1. Getting the Most Out of Class
In this class, we will explore different ways to stay engages in class and to get the most out of being there. Are there any questions from last class before we jump in?

2. Become Engaged in Learning
Active learning: learning through engagement and participation
Skills from active learning:
Working with others
Improving thinking, listening, writing, and speaking skills
Functioning independently and teaching yourself
Managing time
Gaining sensitivity to cultural differences
Engaged students are those who are fully involved with the college experience and spend the time and energy necessary to learn, both in and out of class.
You must practice the techniques of active learning, which means learning through engagement and participation. When you are actively engaged in learning, you will not only learn the material in your notes and textbooks, but will also be practicing valuable skills that can be applied to college, work, and your personal life, such as:
Working with others. Learning to do professional work with others is one of the most important skills you can develop for success in college and your career. Do so by becoming active in a co-curricular organization or joining a study group.
Improving your thinking, listening, writing, and speaking skills. These are the primary skills that define a college-educated person.
Functioning independently and teaching yourself. Your first year of college will help you become an independent learner, who does not need to wait for an instructor to point them in the right direction.
Managing your time. Time management sounds easy, but it is a challenge for almost all students, and is the number one success strategy reported by successful students.
Gaining sensitivity to cultural differences. The world we live in requires all of us to develop our knowledge about and respect for cultures that are different from our own.
Your instructors will set the stage and provide valuable information, but it’s up to you to do the rest. You must take initiative in the learning process.
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3. Stay Engaged Before Class and Between Class Meetings
Before-class tips:
Do the assigned reading
Pay attention to course syllabus
Make use of additional materials
Warm up for class
Get organized
An important first step toward success is to prepare before you attend class by listening, learning, and remembering the material. Some simple, but important strategies are:
Do the assigned reading. Doing the assigned reading before class will help you understand new terms, listen better, and pick out the most important information when taking notes in class. Some instructors assign readings during class, others expect you to follow the syllabus.
Pay careful attention to your course syllabus. The syllabus will include course requirements, your instructor’s expectations, and the course grading breakdown. You will be expected to understand and follow the syllabus with few or no reminders.
Make use of additional materials provided by the instructors. Many instructors post lecture outlines or notes in the course or learning management system (CMS or LMS). These materials often provide hints about what the instructor considers most important and can provide an organizational structure for taking notes.
Warm up for class. Review chapter introductions and summaries that refer to related sections in your text and quickly review your notes from the previous class. This prepares you to pay attention, understand, and remember.
Get organized. Decide how you want to take notes. Create an organizational system to keep track of your notes and other course handouts.
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4. Participate in Class: Listening
Listen actively and with an open mind
Be ready for the message
Focus on the main concepts and central ideas
Listen for new ideas
Repeat mentally
Decide what is important
Keep an open mind
Ask questions
Sort, organize, and categorize
Participation is the heart of active learning. To really learn, you must listen carefully, talk about what you’re learning, write about it, and connect it to past experiences. Listening in class is different from listening to a TV show or a friend. You must:
Be ready for the message. Prepare yourself to hear, to listen, and to receive the message.
Focus on the main concepts and central ideas, not just on the facts and figures. Although the facts are important, they will be easier to remember and will make more sense when you can place them within concepts, themes, and ideas.
Listen or read for new ideas. Even if you are an expert on a topic, you can still learn something new. Do not assume that college instructors and textbooks will present the same information you learned in a similar course.
Repeat mentally. Words can go in one ear and out the other unless you make and effort to remember them.
Decide whether what you have heard is not important, somewhat important, or very important.
Keep an open mind. Instructors want you to think for yourself; they don’t necessarily expect you to agree with everything they say.
Ask questions. Determine whether your instructor wants you to ask questions during the lecture. Some instructors prefer that students ask their questions after the lecture, during separate lecture sections, labs, or office hours. Most faculty really do like students to ask them questions.
