In order to take effective lecture notes, you have to have a systematic method of taking notes. In this video, we're going to talk about the Cornell note-taking method. The purpose of note-taking is to create a record of information that you received verbally from the professor in a lecture. Your notes should include the topic, the main ideas or the main points, and any of the important details that support those main points. With good notes, you should be able to summarize the content of the lecture, days, weeks, months, or even years after the actual lecture has taken place. There's not just one way to take lecture notes. Many people these days are taking digital notes in their computers. Current research, however, states that if you take notes the traditional way with pen and paper, you're more likely to retain the information longer. If you take notes by hand, there are still many different options of how you write the information down on paper. Some students use Mind Maps to illustrate their ideas and to visually connect them with arrows and lines. Some more artistic people can draw pictures and illustrate their notes in a memorable way. Some professors make PowerPoint notes available for students before class so students can print them out and take notes right next to the slides that they see in class. In this course, as mentioned before, we will be practicing notes using the Cornell note-taking method. This is a system that's been around since the 1950s and it continues to support students in really deeply learning the content of the lecture. To begin, you'll need a regular 8 1/2 by 11 size paper. You'll need to divide your paper into three special sections as shown here. Your notes should be labeled at the top with the topic, the person who's speaking, your name, the class, and the dates. Step 1 is taking notes. The big white section is where your notes will go. The first step of the Cornell method is to take notes during the lecture. I have a few tips for you. First, use as few words as possible. You should never take notes with full sentences. Use note-taking shortcuts to write a little more quickly. Some examples of some shortcuts are using abbreviations and symbols instead of writing out the words. As mentioned, you need to indent so that the supporting details are underneath the main ideas, and lastly, skip lines and don't try to squish your words together. Use the space so it's legible. You can read it afterwards. Also, leave lots of space, so you can add information later. Step 2, cues. You'll write down your cues in this green section. You'll fill out this column after the lecture, either during class or later in the afternoon. Cues could include main ideas, study questions, key vocabulary, or important phrases mentioned during the lecture, questions either for the professors or for your classmates. The importance of this section is that students create cues to help them review the most important parts of the lecture. Then students should use those cues, cover up the notes section, and recite and see if they remember what the key vocabulary means, and if they can answer the study questions. Step 3, summary. The third step is to write a summary from your lecture notes in the blue box at the bottom. Write the main ideas in a complete thought. This should be done ideally for homework on the same day as a lecture. By writing a summary, you're reflecting on and reviewing the main ideas. This section should be written again in complete sentences and should answer questions such as, why is this information important or how is this information related to what we've been studying in class? Or what conclusions can I make from this information? The importance of this step is to encourage you to reflect and review a material which, according to research, is the best strategies to remember information for an extended amount of time. Reviewing the five Rs of note-taking. Step 1, record your notes. Step 2, reduce those notes into cues; the main ideas, study questions, vocabulary. Once you have those cues, recite the notes as well as you can without looking, see how much you can remember. The third step is the summary, where you're reflecting, thinking about the information, and reviewing it once again.
