Teaching Note Taking Skills

My students hate taking notes. I don't blame them. They're not very good at it. I spend way too much time during lecture repeating the same thing over and over again so they can laboriously copy word for word my statements into their notes, all the while puzzling out how to spell things right. As a student that would bore me, as a teacher it drives me nuts. Were I to simply continue my lecture and not wait for everyone to catch up, a handful would simply become frustrated and put their pencil down and proclaim their own incompetence: "I can't do this!" At that point they look for ways to derail the lecture and focus attention on them.

I tried something the other day that I want to experiment with a little more, but it's a simple idea really. I had them listen to me lecture. No questions, no pauses, nothing. They were instructed to take notes on as many things as they could catch, but not to worry about getting everything. I instructed them in the use of shorthand and abbreviation to reduce the time writing out words or ideas that can be conveyed through the use of symbols.

Why write out the word money or economy when you can convey the idea with a simple $ instead? "The Great Depression was a time of economic downturn" becomes: G.D.=no $. Does it fully encapsulate the idea? No, but we can hash that out later.

Students were also told ahead of time that the notes did not need to be in any particular structure or format (Cornell, SQ3R, etc) and that they should format them however they like best. At the end of the lecture we would all share what we noted and create a group set of notes. I did this very low tech. I drew a Cornell format on the whiteboard and wrote in what they told me using my own shorthand and demonstrated how to organize this information using the Cornell format. I did not ask for volunteers for this activity (thereby allowing students to be held unaccountable for taking the initial notes), instead I called on them all one by one and continued "around the world" so to speak.

It was a bit much for one period. Their hands were pretty sore, but we had a good set of notes that they could all copy at their own pace. Thereby, also eliminating the usual copying of each others' notes (I do not condemn this normally, I actually encourage it). At the end of the class a few students who needed more time to copy the notes thought it might be prudent to take out their cellphone and use the built in camera to photograph the whiteboard to copy later.

I rolled with it and allowed cellphone use, which I am doing more and more these days. I just can't argue with the logic of a student using a blackberry type phone to look up definitions online faster than paging through the dictionary they barely recognize as anything resembling a reference source and which they regard as little more than shelf decoration.

I could see this activity being a good follow up activity the next day in class or even online via a wiki page, notesake, or Google doc that students could collectively create. The best part of this structure is that it allows me to correct misconceptions, further question them, and include additional information into their notes on the spot. Were it online, I could easily add additional notes.

After trying the idea I did some research on collective note taking and found this article from 1883 that seems to undermine the concept of this being a new and original idea, but at least it shows how long people have been questioning traditional solo note taking. I also came across this more up to date look at NoteBlogging and the way it could advance learning, as well. I guess I am not alone. While the latter article offers a wealth of ideas it is also about students using tablet PCs which are a bit out of our school's budget.

I'll be following up this post with updates on how I use this idea this year and perhaps some links to notes my students have made collectively.