Sort, organize, and categorize. When you listen and read, try to match what you’re hearing and reading with what you already know.
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5. Participate in Class: Speaking
Speak up
Sit close to the front
Focus on the lecture
Raise your hand when you don’t understand
There is no such thing as a stupid question
Don’t bluff
Bring in relevant outside material
You will be more likely to participate in a class in which the instructor emphasizes class discussion and avoids criticizing students for an incorrect answer. Often, answers you and other students offer may not be quite correct, but they can lead to new perspectives on a topic.
Use the following techniques to speak up in class:
Take a seat as close to the front as possible and keep your eyes on the instructor. Sitting close to the front can help you focus better and not get distracted by other students.
Focus on the lecture and class discussions. Avoid distractions. Sit away from friends who can distract you, don’t engage in side conversations, and turn off electronic devices.
Raise your hand when you don’t understand something. If you don’t understand something, you have the right to ask for an explanation. Never worry that you’re asking a stupid question.
Speak up in class. Ask a question, volunteer to answer a questions, or make a comment. This becomes easier every time you do it.
When the instructor calls on you to answer a question, don’t bluff. If you know the answer, say it. If you don’t know, just say so.
If you have read a book or article that is relevant to the class topic, bring it in. Us it either to ask questions about the topic or to provide information not covered in class.
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6. Take Effective Notes Note-taking formats Note-taking techniques
Cornell
Outline
Paragraph
List
Note-taking techniques
Identify main ideas
Don’t try to write everything down
Don’t be thrown by a disorganized lecture
Keep notes for each course separate
Download online materials
Label handouts
Effective notes cover all the important points of the lecture or reading material without being too detailed or too limited. There are four commonly used note-taking formats: Cornell, outline, paragraph, and list formats.
Using the Cornell format, you create a “recall” column on each page of your notebook or your Word document. As you take notes during class, write or type only in the wider column on the right. The recall column is the place where you record the main ideas and important details for tests as you go through your notes after class.
In an outline format, Roman numeral (I,II,III, etc.) mark the main ideas. Other ideas relating to each key idea are marked by uppercase letters (A, B, C, etc.), numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.), and lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.) in descending order of importance or detail. The outline format allows you to add details, definitions, examples, applications, and explanations.
When you are taking notes on what you are reading, you might decide to write summary paragraphs – a note-taking format in which you write two or three sentences that sum up a larger section of material. This method may not work well for lectures, as it is difficult to summarize a topic until your instructor has covered it completely.
The list format can be effective in taking notes on terms and definitions, facts, or sequences. It is easy to use lists in combination with the Cornell format.
Whatever note-taking format you choose, follow these important steps:
Identify the main ideas. Although supporting details are important as well, focus on the main concepts. Ask yourself, “What does my instructor want me to know at the end of today’s class?”
Don’t try to write down everything. You should be a thinker, not just a note-taker.
Don’t be thrown by a disorganized lecture. When a lecture is disorganized, it’s your job to organize what is said into general and specific points. Indicate where gaps are in your notes, and fill in the gaps after class. If your college offers Supplemental Instruction (SI) sessions, take advantage of those to go over concepts you didn’t understand in lecture.
Keep your notes and supplementary materials for each course separate. Label your materials with the course number and name. Date your notes and keep them chronologically.
Download online notes, outlines, or diagrams, charts, and graphs from the CMS/LMS site. You might save time if you don’t have to try to copy down graphs, and can focus instead on the ideas being presented.
If handouts are distributed, label them and place them near your notes.
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7. Take Effective Notes: Types of Courses
Taking notes in non-lecture courses
Adapt note-taking methods to match the situation
Taking notes in mathematics and science courses
Write down equations, formulas, diagrams, charts, graphs, and definitions
Write the instructor’s words precisely
Use standard symbols, abbreviations, and notation
Take notes in pencil
Keep math and science notes until graduation
Use technology to take notes
Note taking is an essential activity in online courses because you need to summarize the reading material and put it into your own words, record your ideas and thoughts for online discussions, or keep track of questions.
