I keep hearing more and more that the best way to take notes is to listen.

[oiprocs]

I just read an article that said taking notes in class and trying to write everything down is a terrible way to understand the material. The author compared it to watching a TV show and trying to write down everything that goes on.

Do any of you follow this tactic? Perhaps limit yourself to 1 page of notes? How do you filter out the unnecessary stuff and only write down what will help you?

 

[Tiamat]

Taking notes > simply hearing though. The difference between listening and hearing depends on many factors, some of which you cannot control. In reality, understanding material takes practice, listening, writing all.

 

[theflyingpig]

The article is correct. Most people just sit in class and scramble to write down everything the prof says, which is foolish. I take notes from the book before class, then when the instructor mentions something unfamiliar I make a note of it. This allows me to pay more attention during the lecture.

 

[darkxshade]

When I was in college, I found it hilarious that each time the professor switched to a new slide, you could see a mass of heads drop as they begin to copy down the new information being displayed. For one thing, the slides can be found on a website(blackboard, etc). And secondly, they are just a simple breakdown of a more complex chapter in the textbook. Oh well, I got a good laugh out of it... Morans!!!

 

[D1gger]

My notes always consisted of points that the professor seemed to be emphasizing. It always worked for me.

 

[sjwaste]

In law school, this is an especially important skill. Many will use their notes to write their study outlines, so they try to take down every word. Usually on laptops.

I use pen and paper and basically write down the concepts and important things, or the non-obvious details. For instance, in most classes, knowing the detailed facts of a case isn't that important. It's more important to have the analysis and holding down, along with the few facts that the case turned on. If you understand the material, you can take this stuff down before/after class and just be in class to listen to the discussion on what the prof found important. After all, what the prof finds important likely makes it onto the exam.

 

[Deeko]

Yes, which is why many of my professors posted the notes online and explicitly told us not to take notes, so that we'd pay better attention.

 

[ggnl]

Detailed notes never helped me learn. I would just do a brief outline of the material covered. Just enough detail that I could go over it again with the help of a textbook.

 

[darkxshade]

Actually, it depends on the class. I took a lot of notes for math courses even though it's already in the textbook. Learning how to solve problems through notes during class would be a lot more effective than just hearing about how it got solved and not taking it down.

But for most other courses, I rather just listen.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Hardly any of my professors taught out of the textbook. Matching a mere one page outline of notes for a 3-hour lab to the textbook when studying would have been murder. Like others said, it's better to find a balance for you focus. Note the important points, roughly copy diagrams, and pay attention to the rest.

For me, studying in groups and quizzing each other always worked best.

Towards the end of my college career, more and more professors started posting their outlines and notes online so people could just print those out, follow along and jot down various important concepts, or extra relating info in the margins.

 

[LordSnailz]

dunno, for my engr. classes I find that I can follow the prof. much easier if I write what he writes ... the derivations are or solutions to solving a circuit are usually not posted. I've tried just sitting there and listening, I can follow and understand but after awhile my mind tends to wonder. Plus my memory sucks, ask me to derive something 2-3wks later, I would prob. get half of it.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

example problems and solutions
things the teacher explicitly says 'will be on the test'
something i dont understand immediately (in this case, just write down the topic, research on own)

i prefer classes where the teachers publish their own notes, (powerpoint, etc.). then i just print out and annotate where useful

 

[KeithP]

When I was in college, during my note heavy classes, I would record the lecture on tape and not write anything during the initial lecture. Later I would listen to the tape and take notes then. This way I could pause the tape or rewind as necessary.

-KeithP

 

[nakedfrog]

The only time in my life I ever really took notes was in the more complex parts of satellite/wideband comm theory.

 

[Alone]

I've never taken notes, not once in my entire life. I prefer to listen to what's being said, as I'll probably miss something if I try to write it all down. Plus, when you're copying, it's all store and dump. You hear the sentence, write it down and it's gone.

Plus, the notes are usually available somewhere.

 

[vi edit]

My notes were more of a function of a write commit function to my brain rather than a regurgitation of the material. If you were to look back on them they would make no sense at all. But my retention of the material was better if I scribbled down the important details.

But I did take many more classes that focused on theories rather than step by step problem solving. I find myself taking notes much more frequently "in the real world" than I ever did in college. But it's more of a step by step problem solving thing than a theory.

 

[Tiamat]

Originally posted by: LordSnailz
dunno, for my engr. classes I find that I can follow the prof. much easier if I write what he writes ... the derivations are or solutions to solving a circuit are usually not posted. I've tried just sitting there and listening, I can follow and understand but after awhile my mind tends to wonder. Plus my memory sucks, ask me to derive something 2-3wks later, I would prob. get half of it.

Exactly.

 

[RKS]

Originally posted by: sjwaste
In law school, this is an especially important skill. Many will use their notes to write their study outlines, so they try to take down every word. Usually on laptops.

I use pen and paper and basically write down the concepts and important things, or the non-obvious details. For instance, in most classes, knowing the detailed facts of a case isn't that important. It's more important to have the analysis and holding down, along with the few facts that the case turned on. If you understand the material, you can take this stuff down before/after class and just be in class to listen to the discussion on what the prof found important. After all, what the prof finds important likely makes it onto the exam.

