How do you take Notes?: A Noteworthy Survey

Are some note-taking strategies better than others? And what can we learn about learning from how we take notes?

This article presents and discusses the findings of a Twitter survey I conducted on note-taking. No please, that’s not your cue to cut loose. I know this isn’t the sexiest subject in the ‘Edusphere’. But stay with me, I think you’ll find what I have to say about this interesting. Noteworthy even.

But before I get into the survey itself it will be helpful briefly to put it into context.

Note-taking is clearly a fundamental learning activity — almost every student does it in one form or another, presumably because they assume they need to and/or find it useful and because teachers assume the same. Indeed the research supports the common sense notion that notes aid recall of information (especially useful in revision) and help to build knowledge.

Given the fundamental importance of note-taking however it’s surprising how little academic attention seems to have been given to what actually works best and why the skills involved are not more widely taught. As Boch and Piolat (2005; 1) note:

Even though techniques for understanding and writing texts are widely taught and practised throughout a student’s school and university career, very few students are taught even basic “note-taking” skills.

Source: http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol16/boch.pdf

Assuming this claim is correct I suspect there may be two reasons for this. First there isn’t the scope in most schools to teach note-taking as such, only to support individual students via study skills. Second there appears to be a widespread assumption that everyone has their own style of note-taking so it would be wrong to be prescriptive. Hmm..

As an undergraduate I was never very good at taking notes in lectures (much better at doodles). And if I wasn’t doodling my attention often wandered (especially if the lecturer sounded like they were surfacing from a coma) to the behaviour of some of my fellow students. You know the ones I mean — furiously transcribing (apparently verbatim) the content of the lecture, smoke pluming from their pens. Why were they doing this? Did they really think they were learning? Surely the whole point of a lecture is to sit and listen, to engage the brain, and to only make note of salient points?

To bring things bang up to date — we whizz past my intervening career in teaching/teacher training and subsequent move into educational apps development — this is the article that stimulated my thinking about note- taking and triggered the survey.

Leave Your Laptops at the Door to My Classroom

To summarise, it argues that we need to ditch laptops in lectures because they undermine focused attention — come back pen and notepad all is forgiven!

Laptops at best reduce education to the clackety-clack of transcribing lectures on shiny screens and, at worst, provide students with a constant escape from whatever is hard, challenging or uncomfortable about learning. And yet, education requires constant interaction in which professor and students are fully present for an exchange.

You mean (whispers in confidence) some students are actually using their laptops in proper lectures to surf the net and dive into social media?! Perish the thought..

But seriously folks.. Whilst I do think that ‘digital distraction’ in lectures is a valid issue (who could reasonably disagree?) I don’t intend to take that up here. My focus is less on the tool/technology per se and more the method of note-taking. Is there something intrinsically more advantageous about taking notes with a good old-fashioned pen and pad? What about linear vs. non-linear approaches? Could a blended (low and hi-tech) strategy be the best solution? And more broadly, what can we learn about learning from note-taking?

Time to check the findings of the survey.

Findings/Discussion

Who knew? A significant majority (70%) of those who participated in the survey (sorry, no demographic data on the participants available via Twitter) prefer the traditional — pen+paper+linear style — approach to note- taking.

Of course a couple of caveats apply. First, even though I used teaching contacts to share the survey we have to allow for the possibility that some of the participants were not teachers and/or did not vote truthfully. But I think we can take these results as reasonably reliable. And I think, with a sizeable number (N=363) of participants, we can also assume they can be taken as representative of the teaching population as a whole.

Second, we can’t assume of course that these findings show there’s a strong antipathy amongst teachers towards technology per se or indeed any correlation between note-taking preference and pedagogical beliefs, notably traditionalism vs. progressivism.

So what are we to make of the main finding? Perhaps, as one (younger) teacher on Twitter suggested, this is simply down to the fact that the older generation of teachers who make up the core of my network are more digital ‘immigrants’ than ‘natives’? But it might also be that they prefer the simplicity and convenience (minus the digital hassle of hardware and software etc.) of a pen and pad?

The survey is also noteworthy for the following reasons.

I was genuinely surprised, given how popular it appears to have become in schools, how low (15%) non-linear/mind mapping was as a note-taking strategy. But I was also intrigued — bearing in mind the importance of backing up and reviewing information delivered in a lecture/talk/presentation — by the very low use of audio recording.

What do I do myself (now that my misspent student days are behind me)? I combine traditional pen and pad linear note-taking with non-linear mind maps/diagrams (I definitely need a visual element) and often use audio recording for the reasons outline above. A good video recording accessed online later works even better for me (just don’t share that with your students).

With regard to students specifically, it’s interesting to speculate on what the same survey targeted at them might reveal about their note-taking strategies. We certainly might expect a much higher use of laptops/mobiles — perhaps as much as 70% or more — and of specialised note-taking software like Microsoft’s OneNote (which I also use for creative projects).

