A Teacher’s Guide: How to take better notes in lectures and seminars at Uni

Posted on by J.J. Hamilton

As a teacher, I’ve read through thousands of exercise books, filled with notes, sketches and diagrams. Some of them are brilliant; others, not so much. I’ve graded thousands of essays and marked countless pieces of work, preparing hundreds of students for their GCSEs and A-Levels. I can tell you that a student’s notes are often a direct reflection of what – and how much – they understand. 

This is what I’ve learned from my years in the classroom about what truly works. It’ll set you up well for Sixth Form, college, University and beyond. I’ve seen every note-taking mistake in the book, so this guide isn’t stuck in theory; it’s based on what I’ve seen lead to success for my own students. This is the second part in my series that’ll prepare you for university. For my essential checklist of things to take, read that one first over here. I’ve got two degrees under my belt and have been teaching for six years, so you’re in safe hands.

But first, we need to start with why. Why is effective note taking so vital to acing your exams?

Why bother? The secret power of good notes

If you’ve already started attending lectures and seminars, or still reeling from the idea of capturing ideas at school or college, your view of note-taking might be very different from the view you’re about to read:

Note-taking is more than just transcribing.

Transcribing is about capturing exactly what’s been said. It’s a vital skill if your passion is journalism, and can make or break the difference between jotting down everything that your interviewee has said and missing out on key correspondence, but it’s useless in taking the best quality notes.

Trust me: I’ve done the research. If my Master’s in Teaching Studies taught me anything, it’s that students learn so much worse if they’re capturing everything their teacher said, word for word. Instead, it’s time to think about what you’ve heard or read and try your best to summarise that information into your own words.

I know: easier said than done. This involves thinking deeply about the new information and capturing it in a new way. As a result, you’re much more likely to remember these key concepts. And if you cement something into your brain in the long-term, you’re less likely to forget it, reducing the time you’ll need to dedicate to revision later down the line.

Actually, while we’re here, let’s touch on forgetting. Or, more accurately, the Forgetting Curve. This curve represents how much new information you lose if you fail to purposefully remember it over time. Your new information will simply leave your brain, since it’s not yet been converted into a long term memory. By returning to that information after an hour, a day, a week, even a month later, you’ll be more likely to remember it.

Knowing how this process works can reduce your need to relearn something, giving you more time to do what you want at Uni – rather than burying your head in a book all day long. By building good note-taking habits, you’re laying a really strong foundation for successful studying, leaving you in a solid position when it comes to assessments and examinations later down the line, as well as long-term retention (for the examiners and also for your pleasure).

What will be your note-taking weapon of choice?

Choose your weapon: the top note-taking methods

There are plenty of methods for note-taking, and you’re only going to discover which you prefer by having a go and experimenting with each of them. You might prefer some of these methods for certain kinds of knowledge retention, while you could use others in lectures, and others still in seminars. Experiment and see which works best for you.

The Cornell Notes Method

Developed by Cornell University, this note-taking form offers a space to place any reading that needs doing, alongside space for key words or paragraph summaries on the left, and summaries for the entire text at the bottom. The idea is that, as you read, you pick out key bits (everyone loves to highlight, right?) which add to your understanding of the topic, and then add them to the left-hand side of the page. Once you’re done, use your key words to write an overall, one-or-two sentence summary at the end of a piece of text.

Think of this as asking Gemini or ChatGPT to summarise a piece of text for you. If you’re interested in seeing how I use AI in teaching, or in blogging, I’ve linked to two posts I’ve made in the past. If you’d like to see how you could use AI as a student, let me know, and I could put something together.

Now, if you’re reading a book, it’s going to be tough to copy-and-paste the text into a new document. Instead, if the book is yours, why not highlight key words and write them on the left of each page, offering a summary at the end of each section? After all, it’s your copy – so what’s the harm?

For more on Cornell Notes, click here.

The Outline Method

This one’s simple, but requires a little forethought. In the outline method, you’ll be taking notes in a hierarchical structure, using bullet points and indentation to organise your work.

So, if you’re taking notes on Sparta, this is how your notes might look:

Sparta:

  • Societal structure:
    • Spartiates (10,000)
    • Perioikoi (40,000)
    • Helots (100,000)
  • Education:
    • Agoge:
      • Brutal
      • Highly trained
      • Stealing encouraged
        • Punished if caught

And so on. You could indent as much as needed, depending on what your notes require, leaving them highly organised and easy to read. The one drawback? It’s kind of tricky to do this on the fly, so perhaps avoid if you’re taking physical, paper, notes.

The Mind Mapping Method

Otherwise known as fancy spider diagrams. Write down a topic in the middle of a page (ideally A3 sized) and draw a circle around it. From there, each of its ‘legs’ represent something related to that topic.

Mind mapping goes one step further since you can build links between different pieces of knowledge. It’s one of my favourite ways to brainstorm, but it’s also great if you’re a visual learner or want to explore some more complex ideas. Perhaps not ideal for note-taking in the moment, since there might be bits that you miss, but great for capturing ideas in your own time.

The Flow-Based Method

This one’s a little more out there but worth trying. The flow-based method encourages you to jot down a few of the ideas you hear in the lecture or seminar and then making connections, rather than new headings, when something new crops up. Use those symbols to show how new ideas might relate to previous ones.

Since your goal is to capture concepts quickly, using shorthand and symbols, or even abbreviations and simple drawings, is critical to representing complex ideas. As an example, you could draw a double-headed arrow to show a cause-and-effect relationship. Crucially, though, you’ll want to be adding your own thoughts. Don’t just take notes on what’s being said; instead, actively think and make comments or jot down your own questions (this is what makes this method ‘flow’, since you’re exploring these new concepts in real time).

I wouldn’t personally use this method by itself, but it’s useful for incorporating with the other methods outlined above to really cement concepts.

You’ve got the why of note-taking down and the methods you could use, but not all methods are created equal. Next week, we’ll be exploring how note-taking looks different in different contexts, and whether using analogue or digital note-taking makes a difference.

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