The best way for me was to get a prior outline from that class/prof and supplement it.

 

[Baked]

Source of your stupid opinion?

 

[imported_Imp]

For me, that's a load of shit. I've tried it. I listened, didn't take notes, understood stuff and followed along during class. Five hours later at home, I forgot all the important, necessary details, and they aren't in the textbook/handouts.

If I take notes, I may not follow along, I may be day dreaming, but when I get home, I remember just enough from the lecture and have a full body of notes to connect the dots.

 

[CRXican]

Originally posted by: vi edit
My notes were more of a function of a write commit function to my brain rather than a regurgitation of the material. If you were to look back on them they would make no sense at all. But my retention of the material was better if I scribbled down the important details.

But I did take many more classes that focused on theories rather than step by step problem solving. I find myself taking notes much more frequently "in the real world" than I ever did in college. But it's more of a step by step problem solving thing than a theory.

The same is true for my college classes/note taking. My notes were never very lengthy but rather a list of concepts with bullet points that made up the details of the larger concepts.

If I needed more detail I would then turn to the textbook.

 

[swbsam]

Looks like there's a memo going out to all middle management - I've been told this by various manages at different points of my life. I have a.d.h.d. and NEED to take very detailed notes, but I was often told to listen, not take notes. Personally, that's just horseshit. But everyone's different.. I just hate it when people try to apply their methods onto me.

 

[alchemize]

Originally posted by: KeithP
When I was in college, during my note heavy classes, I would record the lecture on tape and not write anything during the initial lecture. Later I would listen to the tape and take notes then. This way I could pause the tape or rewind as necessary.

-KeithP

I did the same for my first year - 4.0. Was tremendously helpful.

Then I found out that if I didn't tape the lecture, and instead of re-writing the notes I could party/have fun, and I could still end up getting a B. Fair trade off for me 🙂

 

[yhelothar]

Depends on the class.
I had a stats class that I thought was really easy... standard deviation, mean, median, mode.. basic stuff that I've learned in middle school math and tutored extensively when I was a math tutor.
I could do all the problems easily, so I never took her notes and I often skipped class. Exam comes up and I bomb it. She wanted a lot of the stuff written out in the way she wanted it and her procedure/notation.
It took me two exams to figure this out.. i bombed two of them. Then for the last one, I got a detailed copy of her notes from someone that copied everything down extensively. I studied exactly what she wrote down in class and aced the exam.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: theflyingpig
The article is correct. Most people just sit in class and scramble to write down everything the prof says, which is foolish. I take notes from the book before class, then when the instructor mentions something unfamiliar I make a note of it. This allows me to pay more attention during the lecture.

Which is dandy if he follows or uses the book. 🙂


A lot of my profs taught stuff out of sequence, or had their own material, with the book(s) acting as a supplement and source of homework problems.

And it depends on your major. If the professor is scribbling down a long sequence of equations, listening might enable you to score a 10% on the test. Some of those equations are not in the book, nor are the examples.


That was my experience with my engineering classes: Take notes or fail. It wasn't put on the board if it wasn't important. The purpose of taking notes wasn't so much to learn the material either, at least not at the moment. Those notes were then used to do the homework problems, which was when the learning took place. No take notes? No do homework. No do homework? No pass test. Simple as that.
On the other hand, there was my business course, Project Management for Engineers. I listened and wrote down what was on the board. Each test got about 20 minutes of study time from me; there was a single homework assignment the whole semester.
I came out of the class with an A-. If that's what business classes are like, a 4.0 GPA should be cake for anyone in the major.
<flameproof ablative armor deploying>


I also do not learn well by listening. If I read something, I tend to remember it very well, sometimes verbatim.
Listening, I only have a memory of what was said, and my own ideas can often overshadow what was really heard, and start to overwrite the memory - things which are simply heard are far too tenuous for my taste.
If I read something to memorize it, I can also freely look for patterns in the information, either in the information itself, or in the way it's presented, which can help me to remember it. I can't do that for things I hear.

Originally posted by: LordSnailz
dunno, for my engr. classes I find that I can follow the prof. much easier if I write what he writes ... the derivations are or solutions to solving a circuit are usually not posted. I've tried just sitting there and listening, I can follow and understand but after awhile my mind tends to wonder. Plus my memory sucks, ask me to derive something 2-3wks later, I would prob. get half of it.

And even if you retain everything you covered in college, it still won't be enough for the real world. Once you get a job, your first project may well be something you've never seen before, so you're going to have to go find a reference and figure it out. That was one concept the profs impressed upon everyone was the ability to find information. They said flat out, you're never going to come close to knowing everything about engineering. There's just too much to know. And by the time you'd try finishing learning everything, some of what you'd know wouldn't be accurate anymore.

It's always more about problem solving technique. Boom, here's a problem. Some of it looks kind of familiar, but the rest of it is well into WTF???? territory. So you use what you do know, such as some notes scribbled down during a classroom lecture on using the commandline in ANSYS to do some obscure thing, and supplement it with some other reference.