How Good Notes can be Helpful in Improving Your Learning and Grades in Exams?
A number of studies have highlighted how notes taken by students while attending lectures help them to acquire knowledge and improve grades. According to Utah State University, “Taking notes aids your comprehension and retention. Researchers found that if important information was contained in notes, it had a 34% chance of being remembered (Howe, 1970, in Longman and Atkinson, 1999). Information not found in notes had only a 5% chance of being remembered.”
The lecture notes provide a concise but comprehensive outline of the important information, points, and ideas. In addition to making it easier to recall important information, the notes help students to understand the textbook material clearly. A student can further combine the lecture notes and the textbook material to prepare for exams and tests quickly. The lecture notes help students to improve exam performance in a number of ways.
7 Ways Lecture Notes Help Students to Improve Their Exam Performance
1. Recall Important Information
Often teachers impact a wide range of information and ideas while taking a class. The students often find it difficult to identify and differentiate the relevant information and irrelevant information. The lecture notes help students to create an elaborate outline of the important and relevant information and ideas. The outline helps students to remember and recall the relevant information while preparing for the exam.
2. Understand the Text Material Elaborately
No student can improve her exam performance simply by reading the textbook material. She needs additional information to understand and extend the text materials. The notes made by a student while attending the lecture helps the students to acquire the additional information required to understand the textbook material clearly and elaborately. The understanding of textbook materials helps students to improve their grades.
3. Clarify Confusing Information
A student cannot boost her exam performance without understanding a topic or subject clearly and elaborately. The lecture notes help students to capture important information or ideas during a lecture. The student can further review the notes after attending the class or lecture to identify the missing information or understand the confusing information. She can understand the topic clearly by consulting the teacher or availing assistance of classmates.
4. Eliminate the Need to Relearn
As highlighted by a number of studies, students often forget the information not found in notes. The students can easily remember and recall important information before the exam by taking notes while attending a class or lecture. They can remember important information by reviewing the notes multiple times. They can further review the notes to prepare for the exam without relearning the topics or subjects.
5. No Need to Refer to Multiple Sources
The skilled teachers prepare study notes by collecting information from diverse sources. Also, they keep the notes up-to-date by adding and modifying information on a regular basis. Hence, lecture notes help students to acquire in-depth knowledge and authentic information about a specific topic without reading multiple books and referring to multiple sources. The elaborate information helps students to learn and prepare for the exam quickly.
6. Review the Textbook Material Quickly
While preparing for an exam, students explore ways to review the textbook material quickly and efficiently. The lecture notes help students to identify important information, ideas and points. The informational insights provided by the notes help students to identify the important parts in the textbook. Many students use lecture notes as an effective tool to review textbook materials in a short amount of time.
7. Answer Questions
While taking notes during a class, you have the option to present the information in a number of formats — texts, pictures and graphs. The images and graphs are more effective than textual content to remember and recollect information. They even help you to recollect the relevant information while answering questions in the exam hall. Thus, lecture notes help you to answer questions easily and quickly in the exam hall.
A student can take notes while attending a class or lecture in a number of ways. Innovative websites and mobile apps like LectureNotes help students to access relevant study notes without putting extra time and effort. The options and features provided by the web application enable students to access notes from various teachers according to their precise needs. In addition to improving their exam performance, the digital notes help students to prepare for campus placements.
References
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/lecture-notes
https://www.csbsju.edu/academic-advising/study-skills-guide/lecture-note-taking
https://sites.austincc.edu/student-skills-workshops/taking-effective-notes/benefits-of-notetaking/
https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/effective-note-taking-in-class/
https://www.studyread.com/advantages-notes-takingclass-seminars/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140907101944-51876784-the-biggest-benefits-of-effective-note-taking
https://www.usu.edu/asc/assistance/pdf/effective_note_taking.pdf
