarchy or structure, methods like the Outline or Cornell might be more appropriate. For fast-paced lectures without a defined structure, the List Method could be beneficial. For subjects with interconnected ideas, a Concept Map can help visualize relationships. For subjects requiring comparison, the Charting Method might be ideal.
• Students’ Preferences: Students who prefer visual representations might benefit from methods like Concept Maps. Those who prefer to focus on spoken information might gravitate towards the List or Cornell Method, where they can jot down what they hear and then review and restructure their notes later. Students who prefer to actively engage with the material might find methods like the Cornell Method or drawing out Concept Maps more effective.

• Practice and Refinement: Encourage students to experiment with multiple methods. After several sessions, they can reflect on which method facilitated better understanding and recall.
• Combine Methods: Students shouldn’t feel restricted to one method, either during initial note-taking sessions or when reviewing notes later. Combining techniques, like starting with the List Method and then restructuring into an Outline, can be beneficial.
• Regular Reviews: Periodically discuss note-taking techniques with students. Encourage feedback on what’s working for them and what isn’t, which fosters refinement of their methods.
• Provide Templates and Examples: Offer students the templates provided here for each method, as they can guide and simplify the note-taking process. With a structure in place, they can focus more on content.

Creating guided notes can be an effective tool in promoting active learning and retention among students. Though the process of creating guided notes might seem straightforward, achieving the right balance between providing guidance and promoting active note-taking does take some planning and preparation. Here are steps to getting started in crafting effective guided notes:

• Determine Core Concepts and Themes:
  • Before creating your notes, identify the primary ideas and themes intended for the particular class or lecture.
  • This ensures you remain centered on the core concepts aspects of the lesson.
• Align with Course Learning Objectives:
  • All notes should serve a purpose beyond just being a lecture summary.
  • Aim to align your guided notes with the learning objectives of the course. This ensures that the notes guide students towards achieving specific learning milestones. To learn more about craft effective learning objectives, consult CATE’s teaching guide: Learning Objectives
  • Regularly revisit the course’s learning objectives and cross-check with your notes to maintain this alignment.

• Structure the Content:
  • Organize your content thoughtfully. This involves creating a structured outline that makes use of headers and subheaders, allowing for a logical flow of information.
  • By breaking down complex topics into digestible segments, you facilitate ease of understanding and better retention.
  • Incorporate interactive elements like prompts or reflective questions throughout the notes. This nudges students to grapple actively with the content, promoting deeper comprehension and critical thinking.
• Keep it Simple:
  • Ensure your notes are concise, prioritizing clarity over complexity. This doesn’t mean omitting important details, but rather presenting them in a way that is’s straightforward and digestible.
  • Be mindful of cognitive overload. Bombarding students with too much information can be counterproductive. Instead, focus on delivering the essentials in a clear format.
• Ask for Student Feedback:
  • Encourage students to provide feedback on the guided notes. Understanding what works and what doesn’t from a student’s perspective can offer insights for future revisions.
  • Continuous iteration based on feedback ensures your guided notes evolve in line with student needs.

1. Incorporate Visual Aids: Enhance your guided notes by integrating visual elements like maps, diagrams, charts, and graphs. Visual aids are a great way to enhance student comprehension of complex concepts and resonate well with learners who like to learn visually. Rather than burdening students with drawing complex figures in their notebooks or recreating them digitally, consider supplying a basic graphic in the guided notes. Spaces can be left blank for students to annotate further. For example, provide a partially complete diagram and ask students to label specific components or provide a graph for students to label axes or plot curves.
2. Facilitate Conceptual Connections: Introduce concept maps, another type of guided notes, to help students to organize information and make connections between different concepts. You can supply a concept map or ask students to create their own during lectures. This approach is particularly advantageous for students who find linear note-taking challenging and gravitate towards a graphical format.
3. Multimedia Assignments: Pair guided notes with readings, podcasts, or video assignments. When students are presented with content across multiple modes, guided notes can help direct attention to key concepts and ideas. Especially for lengthier assignments, guided notes can help students chunk the content more effectively.

• Use Generative AI to Create Guided Notes: You can input lecture notes or other instructional materials into ChatGPT or another Generative AI tool to create a draft of your guided notes. See the CATE’s teaching guide AI Writing Tools for more information.
• Student-generated Guided Notes: Engage your students actively by designating groups to create guided notes for specific content segments, be it a section, topic, or chapter. Encourage peer teaching by asking each group to teach or present their designated content to the class.
• Pair/ Share Activity: Intersperse your lectures with scheduled breaks for pair/share activities. Direct students to collaborate with a peer, exchanging insights from their guided notes. This time can serve as a platform for students to fill in any gaps in understanding, address areas of confusion or concern, or dig deeper into topics.
• Collaborative Note-taking: Assign groups to create guided notes for a chunk of content. This strategy gets your students involved in the process of creating guided notes. Assign each group to a chunk, section, or chapter to outline for their peers. You could even take it a step further by asking each group to teach or present their assigned chunk of content.The next section of this guide describes collaborative note-taking in greater detail

• Adopt a Predictable Lecture Format: Recurring slides like “What’s Coming Next,” “What We’re Doing Today,” and “Question to Consider” can guide student note-taking. This structured format bridges gaps from varied note-taking quality and levels of student preparation.
• Encourage Explicit Discussions: Facilitate conversations where students can set expectations and norms for the collaborative document. This might include taking verbatim vs. paraphrased notes, using color codes to distinguish information, and managing differing note-taking expectations.
• Be Clear on the Role of Notes: Emphasize that collaborative notes are a supplementary resource, complementing personal engagement with course materials, and not an authoritative study guide.

• Use a Pre-class Survey: To assess interests and preparation levels and strategically pair students. This helps in understanding and aligning varied note-taking quality.
• Allocate Time for Peer Review: After individual note-taking, allocate time for students to swap notes and add additional insights, ensuring thorough coverage and varied perspectives.
• Monitor Group Dynamics: Stay vigilant of group dynamics affecting the note-taking process and foster an environment where students can communicate concerns openly (Harbin 2020).

Below are various collaborative note-taking techniques suitable for the UIC classroom. Make sure that the tool selected is accessible and comfortable for all students participating in collaborative note-taking.

• Shared Online Documents: Create a shared Google Doc where all students can contribute and edit notes simultaneously. Alternatively, Microsoft features shared documents or notebooks, where students can access and add information collectively.
• Wiki Platforms: Develop a class wiki where students can add, modify, and organize notes, fostering a collaborative digital environment. Blackboard offers a wiki platform.
• Collaborative Annotation Tools: Use tools like Hypothes.is or Perusall for annotating web pages and PDFs collaboratively, facilitating dialogue within the text.

• Mind Mapping: Use mind mapping tools like MindMeister or Miro where students can collaboratively create visual notes, linking concepts in a visually appealing and structured manner.
• Collaborative Boards: Use digital boards like Padlet where students can post notes, images, links, and documents, allowing for real-time collaboration and sharing.
• Cloud Storage: Use cloud storage platforms like Google Drive, OneDrive, or Box to create shared folders where all notes and relevant documents are stored, accessible to all participants.
• Audio/Video Sharing: Share audio or video recordings of notes or brief summarizing podcasts that can be accessed by peers asynchronously.