Benefits of note-taking and tips from the Association of College and University Educators

1. Why Take Notes in Your Online Course?
• How does note-taking support learning?
• When should I take notes?
• Does it matter if they are handwritten?
• Note-taking tips

2. According to Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel (2014), getting new learning into your long-
term memory is a three-step process.
1. Encoding of information―Required to keep information in short-term memory
• Note-taking by hand allows you to encode information
2. Consolidation―Reorganizes and stabilizes memory traces, gives them meaning, and makes connections
to past experiences and other knowledge already stored in long-term memory
• Rewriting your notes helps to consolidate your learning
3. Retrieval―Updates learning and enables you to apply it when you need it; repeated use of information
keeps retrieval routes strong
• Reviewing your notes assists in the retrieval process
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How Does Note-Taking Support Learning?
Source: Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., III, & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Belknap Press.

3. In one study (Mueller and Oppenheimer, 2018):
Participants who handwrote their notes wrote significantly fewer words.
• Laptop users averaged 14.6% verbatim overlap with video content while longhand users averaged
only 8.8%.
• Laptop users are more likely to take transcription-like (verbatim) notes.
• Participants with less verbatim overlap with the lecture performed better on posttests.
Additionally, the researchers noted:
• equal performance (between handwritten and laptop-written notes) when comparing recall of facts,
and
• students who handwrote their notes scored significantly better when answering conceptual and
application questions.
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Putting Notes in Your Own Words Improves Learning
Source: Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2018). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking (vol 25, pg
1159, 2014). Psychological Science, 29(9), 1565–1568.

4. Take notes whenever there is information being shared that will be important for you to
remember.
• Take notes when listening to a lecture or presentation or when reading course content.
Note-Taking Tips When Reading an Assignment
• Ask questions as you read.
• Mark content that catches your eye.
• Confused by something? Leave a question mark and go back afterward to clarify.
• Outline what you read and reduce that initial summary, taking notes on notes on notes (Bain, 2012).
• After speculating about the possible meanings of unfamiliar words, look them up and write down
their definitions (Bain, 2012).
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When Should You Take Notes?
Source: Bain, K. (2012). What the best college students do. Belknap Press.

5. •Organize, share, and save your notes using software
programs.
• Try out some of the programs below and select the one
that is most useful to you.
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Software to Help Organize Your Notes
• Google Keep
• Evernote
• Simplenote
• Notion
• Microsoft OneNote
• Zoho Notebook
• Notability