Many courses are still taught in lecture format despite the impact of technologyIn an increasingly competitive job market, taking good notes and learning to make good use of them is an essential skill for academic success.Research shows that students who take notes and study them score higher on tests.Learning how to study lecture notes requires good preparation and organization.
Step 1: A system of organization needs to be developed.
One of the most important tools for exam-studying is a well-organized set of notes.Stress and time wasted are caused by scattered, lost, incomplete and non-sequential notes.There are a few ways to organize your notes.The folders and notebooks should match the color of your courses.For example, buy a green notebook and folder for science, a blue notebook, and a red notebook for history, literature and so forth.Write the title of the lecture and the date on the first page.Write the title and date when you start each lecture on a new page.If you miss a class, leave several pages blank in your notebook, ask a friend or your teacher if you can get those notes and insert them into the blank pages.Purchase a three-ring spiral binder, loose-leaf paper, subject dividers and 3-ring pocket folders to organize your notes.For your first course, you'll need lots of loose-leaf paper, a 3-ring pocket folder and a divider.For the next course, repeat.Purchase two 3-ring binders if you are on an alternating day schedule.Science and history can be put in literature and art.You should create a folder for each course if your teacher allows you to use your laptop in class.You can either start a new document and save as the date followed by an abbreviated title of the lecture or you can create a running.If you want to see when a new one starts, leave some space between lectures and enlarge the title and date.
Step 2: Before class, read the assigned materials.
Warming up by reading before class is like getting your body ready for a strenuous workout.It will help you better understand what the teacher is discussing, more quickly absorb and process additional material presented and more readily recognize particularly significant points (say, when your teacher spends 10 minutes talking about the poison dart frog, not the spotted salamander, in a lecture on amphibians).Take notes of the areas that are hard to understand.Look for terms that are not fully explained in the readings.If the class period does not clarify the questions, you can ask them in class.Sometimes course materials can be found online, including lectures, readings and helpful resources.Ask your teacher how to access the materials if they are not stated in the syllabus.If your teacher uses electronic media in class but doesn't post it online, ask if he or she will.
Step 3: Look at the previous lecture notes.
Review the previous lecture's notes to refresh yourself on what was discussed.Ask any questions in class.If the lectures are cumulative, or built upon each other, reviewing the previous lecture will help you better follow along.Retention- and recall-testing is a profitable area and it will help you be a more active listener.Doing this before each class meeting will make study efforts easier.It has the added benefit of being prepared for a pop quiz.
Step 4: Make sure to review your lecture notes carefully.
It is a common practice to lecture in a short time frame the day before an exam, but research shows it is not an effective study strategy.Your mind is not a video recorder.If done correctly, reading each set of notes more than once is still helpful.spacing the time between studying and mixing up study topics is one of the ways to get the most benefit from reviewing your notes.Take the time to study each set of notes.Within 24 hours of taking your notes, read over them.50% of the material will be retained if you do this.You will only retain 20% of the material if you wait longer than 24 hours.Wait another week or two to read that lecture's notes again.Isn't waiting to reread a way to forget a lot?The closer you are to forgetting the material, the more you will remember it, according to cognitive psychologists.You can read your notes aloud.This converts a passive activity into an active one.You should mix up the topics you study.Two hours of studying per day is what you have set aside.Instead of spending an entire study session studying your notes from one class, spend a 12 hour studying one subject, and then repeat.A higher order of information processing leads to greater comprehension and long-term retention when you mix up topics in this way.As soon as you begin to feel like you know the material, you need to switch it up and work on something else.Pull out the red notebook and put away the blue one.
Step 5: Reduce the amount of notes you have.
You should summarize your notes the same day you take them.Identifying the key points, concepts, dates, names and examples provided in the lecture, write a summary of that lecture's notes in your own words.Writing them in your own words will force you to think.The stronger they become, the more you flex them.The adage, "If you don't use it, you lose it!" is true, so write down any questions you have related to the material.One way to encourage critical thinking is to use a concept map, a diagram that shows relationships between concepts that help you organize and evaluate both the main ideas and supporting details presented in your lecture notes.A particularly useful ability for essay questions, essay exams and finals is the ability to make connections between concepts.Students who take written notes comprehend and retain more because taking notes by hand requires active listening and purposeful selection of what to write, are more likely to record what the teacher says when using their laptops as typing, according to recent research.Many students still try to memorise their teacher's words.An outline from your notes is needed to promote retention and efficiency.It will make your notes more manageable and help you move the information more quickly down those neural pathways.
Step 6: Attach the information in your notes.
