Hitchhikers's Guide to Lecture Notes

My current method for taking notes during lectures is to use OneNote (Windows 10) with my tablet. I organise the one note sections into:

Years→ Semesters→ Modules→ Lecturers/Topics→ Lectures

For each lecture I download the powerpoint and copy it into the one note lecture. This allows me to draw and write anywhere on the slides. I found that the best way I learn each lecture is to only make notes on what has been said that is not on the lecture slides. Trying to make your own notes on everything can quickly overwhelm you and you may lose track of what is going on and miss some key information that is not on the slides. After each lecture I usually write out all the slides and extra notes into a neat and colour coded format as I find this solidifies the new content and is easier for me to revise from them in the few weeks before exams.

You can easily add new sections/pages by clicking the add section/ add page buttons in the bottom left corner. To make sub sections/pages you need to right click on one of the new sections and click promote/make subpage, this will group pages together to make them collapsible groups.

To insert lecture slides into one note just download them from the module pages on blackboard. Then simply drag and drop the powerpoint/pdf into the lecture page and click insert as printout. Note: Sometimes the download will not support “Insert as printout” I find this is usually because the download is an older version of powerpoint. Changing the file type to pdf or a newer version of powerpoint will then allow you to “insert as printout”.

For my first year I was not too sure how to take notes and because of that I changed my style of writing notes after the first semester.

In the first semester I hand wrote my notes. During lectures, I wrote down comments from the lecturers that were not included on the lecture slides because I had the lecture slides downloaded on my laptop.

Personally I found it more beneficial to write notes on things that are mentioned that are not in the slides because some students that wrote notes for both the slides and the lectures comments found it difficult to write everything and would sometimes miss important information that the lecturer is giving, whereas because I was focusing on what the lecturer was saying I didn’t miss anything important that I needed to write down.

When I was hand-writing notes, I found it very tedious and I commonly lost my train of thought in lectures because of it. Therefore, I changed to writing digital notes. As I was fortunate enough to have a laptop that I could use a digital pen for, I wrote notes digitally. As the lecture notes are released before the lectures, I would save the lectures as pdfs and then during the lectures would write notes that were not already included in the lectures on the pdfs. This was easier for me because all my notes were in one place and the lectures notes included the important and helpful comments from the lecturers.

Lecture slides also include many diagrams so instead of having to draw the diagrams and graphs to add notes to them, I only had to draw and write on the pdfs.

My personal view is that writing notes digitally, on a laptop, is the most beneficial way to make sure you don’t miss anything important as well as having all your notes in one place.

Yes, I might be becoming a bit of a dinosaur in the department, but fortunately that means I’ve sat through plenty of lectures through the years! I’ve also experienced some ‘online lectures’ at the back end of last year; luckily the way you take notes can stay pretty much the same as if you were sat in an actual lecture theatre.

My approach to note-taking has changed slightly through the years, as I imagine yours will too. I’d encourage you not to be afraid of trying something different, especially in first year. Remember that all you really have to do is pass all your first year modules (i.e. 40% +). Don’t aim on getting just 40%, but do have confidence that even if things don’t work as well for you, you’ll likely still pass the module and be able to move on.

To note-making then! My advice would be to print out the lecture slides before the lecture. The slides should always be available to you on Blackboard at least 24hrs before. Then, in the lecture, take down any EXTRA notes that the lecturer says that you find helpful. This stops you from simply writing what’s on the slides; it’s the extra notes that you add which will help you when you revisit them. Then, outside of lectures and in between nights out or sports fixtures, I spend time going back over them and writing ‘neat notes’ in my own words. This often sparks a lot of questions, so doing this through the term means you can go into another lecture and ask questions then. I’ve more or less stuck with this in years 2 and 3 too, and it has never let me down. Though, now I’ve coached myself into not rewriting the slides, I save money by not printing off the slides at all!

So, my main tips for making notes in lectures:

1. Try something different for one of your modules - see if it works. No harm done in first year if it doesn’t work as well

2. Don’t write what’s on the slides; listen carefully to the lecturer and make any extra notes that you find helpful

3. Slightly unrelated, but don’t be afraid to ask lecturers questions!! Either in the lecture, or email them afterwards. No question is a stupid question (it’s likely others are just too shy to ask).

You’ve got this!