Activity
Note taking and reviewing notes for exams
Strategies on how to take notes and how to review these notes for quizzes and exams.
As educators, we often focus on the content of the materials and not the skills required to access and retain the content. The old Chinese saying, applies here! “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Have you taught your student strategies on how to take notes and how to review these notes?
The actual process of taking notes should begin in elementary school, even though students who are blind or low vision may be able to retain the required information without taking notes. It is important to teach the process of note taking – including the tech skills required to take and review notes – while the content is still easy to memorize and retain. Do not wait until your student struggles with complex content and/or retaining content before teaching the process of how to take notes!
In a recent assistive technology Facebook thread, a struggling college student asked for strategies on how to be more efficient when studying for exams. The sheer amount of reading in college can be overwhelming! She specifically requested tips about how to review without having to read everything – including all of her notes – again, prior to the exam. This student also has some “open note” timed quizzes and was looking for suggestions on how to easily find specific information within her notes. These issues all begin with good note taking skills.
Five note taking/studying strategies from Dr. Coletta
Kristin Mathe Coletta shared excellent strategies from the perspective of being a totally blind person who earned a PhD and now designs and teaches online college courses. Here are her top five strategies:
- First, do you have electronic copies of the readings that you can edit? I ask because one way to easily mark important passages if you’re using a screenreader, is to insert “yy” or “xx” without the quotation marks just before the sentences you might need to review. It is an unusual letter combo that a quick find function will jump through easily.
- Second, consider what is in your notes and how/when you review them. Be sure to have the thesis statement of any reading, any key terms, interesting ideas and note headings. Copy and pasting brief quotes can also be helpful. Then, before an exam be sure to review and quiz yourself on key concepts. Do any practice problems or checks for understanding even if they are ungraded.
- Third, if your online course is arranged with modules, typically the overview or intro page of each lesson will have learning objectives. Use these to structure your notes; they are typically what is assessed.
- Fourth, and not to be overlooked, schedule times to chat with your professors to ask questions or get their suggestions for studying. Phone, email and Zoom all are great for this.
- Finally, take great steps to actually learn the content. Be aware of your course and university’s policies surrounding the use of AI. While some classes allow it, some do not.
Additional comments from this FaceBook thread
A number of others contributed their suggestions including:
- Study by first reading the objectives, usually given in the beginning of the chapter and use those questions while you are reading.
- Answer the study questions at the end and put those in your notes, as those are usually where many professors take their quiz questions from.
- Ask for help from the disability coach in the universities accessibility department. Helping with issues of adaption for taking notes and ways to study using verbal notes instead of reading can make a big difference in how you memorize facts and concepts. There are ways to skim and still get the gist of those chapters!
- This worked for me! I remember my notes a ton better when I type them on a braille keyboard (which might be slower than the QWERTY keyboard, but I remember better using the braille keyboard.
- When I was in college, I used Voice Dream Reader. You can import the book and then use the search feature – it works beautifully! Search for a certain phrase or a keyword.
- I love Kristin’s advice. Use command + f to search through your notes to find information. Can you get the book in a different format that would be easier to search? For example, Word format from Bookshare or accessible PDF from the publisher. Unfortunately e-textbooks can have pretty clunky navigation.
- There are some posts on Paths to Technology with videos on notetaking strategies with screenreaders. Here is a post on simplifying college notes.
- Envision #3: Keep it simple! How to simplify college notes
- My Sweet Sixteen Tips to Note Taking Success (video that is a summary of 16 note-taking tips)
- Use Voice Dream so that you can bookmark where the necessary information is.
- Read the material or lecture on one device and take notes on a second device.
- Several people suggested reaching out to your university’s accessibility center or student’s center for tutoring and/or readers.
- Several people suggested recording lectures and/or recording your notes and label each section separately.
- I look through my modules first, then I check to see if there is a quiz for a certain chapter. After I read the chapter and highlight the important things, I take the quiz right away when it is still fresh in my mind. Highlighting important information or copying that important information into a document is helpful as it takes me longer to skim through the text when reviewing. I also review the PowerPoint lectures and leave them open during quizzes.
- I use AI to summarize important information that I have read, especially if I’m reading articles that are hard to understand, such as some research articles. This is where AI really helps!
Editor’s comments
Dr. Coletta’s first strategy is to mark pertinent information with “yy” or “xx” and to use the “find” feature to quickly find the important pieces of content in order to review, or for quizzes that allow the student to access notes and materials during the quiz. To build on Dr. Coletta’s strategy, try using a specific letter combination for different types of content. Example: Important dates might be marked as “ddd”, important terms (definitions) might be marked as “ttt”, important names or places might be marked as “nnn” and important events might be marked as “eee”. Labeling the specific types of content should make it even quicker to locate the desired piece of information! Note: Use three letters; some search features might find words that have two “t’s” within the word. Using three “t’s” will eliminate this issue. Using unique letters, such as “yy” or “xx” also works well, but are harder to remember what type of content is marked.
The strategies listed above are excellent! If you have additional tips, please reach out to us at [email protected]
Resources: Activities
There are a number of note taking activities geared for younger students to introduce and practice note taking skills.
- Monster: Note taking skills
- Monster: Note Taking Skills Part 2
- Turkey vs. Bald Eagle: Debate Writing (and Note Taking)
- Note Taking: Polar Bear Video
- Note taking: Polar bear video (part of a series of posts on note taking; this post focuses on note taking strategies specifically for videos)
- Zoom and NVDA tutorial skills (and note taking skills) (Zoom meeting)
- Butterflies part 3: Note taking from videos
- The story of Martin Luther King Junior: Note taking
- I have a dream: High school literature activities (includes note taking skills using this iconic speech)
- April Fool’s Day lessons (includes note taking from a video)
Resources: Taking notes strategies
- Taking notes and low vision
- Tips and models for effective note taking (From the Perkins College Readiness Resource Center)
- Note taking: The prerequisite skills (From the Perkins College Readiness Resource Center)
- What do I do with my notes anyway? (From the Perkins College Readiness Resource Center)
Resources: Apps
- Note-taking Applications for the iPad: Part 1
- Note-taking Apps for the iPad: Part 2
- Note-taking Applications for the iPad: Part 3,
- Note-taking applications part 4: Android
- Great note taking application: Noteshelf
- Evernote for taking class notes: iOS and Android app
By Diane Brauner (with comments from others!)
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