1. Better Notes for Better Grades
Heads up: You will need to have a pen and paper out and ready for this workshop. Try to take notes the way you normally take notes.

2. Questions How many of you take notes in class? When do you take notes?
Has someone ever taught you to take notes?
How do you take notes? How do you know what to take down?
Do you think it would be a good idea to remember this information I’m about to give you?
Try taking notes and see what happens. We will talk about your notes later.

3. Why take notes? Encodes information – writing down helps you remember
Promotes active listening
Allows you to store info for tests and essays (what you use to study)
Maintains a record of what your instructor thinks is important
Helps you find important info quickly and easily—if your notes are organized!
Why should you take notes?

4. When should you take notes?

5. When instructor lectures, even when using PowerPoints or handouts
You should always take notes even if instructor makes presentations available online.
Why would you need to take notes if you can pull the information up easily online?
Often, PowerPoints will either contain outlines—you will want to flesh out the outlines with important definitions and facts
You can condense the info and find important info faster.
Taking notes can clarify the explanations that were included with the presentations. Look at the PowerPoint above. Would the visual be enough to let you know what important points the presenter made about each highlighted term? Probably not. In your own notes, you might want to define each term and write out what the connections are between terms.
Recording the info also increases your odds of remembering it!

6. During labs & Class Discussions
In a discussion style class, instructors will often allow students to communicate the bulk of the information you will want to know. Take note of what your classmates have to say in class discussions. Often their answers to a professor’s question contains the information you will want to know about a particular subject. If your professor asked a certain question, you’ll probably want to know the answer to it! Make sure to evaluate your classmates’ responses for accuracy—look for assent from the professor and double-check against your own notes and/or the text.

7. When you watch a film in class
Don’t try to take note of everything that happens in a film!
Note names and details that are emphasized.
Think about WHY you are watching the film in class, and take note of details that relate back to your focus in class.

8. When the instructor writes, diagrams, or draws
If your instructor writes it down, he/she wants you to notice it. Take note of anything your instructor writes on the board. Copy down diagrams.

9. While reading a textbook
As with the PowerPoint presentations, you’re probably wondering why you would need to take notes from your text when you can easily refer back to your book.
It will allow you to put complicated material into your own words
Makes the studying process more efficient.
Helps you to better retain the information.

10. When given assignments and deadlines
Don’t assume all important dates and deadlines will be included in your syllabus.
Take note when your instructor mentions a deadline so that you don’t miss it!
Take note of the particular requirements for an assignment so that you don’t forget what your instructor expects.
This can be especially helpful if you seek tutoring in the Learning Center so the tutors can see exactly what you should be working on!

11. 3 Components of Good Notes
Be COY
Be Concise
Be Organized
Be Yourself

12. Be Concise Include only necessary words Use abbreviations
Use symbols like “&” instead of writing out “and”
Don’t concern yourself with spelling and grammar
What does concise mean?
How can we be concise with our notes?
Abbreviations –create a system for abbreviating terms…but make sure to give yourself a code somewhere to remember important abbreviations!
Remember, we use abbreviations all the time…think about how we text!
Pick out main points – don’t write down everything. Avoid trying to write complete, grammatical sentences. What jumps out at you?
You can also fill in information later so take note of words you are unfamiliar with and look them up!

13. Be Organized
Review your notes after class to better organize the information while it is fresh.
Refine your first draft of notes (yes, notes have drafts).
See your professor if you think you missed an important point!
Drafts: Some people like to type their notes or even rewrite them. Sometimes drafts just mean making things clearer, putting in info from the textbook, filling in information that you didn’t have time to record in class. You might also color code things to make concepts clearer. Like all the green highlights are definitions. All the pink highlights are processes. Things like that.
Refining your notes can mean:
Filling in incomplete thoughts
Defining terms that you missed

14. Be Organized Group concepts into categories
Make connections between concepts
Leave blank space
Emphasize certain items
How do you think you should organize your notes?
It’s hard to think about organizing your notes while you’re just trying to keep up with everything the instructor says, right?
Don’t worry about the state of your first draft of notes. When reviewing your notes, you can work on these techniques to better organize your notes.

