Better note taking; ditch the highlighter
- Grasp highlighter firmly in hand
- Find a trash can
- Deposit highlighter in trash can
- Pat self on back
Highlighters are a nice invention aren’t they? You read a bit; you highlight a bit. You read a little more. Hmmm, that might be important; better highlight it. Here’s another important bit. Let’s use the orange highlighter for this one. Read. Read. Highlight. Read. Aren’t you good? You must be studying ; I mean, look at all the pretty colors.
The trouble is, you aren’t actually learning anything. You’re just identifying the possibly important parts. Nothing wrong with that, but you’re just postponing the actual studying. It’s like cleaning your house by putting little flags next to the dirty parts. You still have to go back and clean. Why not just clean it now?
Your goal should be to read it ONCE. After that, all the important points should be captured in a studyable format, so you’ll never have to wade through that text again.
So dispense with the college crayons and try these methods instead…
- Make keyword notes in the margins. Try to write as little as possible yet still capture the important points, and go for at least one note by every paragraph, even if it’s just your opinion about the author’s IQ. Abbreviate, symbolize, and summarize. To accurately and concisely summarize, you must process the information, and processing the information will automatically help you learn it. Bonus: now you have a nice outline, perfect for review.
- Make flashcards. Yes, flashcards … they’re not just for phonics and multiplication facts. Summarize, symbolize, and abbreviate as above. Go for one key note per card. Again, you’re working with the information, and this has been proven to be a much more effective way to learn info than by rote repetition. Bonus: You’ve got a portable review aid. Mastered that flashcard? Then remove it from the stack and sock it away in another stack to review again in a few days.
- Make condensed notes. Try to clearly and concisely summarize the entire chapter on one side of a 3×5 card. This is a great technique for those of us who tend to write too much and go on and on and on and on, not that I would know anything about that. The size of the card forces you to eliminate anything non-essential. I stumbled across this technique when a professor generously allowed us to use the notes on a single 3×5 card for our cumulative final exam. My writing was teenynsy (which is one step below tiny, I think), but it didn’t matter. I found that I almost never had to refer to the card! Just making the card was enough to help me accurately recall the information during the exam. Bonus: You’ll get really good at writing really small. That has to be useful for something. Suggestions are appreciated.
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To sum up: don’t just identify the info, capture it and process it. The summarizing, symbolizing, and abbreviating allow you to actually recall more information than if you just copied sentences word for word. Use any of these methods in combination with mnemonics and steady study, and you will find yourself with a lot more free time and better grades.
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[...] most college classes are mainly lecture, but you can push that recall further down the pyramid by taking effective notes and reacting to the information instead of just passively capturing [...]
Would you say that this is also applicable to med students? We are just bombarded with so much information, and need to study it in such little time. Would note-taking be more time-consuming than highlighting? I do agree that a deeper learning is achieved in note-taking, that’s why it’s a dilemma for me to ditch the highlighter.
Studying is really all about strategy. You have to balance the time you spend studying versus the grades you hope to get and the knowledge you want to walk away with. If you really want to capture the key points from a text or set of notes you’ll always have to do this sort of “information triage” to decide what’s worth studying. Highlighting is the first step in the triage; you’ve decided something is important enough to study.
Highlighting, however, is not enough to get the info stuck in your brain. You’ll have to come back and look at it many more times to make sure it sticks. Now it becomes a question of what method you’ll use to get it to stick; elaboration (using notes and other means of processing) or just rehearsal (reviewing the sentence in the text enough times that it finally sticks.) All the research shows that elaboration, while more difficult than rehearsal, is much more efficient at getting info into your memory. So the trade off is between spending, say, two minutes adding that piece of info into your notes and processing it with questions and diagrams, and then maybe spending an additional ten minutes (spread over days and weeks usually) reviewing it OR spending ten seconds highlighting it and then spending an additional twenty minutes (spread over days and weeks) to make it stick. Bottomline; just highlighting costs you time in the long run if you’re end goal is mastery of the information.