Take a few minutes to review your notes, summary, concept map or outline.You can say this information in your own words.Repeated at time intervals per the spacing effect guidelines is what you should do.One of the most active means of studying and learning is provoking.It will help you discover gaps in your memory and understanding, elaborate on the main ideas and concepts, test your overall comprehension, and make connections between issues.cue cards can be used when reciting.Pick up a pack of unlined 3x5 or 4x6 notecards and write cue words, or main idea, date, diagram, formula or name, and begin discussing it aloud.shuffle them before you recite if you have created them in order.The idea that mixing up information makes your brain work harder is what this plays into.
Step 7: You should reflect on your lecture notes.
The process of thinking about content is called reflection.It can be helpful to reflect upon what we have learned and how it relates to our experiences, because we are more apt to remember things that we can personalize.There are a few questions you can ask yourself to improve the reflective process.To get the most from reflection, record your answers in some way, whether that be through traditional writing, outlining, diagramming, audio recording or another means."Why are these facts important?" "How can they be applied?" and "What experiences do I have that relate to this information?"
Step 8: Attach lecture notes to flash cards.
Studies have shown that students who use flash cards to study for exams score higher than those who don't, making this a cheap method of studying.You will need a pencil, pen, and marker if you want to write on the other side.Write a question on one side of the card and an answer on the other side.Pick the first card and answer the question.If you answered it correctly, flip the card.You should keep all of your flash cards in one stack.The spacing effect enhances recall and retention.After you have gone through them many times, separate the cards that you consistently get right from the ones you don't.
Step 9: You can create concept cards from your lecture notes.
When preparing for essay exams and finals, concept cards are more helpful than flash cards because the focus is not on individual facts but on the interconnectedness of facts and ideas.As with flash cards, buy either 3x5 or 4x6 unlined index cards and a pencil, pen or marker that won't show through on the other side after you write.Write a key idea, term, name, event or process in your notes.Write the definition of that word, keeping it brief, and list the concepts related to it.You can use your concept cards to test yourself on each identified word.There are examples, reasons why the identified word is important, related issues, sub-categories and so on.Pick up a few index file boxes or cases/holders to store your cards.If you went that route in organizing your notes, the cases/holders come in a variety of colors and can be matched with the colors you chose for your subjects.You can use one or both sets of cards in your down time, such as when you are waiting at the doctor's office, riding the bus or between classes.
Step 10: You can use your lecture notes to create self-tests.
One of the most effective study strategies is self-testing.It strengthens the neural pathways to memory storage.You can create questions based on the material in your lecture notes.Multiple choice questions, true/false questions and short answer questions are some of the questions you will want to create.Take your practice test for a few days, then repeat the process throughout the term for each test.You will usually have a good idea of the test format your teacher uses after the first exam in a particular course.If the test was all multiple choice, you might want to create more questions from your lecture notes.Try to anticipate and construct questions that will show up on the real exam when constructing your practice test questions.Look in your notes for examples and hypotheticals.Look at the questions you missed after the exam.If that material was in your notes, go back to them.It may have been in your text, but you didn't consider it as important as your teacher did.This insight can be used to adjust to not only your practice tests, but also your note taking and studying in general.
Step 11: Work with a person who is studying.
Teaching someone requires you to rephrase and more deeply process information as you put it into your own words, which further commits it to your memory and takes studying to the next level.Pick a lecture and look at the notes from it.Give the lecture to your study partner and have him or her ask you questions about the points you made in the presentation.This is done for each lecture throughout the term.An additional benefit to this approach is that you will be able to identify areas that your study partner presented to you that were not particularly important to study.When your study partner presents something you don't have recorded, it helps fill in the holes in your notes.You could create practice tests for each other.
Step 12: Become a part of a study group.
This is an opportunity for you to fill in gaps in your notes, as well as to view material from other perspectives and to gain insight into how others approach studying.To keep the group on track, you should designate a group leader once you have formed your study group.Decide how long and how often you will meet.Review your notes and other materials with your group members to resolve any confusion.You can also create practice test questions.Students can sign up for study groups in some schools with Web-based learning management systems.Talk to your teacher about how to form one if this is not an option.Ask others in the class if they would like to join.There should be 3-4 committed members in a study group.Chaos and little work can be created by too many voices.The group should meet once a week.You don't want to cram in too much material in each meeting.
Step 13: elaborative interrogation is used for study notes.
Elaborative interrogation is a technique that encourages learning and remembering through asking the question "Why?" when reading material and research has shown to be a more effective study method than those that students have employed religiously for decades.When you stop to review your notes, ask yourself a question.General or specific questions can be asked.Specific: "Why do things only stay in our short-term memory for about 18 seconds without rehearsal or review?"These processes help to hardwire the information into your brain.