Always be ready to change your note-taking methods based on the situation. You will need to record the information from group discussions as well as from lectures, which will require you to pull key ideas from your classmates’ comments, as well as those of the instructor.
If a course has separate lecture and discussion sections, you will have to understand how the discussions relate to the lectures.
Many mathematics and science courses build on one another from term to term. You will need to organize these notes to be understandable in future courses. Use the following tips:
Write down any equations, formulas, diagrams, charts, graphs, and definitions that the instructor puts on the board or screen.
Write the instructor’s words as exactly as possible. Technical terms often have exact meanings and cannot be changed.
Use standard symbols, abbreviations, and scientific notation.
Write down all worked problems and examples step-by-step. Be sure that you can follow the logic and understand the sequence of the steps.
Consider taking notes in pencil or erasable pen. You might need to make changes.
Listen carefully to other students’ questions and the instructor’s answers.
Use asterisks, exclamation points, question marks, or symbols to highlight important points in your notes.
Refer to the textbook after class; it may have better diagrams than you can draw.
Keep your notes until you graduate. They will serve as good review for later math and science classes.
Some people prefer to take notes by hand, and others use laptops or tablets. Some students find it advantageous to record lectures. If you are going to use technology, make sure it is ok with your instructor.
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8. Review Your Notes
The “forgetting curve”: Most forgetting takes place within the first 24 hours
Review strategies:
Write down main ideas
Repeat ideas out loud
Review notes from the previous class just before the next class
Comparing notes
Helps improve notes
Class notes and homework
Do a warm-up
Do any assigned problems and questions
Persevere
Complete your work
Unless we take steps to remember it, we forget much of what we learn within the first 24 hours. The decline of memory over time is know as the forgetting curve. To avoid forgetting all the information you learning in class,
Write down the main ideas. For five or ten minutes, review your notes and select key words or phrases.
Repeat your ideas out loud. For many, the best way to learn something is to teach it to others. Try to explain ideas to a peer.
Review your notes from the previous class just before the next class session. This will prepare you for the lecture that is about to begin.
You should also consider comparing notes, which has a number of benefits. You will probably take better notes when you know that someone else will be looking at them, you will have a chance to see whether your notes are as clear and organized as those of other students, and you will be able to assess whether you agree on the most important parts. Just copying another student’s notes will not help you learn, however.
Once you have reviewed your notes, you can use them to help with your homework.
Do a warm-up for your homework. Look through your notes again and rework examples, problems, and exercises.
Do any assigned problems and answer any assigned questions. Ask yourself, What am I supposed to find or find out? What is most important? What is not important?
Don’t give up too soon. Start homework with the hardest subject first, while you are most energetic. Only move on from a problem after you have tried to solve it. Return to problems you couldn’t solve at the end of the assignment.
Complete your work.
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9. Tech Tip: Explore Note-Taking Programs and Apps
Use basic programs to sharpen note-taking skills
Word
Great for taking notes in most classes
Excel
Good for economics and accounting courses
PowerPoint
Invaluable tool for visual learners
Use apps to take notes on your phone and across devices
Studies have shown that people only remember half of what they hear, which is why note-taking is so important. Use technology to take better notes.
Microsoft Word is great for most classes. You can highlight, bold, or underline text, change font size and color, and insert text boxes and charts. You can make bullet points and insert comments, and rearrange whole sections to make your notes more coherent.
Microsoft Excel is good for classes that involve calculations or financial statements. You can embed messages in cells to explain calculations.
Microsoft PowerPoint can be great for visual learners. You can separate key points across different slides.
There are also a number of useful apps for note taking and reviewing, such as Pocket, Evernote, Simplenote, CamScanner, Tiny Scanner, TinyTap, and StudyBlue.
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