Some aspects of writing good essays may not be immediately obvious. Taking good notes is probably one of them. Note-taking's utility extends beyond writing essays, however, creating a valuable resource in the form of a record of your learning, and functioning as reference material for remembering what you've learnt and is also good for teaching others.

With essay writing, good note-taking allows you to quickly locate useful material. Such material might include concepts that you agree or disagree with, quotes that summarise important ideas, or resources to further explore to name a few. Basically, anything that potentially holds future value should be noted down.

Therefore, anything that captures your attention or imagination is worth making a quick note of. If in doubt, note it down (trust me on this one - I have learnt the hard way).

Text that grabs you attention in class readings should be underlined, highlighted or otherwise marked up. This would include sentences or paragraphs that define or describe core concepts, summarise important ideas, capture the imagination, inspire the heart, stimulate the mind, challenge your thinking, direct future actions - again, essentially anything that grabs your attention and may be useful in the immediate or long-term future.

I like to highlight (in yellow) anything that really jumps out at me, and then underline (in red) any other text that, while not affecting me as deeply, is still worthy of marking. Large sections of text that are of any importance I draw a red vertical line beside, running parallel from the first to last sentence, as I don't want big sections or whole pages highlighted or underlined. Yuck!!

Most good PDF readers will also allow you mark up text as described above, as well as add notes in the margins (usually contained in a dialogue bubble icon). Become familiar with and use these tools. Doing so will cement your learning and, again, make it so much easier and faster to find what you want when you want.

Regarding in-class note-taking, and organising notes from week to week, sessions/classes usually form the basic unit of material and typically make up the core elements of my note-taking. Therefore, each week’s class has its own entry, with notes recorded under each of these entries.

Other information such as the course outline, reference material, and assessment information deserve their own entries. I find Microsoft OneNote to be the superior note-taking app at the time of writing, followed closely by Evernote. I acknowledge research that indicates writing with pen and paper results in greater retention than typing on a computer. I choose a combination of typing, talking (voice to text) and using an Apple Pencil on my iPad.

I do this because I can talk or type more quickly and legibly than I can write and this is pretty important for getting my thoughts down fast enough in a form that I can read later. It also ensures I don't get too far behind in listening to what is being taught. The need for speed is important! Searchable notes (using the search function) are invaluable to me, and this would not be achieved if I wrote only. Think and plan intentionally, and I'm sure you'll strike a good balance.

If your handwriting is quick and legible, you may be interested to know that Evernote has partnered with Moleskine, who make a special paper notepad that can later be scanned into Evernote. Here an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) layer is added, making your notes searchable, as if they have been typed. This may be worth considering for those who'd rather write than type, but also want to be able to search for and find what they’ve written later with ease and speed. At the time of writing, and this has been the case for some years, each compatible Moleskine notebook comes with a 3-month Evernote Premium membership, which may entice the subscribed Evernote customer towards a fairly high-power, cost-effective, good quality note-taking solution.

Any app or paper-based system should allow for several tiers of organising, not unlike the structure of the essays you write. For note-taking, I use the following categories: Course > Unit > Session/Class > Support Material > Topic/Heading > Notes (not always that consistently and simplistically delineated, but you get the idea).

In OneNote this would look like:

• Course (Section Group)

• Unit (Section)

• Session/Class (Page)

• Support Material (Sub-page)¹

• Topic/Heading (Bold Type)

• Notes (Standard type, marked up with italics, underline, etc)

What you are essentially trying to achieve is the creation of a summarised library of ideas that you've identified as important. This may be primarily for the purpose of any assessment in the short term, but as mentioned above, is also useful for personal future reference and as teaching resources to help other's learning down the track.

As you do this, consider that the quicker and easier it is for you to put your finger on what you want when you want later, the better. So using keywords that will appear in a search later can be a very good idea.

So, when taking notes, think carefully about what words might be worth adding. Include who and where ideas come from and when, and where you might find more information if desired. Note the date and lecturer/speaker for each session (and a special note if someone other than them made the comment you noted down); add author and source for written material; and any other necessary information for miscellaneous resources you might want to reference.

Forming good note-taking habits early sets you up for much more enjoyable assignment writing later.

Be kind to your future self, and your future self will remember your past self with much gratitude and fondness, and might even shout your future, future self a coffee. ☕

Next Post: Research

^{1. To expand further on support material, this is where a OneNote page, representing an assignment, for example, might have various support material in the form of documents, such as the assignment task, rubric, case brief, resource list, etc. You will also want to keep your own notes along with any other sub-pages needed to store information or organise your thoughts. For sessions/classes, class slides, readings, handouts, etc may form individual sub-pages under each page. When it comes to importing material to OneNote and not having information lost in a large list of documents and notes, sub-pages makes organising all this a lot easier. Sub-pages can be expanded and contracted as needed.}

March 2018 (Updated January 2021)