As to the thorny question of whether hammering the laptop keyboard is any more productive in ‘capturing the content’ of a lecture than scorching the paper with your pen, I’ll explore that further in a moment.

First some other noteworthy points from the Twitter chat around the survey:

• A number of participants said they used different strategies in combination
• One teacher uses Twitter to make ‘live’ notes. I asked if he threaded these using the web app Storify https://storify.com but didn’t get a reply
• A number of participants use a highly visual/shorthand ‘sketch note’ approach. Personally I love this but accept the obvious argument that it’s perhaps limited to those with decent information design/drawing skills. Also, whilst a well-chosen image might capture the complexity of a thought or piece of information it’s obvious that, even working nimbly, a fair amount of time and effort has to go into its creation if the result is to be effective.

• One high-profile edu-tweeter questioned whether we should take notes at all. Presumably their perceptual apparatus and brain works like a video camera with a hard drive..

The Cornell Method

But for me the most interesting tweet/comment was undoubtedly this:

What is the Cornell method? It’s a system devised in the 1950s by Walter Pauk, an education professor at Cornell University. In fact I’ve taught the technique myself although I admit to letting it languish lately (note to self: time you picked it up again).

Why is the Cornell method so useful? Because in my view it simplifies and structures note-taking. In fact let’s change that to ‘note-making’. Because when you use the Cornell approach notes become organised in a logical and accessible way — note the function of the columns and the box below. Note in particular, ‘Key Questions’ in the left column (I’ll come back to that in a moment). It’s also highly flexible — if you want to personalise it with mind/concept maps etc. no problem.

Here’s a great introductory video:

And here’s a more analytical guide (Prezi/dizzy alert!):

But what I also like about the Cornell method is that, every bit as much as the other strategies outlined here, it really makes you think about learning.

Which means to function at its best, teachers as well as students need to be clued up about it — notes are not a one-sided affair.

In particular they need to think about how they structure and signpost important points. Which involves skills like chunking information and using questions to clarify its focus in addition (if they’re using presentation software) to low-level information design — layout and visuals etc.

But my claims aside, does the Cornell method actually work? Where’s the evidence? Well I don’t know about schools/colleges but I know for a fact that it’s promoted quite widely in universities (although more in the US it seems where it originated). As for research the picture is less clear. One study found no supporting evidence although it does acknowledge a number of possible reasons for this:

http://www.natefacs.org/Pages/v30no1/v30no1Quintus.pdf

So there certainly appears to be scope for more research — over to you interested/action research teacher?

More broadly — ready for the radical bit? — I think thinking about note- taking should even make us reconsider the traditional format of lectures/talks/presentations.

There’s a lot of research now questioning the length of lectures and the amount of information they contain on the basis of ‘cognitive overload’. This is not pandering to the alleged low attention span of ‘millennials’. It applies across the board. As a general guide short, stimulating, ‘TED-style’ lectures are fine in my view. But watch the drop-off after that.. And certainly no ‘death by bullet-point’ PowerPoint presentations!

I also think note-taking (whether linked to a lecture/talk/presentation or done individually from a book, website etc.) focuses us on the importance of ‘knowledge building’.

As I’ve made clear, I have no problem with lectures etc. as a mode of delivery provided they’re tailored cognitively to the audience. But as I’ve also made clear, dishing out information is not the same as building knowledge. In my view this is where the limitations of instructivism as a pedagogy are exposed.

It is my (constructivist) belief that for meaningful knowledge to be built a solid understanding of prior learning is essential and an active (not passive/didactic) approach has to predominate with a variety of experiential learning strategies used to complement ‘talk and chalk’. I further believe that ‘scaffolding’ learning around key concepts — the ‘nuts and bolts’ of knowledge building — is essential.

All of which — regardless of what your preferred strategy is and where you stand pedagogically — underlines the importance of note-taking in learning. You might like to a make a note of that.

Summary

To summarise (Cornell notesheet at the ready — bottom section? And did you note the questions: What is the Cornell method? Why is it useful? etc.):

• Note-taking is integral to learning yet there appears to have been little research into what makes effective note-taking and why it’s not generally taught as a study skill
• this Twitter survey into note-taking yielded some very interesting findings — primarily that ‘traditional’ pen and paper/linear style was the overwhelming preference; but also that there are a variety of methods used and that some use these effectively in combination
• we should be wary of making assumptions/ correlations between preferred note-taking strategy and wider pedagogical beliefs/attitudes e.g. towards technology
• the Cornell method appears to offer an effective note-taking/making strategy because it simplifies and structures the process — but my recommendation is that teachers ‘teach to the method’ to enhance this e.g. chunking content/signposting it more clearly so it fits the format; the evidence in support of the method is not strong however, offering interesting opportunities for research
• note-taking and knowledge building are inter-linked; whilst note-taking in lectures/talks/presentations is a didactic approach in my view active/constructivist strategies should predominate to ensure notes become both meaningful and memorable