Note-taking
Recording information to free the mind from recall.
Note-taking is the practice of recording information from different sources and platforms, allowing the writer to capture the essence of information and free the mind from having to recall everything. It is a foundational skill in personal knowledge management, with notes commonly drawn from transient sources such as oral discussions or lectures, where they may be the only record of the event.
- field
- Information management, cognitive psychology, education
- known_for
- Recording information from transient sources; foundational skill in personal knowledge management; development of various note-taking systems including Cornell Notes, outlining, and SQ3R
- key_methods
- Linear note-taking, non-linear note-taking, outlining, sentence method, charting, mapping, Cornell Notes, SQ3R
Lore & Background
Note-taking has been an important part of human history and scientific development. The Ancient Greeks developed hypomnema, personal records on important subjects. In the Renaissance and early modern period, students learned to take notes in schools, academies and universities, often producing beautiful volumes that served as reference works after they finished their studies. In pre-digital times, people used many kinds of notebooks, including commonplace books, accounting waste books, and marginalia.
Reader's Guide
Note-taking is a central aspect of a complex human behavior related to information management involving a range of underlying mental processes and their interactions with other cognitive functions. The person taking notes must acquire and filter the incoming sources, organize and restructure existing knowledge structures, comprehend and write down their explanation of the information, and ultimately store and integrate the freshly processed material. Studies comparing the performance of students who took handwritten notes to students who typed their notes found that students who took handwritten notes performed better on examinations, hypothetically due to the deeper processing of learned material through selective rephrasing instead of word-for-word transcription. Note-taking is a good strategy to enhance learning and memory, as it allows the notetaker to be selective and reorganize ideas during a lecture. Many different formats are used to structure information, including linear methods like outlining and the sentence method, and non-linear methods like mapping, charting, and Cornell Notes. SQ3R is a method of taking notes from written material, though it might be better classified as a method of reading and gaining understanding.
Did You Know?
- Philosopher John Locke developed and published a popular indexing system that served as a model for commonplace books and inspired at least ten different published editions of templates in Europe and the Americas.
- Studies found that students who took handwritten notes performed better on examinations than those who typed their notes, hypothetically due to deeper processing through selective rephrasing.
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