Structured Integrated Note Taking System
Note-taking is a valuable skill most of us learn as students and take with us into every meeting room, boardroom, and industry conference throughout our lives. The quality of your notes greatly affects your ability to study and retain information. Naturally, finding the perfect note-taking method may seem like a lifelong and highly personal pursuit. But there are proven and effective best practices for note-taking that will help you retain information better.
Structured integrated note taking system
The best way to take notes depends on your learning style, the type of content, and the amount of time you have. Ultimately, the best note-taking method for you is the one that will encourage you to learn and retain information as effectively and efficiently as possible.
When using the outline method on paper, you must gauge how much space you need below each subtopic heading for all your notes. With a digital platform, you can always create more or less space as you go. With practice, you can become highly efficient at taking notes this way while keeping them neat and professional.
The boxing method of note-taking is geared toward those who are visual-dominant learners. Similar to mind-mapping, boxed notes allow learners to see how ideas are connected and flow from each other. You can take boxing notes by hand or digitally with the help of tools like a lasso tool, which allows you to easily group items together.
The sentence note-taking method is the simplest and least structured method. When the lecture content itself is not outlined, then the sentence method can help give your notes a slight structure that the topic is missing. The sentence method is particularly useful for fast-paced lectures that cover a lot of content. It works for either handwritten or digital notes.
The choice between handwritten vs. digital notes, like the choice in note-taking method, comes down to what will yield the best results for you. Whether one approach is cleaner or faster is only part of the equation. The priority should be choosing the method that will actually help you learn and retain information better, with the ability to easily review.
There are some factors to consider about handwriting notes. Studies have found handwritten notes promote higher retention rates than typing notes on a laptop or tablet. It is also easier to be distracted by other applications when taking notes on a device. However, handwriting notes may prove too time-consuming for a fast-paced lecture.
Compared to handwritten notes, digital notes are a fast and clean method for efficient note-taking. They allow you to use additional tools like graphs, charts, and clipped images to better assist your learning, especially if you are a visual learner. However, they may encourage transcription rather than deep learning, as many students focus on typing every word rather than actually paying attention to the content of the lecture.
There is also a popular hybrid approach. You can take initial notes by hand, and then transcribe them to a digital version, cleaning them up in the process. This allows you to convert your original handwritten notes into the best note-taking method for the final version.
One of the main takeaways from learning about the different note-taking strategies should be that the relationship between the method and the type of content is critical. Certain methods are clearly more suitable for some types of lecture or meeting content. Conversely, some methods are not conducive to certain types of content.
Lecture and meeting content is typically either structured or non-structured, meaning you may or may not have a clear outline to follow and build your notes around. In addition to being outlined or not, content can also be conceptual or fact-based. These distinctions will help you choose whether you need a fluid or structured note-taking method.
Effective learning is more than just taking notes. What you do with your notes after a particular class or meeting is crucial to your ability to move your newly acquired knowledge from the surface to the deeper parts of your memory.
Researchers have found that there is a powerful hand-to-brain connection that helps us deepen our learning while note-taking. While typing notes is a fast and efficient way to take down information, it may not produce the same retention that handwriting does.
Let Box Notes be your go-to source for high-quality, user-friendly note-taking. Write down notes quickly and efficiently in real time, or transcribe your notes the way you want them to look. With Box Notes, you can create convenient templates to use for each course, saving you time.
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Making notes is a great way to organize your schedule, remember essential points, create a workflow, and track progress. Humankind saw a massive upgrade in taking notes after the paper was discovered in China and spread to different parts of the world.
It is safe to say that humankind is witnessing another massive upgrade over pen-paper notes with digital writing apps. You no longer need to carry a notebook or make your office desk messy using sticky notes. Many writing apps work on smartphones, making them highly portable and easy to use. Moreover, cross-platform integrations, real-time cloud sync, and integration of multimedia files in your notes take your note-taking experience to a higher notch altogether.
Notion offers a highly structured note-taking and web-clipping experience, among many other things coupled into a single package. You can create rapid and highly flexible content that you can later restructure, change, share, and duplicate using Notion.
Evernote makes sure that you efficiently capture your ideas, projects, memories, and your workflow. The note-taking application lets you customize your notes according to your needs while giving you the flexibility to attach documents, videos, images, or audio clips onto them.
Microsoft OneNote is yet another tremendous note-taking application that lets you organize your ideas and projects. The latest version of OneNote automatically syncs your notes and makes them available across all the devices signed up with the same account. The note-taking application offers plenty of handy templates for every use case. Some of these templates are:
Bear merges the idea of word processing and note-taking and creates a combo that you cannot resist. The simplified Bear UI makes sure you write down every inspiration, idea, and memory when they strike. The application is currently available on the Apple ecosystem; iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Roam Research brings the modern forms of note-taking to your nearest devices. It is not a conventional note-taking application; instead, it aims to take notes for networked thought. It helps you to connect to your thoughts and group them in unison. The application follows a bi-directional approach, meaning that you can move back and forth with your ideas in a fluid manner.
Notability is a mobile-based note-taking application that offers great functionality in a compact package. You can collaborate with other team members and manage projects using sketching and PDF annotation tools on Notability. The application lets you explore your creativity and gives plenty of customization options like adding GIFs, web pages, images, and more to your notes.
Google Keep is a web-based note-taking application that aims to assist individuals and professionals in capturing their ideas in any form they want. You can use audio, images, videos, and more to capture ideas and check to-do tasks.
The sheer number of features on their free version outnumbers the premium versions of many note-taking applications. You get excellent features like end-to-end encryption and access on unlimited devices with the free version. The application syncs all your notes automatically to their servers with no upper storage limit.
Note-taking is the most effective way of organizing yourself as an individual or an entire enterprise. Writing apps are bringing in revolutionary changes to the conventional methods of storing ideas and memories. The above article shares the best note-taking applications that offer great functionality and make sure you never miss any task in your life.
Never fear! Your guide to taking awesome, effective notes is finally here. Your days of looking back at what you scribbled down in class and trying to decipher useful information from them before a test are over.
When taking your outline notes, start by choosing four or five key points that will be covered in your lecture. Beneath those points write some more in-depth sub-points about each topic as the professor covers them.
The mind map is a great way of taking notes for specific types of subjects. Class subjects like chemistry, history, and philosophy that have interlocking topics or complex, abstract ideas are perfect for this method. Use the mind map to get a handle on how certain topics relate, or to go in-depth with one particular idea.
This note-taking method is great for students looking to maximize their active learning within the classroom and minimize their review time later. The point of flow notes is to treat yourself like the student you are, and not a lecture-transcribing machine.
This actually impaired their learning because their brains were processing the information shallowly, instead of taking larger concepts and condensing them into note-form. These students performed poorly on conceptual tests compared to others who took notes longhand.
Notion is one of the most flexible and powerful apps I've ever used. It can be a note-taking app, but there's also a database feature with multiple views (including Trello-style kanban boards and calendars) the ability to make anything into a template, and great collaboration features. At CIG, we use it for all of our team documentation, and I also manage every YouTube video I make with it.