Note-taking

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  1. Advance Organizers
  2. Guided Notes
  3. Note-Taking Pairs

Advance Organizers

Instructors provide a template for taking lecture/reading notes to help them organize their notes and help them focus on big ideas and connections between them.

Promotes: active listening, understanding

Teaching Technique 29: Advance Organizers video © The K. Patricia Cross Academy.

Guided Notes

Instructors provide a set of partially-completed notes that students complete while listening to help them focus on the key concepts presented in the lecture.

Promotes: Active listening, Understanding

Teaching Technique 16: Guided Notes video © The K. Patricia Cross Academy.

Online Technique Adaptation: Guided Notes video © The K. Patricia Cross Academy.

Note-Taking Pairs

Students take turns sharing notes with a partner at intervals in a lecture.

Promotes: understanding, writing, organization skills

Teaching Technique 42: Note-Take Pairs video © The K. Patricia Cross Academy.

Note-taking pairs allows students to take turns sharing notes after mini-lectures of approximately 10 to 15 minutes. It works like this:

  1. Students listen to the first portion of a lecture around one major concept (approximately 20 minutes) while taking notes.
  2. Student A shares their notes with Student B, and they work together to fill in any gaps (approximately 5 minutes).
  3. The lesson returns to a lecture format, and students continue taking notes around a new concept.
  4. Next, the role between students is reversed. Student B is asked to present their notes from the most recent segment of lecturing to Student A.
  5. Keep repeating this cycle until the end of the lecture.

In this manner, students become the pedagogues teaching each other and reviewing the content at the same time. Cycling through a process like this that combines lecturing, as the passive delivery mode of information, with collaboration and practice, through summarization and explanation of notes, effectively combines the transmission of information with more engaging peer-to-peer interactions.

This technique is especially good for large, first-year survey courses and is ideally suited to help students practice note-taking strategies. And, it does not require any advanced preparation and can be applied in nearly all disciplines.

The diagram shows the Note-Taking Pairs active learning technique in the form of a semi-circular flow diagram consisting of four illustrations. Moving from left to right the first illustration, 1 of 4, shows the figure drawn instructor next to a whiteboard alongside a group of figure drawn students in a lecture format. The next illustration, 2 of 4, shows an illustration consisting of four pairs of figure drawn students denoted as A and B in each pair with notes in front of them with the intention of sharing their notes, with an arrow indicating figure drawn student A, sharing notes and figure drawn student B, listening and providing feedback to the notes. The next and 3rd illustration, 3 of 4, shows a repeat of illustration 1 with the figure drawn instructor next to a whiteboard alongside a group of figure drawn students in a lecture format. The next illustration, 4 of 4, shows a repeat of illustration 2 with four pairs of figure drawn students denoted as A and B in each pair with notes in front of them with the intention of sharing their notes. The roles should be reversed between figure drawn students A and B.
Diagram of note-taking pairs active learning technique.

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Active Learning by Centre for Teaching and Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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