If you have a serious need to memorize, you usually must make
notes. Just what is it that I think is valuable about note taking? First and
foremost is the requirement for engagement. Students must pay attention well
enough to make decisions about the portion of the learning material that will
need to be studied later. Paying attention is essential for encoding
information, and nobody can remember anything that never registered in the
first place.
Note taking requires thinking about the material to decide
what needs to be captured for later study. This hopefully generates questions
that can be raised and answered while working your way through the learning
material. Sadly, in the last few years I notice that in my college classes, few
students take notes. It is as if they think they can remember everything (they
can’t). The cause may be that teachers tend to hand out prepackaged notes. I
object to this practice, because it reduces the level of student engagement and
thinking. If such notes are distributed, the notes should be in a skeleton form
that just provides an organized framework for students to construct their own
notes.
Handwritten notes have special advantages. If done in
pencil, which I recommend, items can be erased or re-arranged. You can draw
diagrams and pictures, which provide visual images to strengthen memorization
and control spatial layouts. Using different layouts for each page gives each
page a visual uniqueness that facilitates memory. A well-established fact about
memory is that spatial location is an important cue for encoding and recall. Where information is provides
important cues as to what the
information is. The spatial layout of script and diagrams on a page allows the
information to be visualized, creating an opportunity for a rudimentary form of
photographic memory, where a learner can imagine in the mind's eye just where
on the page certain information is, and that alone makes it easier to memorize
and recall what the information is. This effect occurs because the hippocampus,
which initiates memorization in the brain, also maps spatial location.
This brings me to another important point about
visualization. Pictures are much easier to remember than words. Hand-written
notes allow the student to represent verbalized ideas as drawings or diagrams.
If you have ever had to learn the Kreb's cycle of cellular energy production,
for example, you know how much easier it is to remember the cycle if it is
drawn rather than described in paragraph form.
I will explain the several methods for note taking.
The type of note format should vary with the nature of the
learning material and the level of expected memorization of the content from
reading material, videos, and lectures. All these forms can be produced with
computers, but I don’t recommend using a computer. Researchers Pam Meuller and
Daniel Oppenheimer provide clear evidence that handwritten note taking produces
better learning in college students. Remembering factoids was about the same in
both groups, but memory for concepts was distinctly better in students who took
notes by handwriting. In their report of three studies, cited over 1,000 times,
learning efficacy was scored in two groups of students, one taking notes on a
laptop computer and the other by handwriting.
When tested on learning material, students who used
handwritten notes that they studied scored significantly higher than students
using laptops, including agile touch-typists who took vastly more copious
notes. Handwriters took fewer notes overall with less verbatim recording. There
are many possible explanations for the superiority of handwriting, beginning
with the "less is more" idea in which too much information produces
cognitive overload.
For touch typists, taking notes on a laptop is a relatively
mindless process in which letters are banged out on autopilot. A good typist
does not have to think. Notably, when the typing students were told to avoid
verbatim notes, they still did it. This suggests that there is something about
typing that leads to mindless processing.
Handwritten notes involve more thought, re-framing, and re-organization,
all of which promote better encoding, understanding and retention. The manual
act of handwriting requires more engagement with the subject matter. Finally,
handwritten notes capitalize on the use of drawings and of personalized spatial
layout of the notes. Memorization involves not only what the information is,
but where it is spatially located.
Outline
These notes are arranged in terms of topic, sub-topic, sub-subtopic,
and so on. Each item is on a separate line and is indented. Each topic or
sub-topic can be numbered and lettered. Here is an example for information on
cell biology (Figure 1a):
 |
| Fig. 1a. Common numbering way of taking outline notes. |
 |
| Fig 1b. Common way of taking notes using heads and subheads |
Outline notes are most useful when you must capture large amounts of information quickly. If you don’t have much time to think, outlines are usually easy to construct because that is the way most information is presented in lectures, videos, and textbooks. A presenter typically presents a main thought, then explains it with some detail, and then moves on to the nest main idea.
For
more understanding and to promote memory, it is important to think about the
words that appear in an outline. Other note-taking methods may require
reconstructing the initial outlined information in a different format, and this
requires some thinking.
Charts
Here you create a table with separate columns for each topic
(Figure 2). You typically have only one blank row in which you put the
information you want to memorize. Depending on the subject matter, you might
want to segregate facts and concepts.
 |
| Fig. 2. Chart format for note taking |
Cornell Method
Here, you use a table that captures key facts or concepts in
a different spatial layout (Figure 3).
 |
| Fig. 3. Cornell note format |
Matrix Notes
Matrix notes place information in a table, where the columns
might be categories of information and the rows contain items within each
category. The columns represent one category of information (such as topics and
the rows another, such as items. Here is the basic idea (Figure 4):
 |
| Fig. 4. Matrix note format |
Matrix notes promote an overall “bird’s eye” view of
relationships among ideas. This requires more thinking and may not be possible
in the real time of watching a video or lecture. However, the method is very
powerful, in large part because it requires you to think deeply. Such thinking
may also provide insights that would otherwise not occur. Matrix notes can be
more comprehensive and force thinking about content in a wide range of
contexts. Matrix notes are most useful when cross-cutting relationships need to
be recognized and clarified.
The advantages for learning are that the learner
conceptualizes the ideas in the process of constructing the matrix. Because
ideas are presented in one view, preferably in units of one page at a time, it
is easy to see cross-cutting relationships that otherwise are not so apparent.
Such organization is an aid to stimulating insight. In addition, the fixed
spatial layout is a memory aid.
The process might usually begin with outlined notes, because
few people can think fast enough to construct a matrix in real time during a
lecture or video.
Next lesson: Lesson 6. Mind Mapping
Follow my “neuro-education” group on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4883556/
To check out my four books on learning and memory, see my
web site: WRKlemm.com
Sources:
Klemm, W. R. (2012). Memory Power 101. New York:
Skyhorse.
Mueller, Pam A. and Oppenheimer, Daniel M. (2014). The pen
is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking.
Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524581