15. Group concepts together & make connections: use arrows, diagrams
Notice how the left hand example uses arrows to connect later ideas to previous ideas.
The right hand example uses an outlining system to group concepts together. Under the main concept of property crimes, they’ve grouped the major terms larceny and embezzlement.

16. Leave blank space
For things you don’t understand…yet
Connections b/w textbook and lecture
Use the blank space to add additional information like definitions, examples, etc. as you review your notes.

17. Emphasize certain items by underlining, circling, highlighting
Create a system for how you will highlight your notes—use yellow for definitions, green for certain stats, blue for formulas, etc.
In the left-hand picture, you’ll notice that we circled an important formula in red.
Note in the right hand picture above that they used blue for notes, pink for warnings, orange for cautions, and yellow for abbreviations

18. Be Organized
Date and put them in the correct place – have a folder or notebook for each class.
Keep your notes in order to better understand them later.
Don’t lose important dates by including them within your class notes—have a separate place to note due dates or test dates.
Be flexible—don’t try to treat every class the same. Try different types of note-taking for different classes to determine what is most effective.
Some of this may seem obvious to you, BUT organization doesn’t just apply to the notes themselves, but also where you keep your notes. Try to keep a separate notebook or folder for each class so that different class notes don’t get mixed up and so they can be retrieved quickly and easily.
Keeping your notes in order helps keep the information in the order it was given to you. That way you’ll have sufficient background information for each stage of your notes.

19. Be Yourself Use your OWN WORDS Make up your own abbreviations, etc.
Find your style
Outlines
Mapping
Columns
What do you think I mean by this?
Own Words: You learn when you use something or when you change it. Don’t worry about getting the exact wording – that doesn’t matter. Put it into words that you understand.
Abbreviations: you can make up your own. Just make sure you know what it is

20. Outlines
Outlines help show hierarchical or logical ordering of ideas. If you groups with several subgroups, outlining can be an effective way to manage the information.

21. Mapping
Mapping helps you make connections between main ideas. When ideas aren’t necessarily provided in a chronological or hierarchical order, mapping might be a better way to take notes.

22. Columns Explain Cornell Notes.
Note the two top columns—Use right hand box for notes during class/lecture, skip lines between ideas.
Review the notes as soon as possible, put out main ideas/key points/dates/important terms and write them in left hand column.
Leave a large space at the bottom to summarize. Here you can write in complete sentences explaining the information on each page of your notes.
When reviewing, focus on the terms in the left column and the summary at the bottom of the page.

23. Got notes… What do I do now?
When do you start reviewing your notes?
How often should you look over your notes?
Can you make changes to your notes?

24. Review ASAP after class to organize
Write a summary of what that class was about at the end of your notes
Review notes once a week
Use them!
when you study
when you self-test for an exam
Now you have notes…what do you do with them?
Writing a summary helps you to make sure that you can understand your notes; it also helps to improve retention. If you can’t summarize them, you might want to see your instructor to make sure you understand the content.
Reviewing your notes once a week better prepares you for future exam. There won’t be any last-minute cramming if you’ve been working with your notes all along!
Bring your notes with you if you seek assistance from the Learning Center so that tutors can help you see the connections you’ve already made it class!

25. Evaluating Today’s Notes
Did you try to write down everything I said?
Did you write down everything that was in the PowerPoint?
Did you write down good ideas that your fellow students had?
Raise your hand if you answer yes to the following questions.

26. Review: Let’s see how good your notes are.
When should you take notes?
What are the 3 components of good notes?
How can you be concise?
How can you be organized?
How can you be yourself?
Ask the first two questions, and ask one student each to volunteer to show us what they wrote, looking for a specific thing.
Ask: Who thinks they were very concise with their notes?
Who thinks their notes are very organized?
Who thinks their notes are very personalized?
Share examples with class by showing student notes.

27. Summing it Up
Look over your notes quickly, and let’s summarize what we’ve learned today!
Reinforce the idea of summarizing their own notes. Give students a few minutes to write a quick summary and ask a few students to share.

28. El Centro College Learning Center for additional help with
Room A
Drop by the
El Centro College Learning Center for additional help with
Note-Taking