Taking Notes: There's a Lot More to It than Meets the Eye

As I teach, I have gotten into the habit of walking around the classroom. In part, my habit of strolling around the room was developed out of necessity, as I began to teach larger and larger enrollment classes. Walking around the classroom became one of my tried and true good classroom management practices. By walking around the room, I was “working the crowd” so-to-speak. In educational terminology, I was employing the concept of zones of proximity (Jones, 2007) or proximity control (Catapano, n.d.); that is, using my physical presence to get students to pay attention, response to a question, decrease a student's feeling of anonymity, or, if need be, dissuade someone from being disruptive. My close proximity naturally caused my students to focus and often times participate! In most cases, it works like a charm!

Now this practice of walking around the room also led to something else—it allowed me to observe the notes my students were taking during class. I must admit, I was surprised and somewhat shocked at the exceedingly wide variation in quantity (from none to a lot), quality (from poor to excellent), and format (mostly just words, phrases, and/or sentences, but some contained diagrams and a few even used color coding) of the notes my students were taking. This experience, as well as many others like it, has caused me to want to learn more about the task of note taking. This quest has led me to start each semester with some words of encouragement to my students about the importance of taking sufficient, good quality notes while the learning experience is happening.

Since note taking is such a routine and “just expected” aspect of schooling,1 it may be easy to take it for granted (that is, everyone knows how to take notes) and view it as a rather effortless task (that is, just write the important stuff down). However, in actuality, note taking, if done effectively, is a very demanding task, requiring both skill and a great deal of effort! As expressed by Piolat, Olive, and Kellogg (2005), “Note taking is a complex activity that requires comprehension and selection of information and written production processes.” Selecting key points and recording them while comprehending new information, all at the same time, presents sizeable demands on the central executive and other components of working memory. To put the effort required of note taking into perspective, Piolat et al. (2005) go on to say, “Comparative data show that note taking demands more effort than reading or learning. However, it requires less effort than the creative written composition of an original text.” It is, in fact, the effort behind note taking that has been tied to improved student learning. As discussed by Gonzalez (2018), “Rather than passively taking information in, the act of encoding the information into words or pictures forms new pathways in the brain, which stores it more firmly in long-term memory. On top of that, having the information stored in a new place gives students the opportunity to revisit it later and reinforce the learning that happened the first time around.” What does all this mean? First of all, it means that taking notes is not just an archaic scholastic ritual—it really matters! Second, I think it means that we need to help our students learn to be effective note takers and, in turn, do all that we can do to prepare and deliver our materials in a manner that facilitates the note taking process.

My dear friend and colleague, Dr. Philip Buriak,7 first brought the important distinction between just “taking notes” and “making notes” to my attention. He would say that “taking notes” is basically writing down what the instructor says, as fast as you can without really listening or allowing the words you are writing to pass through your brain; whereas “making notes” is actively listening to the instructor, making meaning of what is being said, connecting it to what you already know, and writing the meaning and connections down in your own words. If you just “take notes,” it is possible to write things down without really understanding them; in the end, you have lots of words on the page, but not much learning in your brain. Overall, making notes leads to deeper understanding of the material, more engagement during class, and better retention.

We have covered a lot of note taking ground. Now we need a straightforward way of remembering it all. I have an idea that could help us, my brother-in-law's beer rules: “Good beer is better than bad beer, cold beer is better than warm beer, and beer is better than no beer” (Edward E. Schmidt). Not to make light of all that we have discussed, but we can do the same thing for notes, which may help us and our students remember them (especially if you tell them they were modeled after Ed's beer rules!). “Good notes are better than bad notes, notes with words and drawings are better than words alone, lots of notes are better than fewer notes, and notes are better than no notes.” Of course, we could add more “better thans,” but you get the picture. As always, I hope you can apply some of what we have talked about to your classroom pedagogy, as well as share it with your students.

This editorial is dedicated in memory of my dear friend and colleague Dr. Philip Buriak (June 22, 1950 to August 2, 2018), who was an amazing, life-touching Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Illinois.