“Taking Notes Effectively” (Jeffrey Kaplan)

Professor Jeffrey Kaplan is the author of the video-class below, published in his YouTube channel.

The text that follows is an unofficial transcription of his video-class. For educational purposes only.

Enjoy the reading.

People think that when you take notes you’re supposed to write down everything you hear. No. To take notes properly you need to do four things:

1. Never write down every word.
2. Don’t even grab whole phrases and write those down exactly.
3. Add flesh onto your notes within 24 hours. (I’ll explain what that means later in the video.)
4. Take notes by hand using a pen or a pencil, not by typing.

Over the course of this lecture video, I’m going to go through all four of these techniques for taking notes properly. If you take notes properly, then two things will happen. There will be two benefits. Here they are:

The first benefit is that during that one hour of lecture, or however long it is, during that period of time you will absorb more information into your brain. You’ll just leave remembering much, much more of what you just heard. The second benefit is that you’ll have the notes; you’ll still have them. You’ll have a written record, your notes, which you can look back on later at the end of the semester or years later.

You’ll have those notes. Both of these benefits are matters of efficiency. You’re getting more out of that same one hour of lecture. You’re absorbing and retaining more information, and you’re getting this physical product: these notes that you can use later. They’ll be very useful later.

You’re just getting them. But in order to get these benefits, you have to take notes properly. The main thing about taking notes properly is that you can’t just write down word for word what you hear, or just grab phrases here or there. You have to think through the meaning of what you’re hearing. You have to engage with the content of what you’re hearing, and then write down a summary of that content in your own words.

You have to do it that way, or else you won’t get this stuff. I’m going to explain how to do that. Here we go.

Fundamentally, taking notes is a tool of efficiency. You’re going to be in class for that period of time anyway, right? You’re there in the room anyway. How can you use that same amount of time, that same one hour of lecture, or one hour and 15 minutes, or whatever it is, how can you use that same amount of time to get the most learning into your brain? I’m not saying work longer hours, I’m saying take the same number of hours and squeeze out of them the most retention, the most understanding, the most resources to make your courses easy. That’s what I’m going to explain how to do today, specifically how to take notes in class so that you get the most out of every class period.

Back to the four techniques for taking notes: number one, don’t write down every word. It’s just a fact about human memory that it’s very hard to retain, to remember, sort of meaningless symbols. What we remember is the meaning behind those symbols. And so if you just write down the words — words are just symbols — if you just write down the words without understanding them, well then you’ll have a transcript of the words.

I mean, most people can’t write at that speed. But even if you could, you’ll have a transcript of the words, or a bunch of those words, but you won’t have understood any of it and you certainly will not retain it. Instead, what you have to do is think through the meaning of those words and summarize what you’re hearing in your own words, with your own understanding of the material.

The result of this, of course, is, you know, technique for properly taking notes number two, which is: not only should you not write down every word, you shouldn’t just grab a few words or phrases here or there and write those down.

It’s like this: say that the following — I’m going to write it here — is a… is a transcript of what the lecturer said at the front of the lecture. These aren’t words, obviously, these are just squiggles that I’ve written on a piece of glass. The point is, okay, say that these were all of the words that you’d heard.

What a lot of students will do is they’ll hear a bit and they’ll just… they’ll write down these few words. But then they can’t write as fast as the person can speak and so they miss a few words. They barely hear these… because they’re busy listening to those. But they grab a few more words, they’re able to capture those. They miss a few more, they grab these, they miss a few more, they grab those. They’re just writing down, like, disconnected phrases.

What you get from this technique is… is even worse, often, than not taking notes at all, because you’ve just got a disconnected jumble of phrases which you don’t understand. And because you were busy writing exact phrases you were like barely listening to the parts in between, and you don’t retain anything.

This… this technique, which is so common — I would say that this is the most common way that people try to take notes — this is a disaster.

Instead what you should do is listen carefully and understand what the person is saying. And then once you understand what they’re saying, write down a little bit of your… that understanding, in your own words. If they talk for a minute, listen for that whole minute, understand that whole idea that took them a minute to say, and then write down your own summary of that one minute of… of talking.

That one minute of talking, which will include 100 words or 200 words, write down that minute of talking in… in your own words, in… in five words. And then get back to listening again and do this for the whole lecture.

But what if you don’t understand it? What should you write down if you’re listening to the lecture and you don’t really understand the meaning or the significance of what they’re trying to say? What do you write down then?

You don’t write down anything. You raise your hand and you ask them to explain it again. You ask a question. You have them answer the question. Then you understand it and you write down the thing that you understand.

It simply won’t work — not in this efficient, powerful note-taking way — it simply won’t work to just write down some stuff that someone says that you don’t get. But if you get it, make sure you understand it and then write that down. That’ll stick in your brain.

Okay, but… but you won’t get enough words down, right? That’s okay, that’s not a problem. That brings us to technique for properly taking notes number three: add flesh within 24 hours.

Uh, okay, what do I mean by flesh? Uh, this is a metaphor, right? I mean flesh, you know, like flesh, like… like… like skin or whatever.

The idea is that those notes that you get down during the lecture, those are the bones. That’s the skeleton. But the creature hasn’t been created yet. Your notes aren’t done at the end of lecture.

It doesn’t take long, but just sit down for 10 minutes after lecture, within 24 hours. It doesn’t have to be immediately after, but late that night before you go to bed, just 10 minutes, go through those notes and add in the other stuff, the other parts of understanding that you didn’t have time to get in during class while you were writing frantically.

Because you’re doing this within 24 hours, there’ll be all these memories that will be… that will be pulled up in your mind when you go through these notes. Those memories will be gone after 24 hours, so you need to get them while they’re still there. So that when you then go look back at your notes two months later, what you’re looking back at is a more filled-out, you know, description of your own understanding.

I’ll just pause here to admit that many students won’t do this part, number three, because number three is more time. Like, it’s 10 or 15 minutes more. And some people just won’t do it. They… they won’t do it. They don’t want to spend that 10 or 15 minutes or whatever.

Okay, fine. But if you do, if you’re one of the few who listens to me and does this, it will increase the powers that you have of retaining information in your mind and having quality notes to look back on later. It will increase your powers dramatically. This will make all of your courses way easier.

I know most of you aren’t going to do this and it makes me so sad. Um, it just makes me sad.

But anyway, those of you that do, hear this: this is… this is gold! I’m giving you a golden piece of advice!

All right, moving on. Uh, number four: write your notes by hand with a pen or a pencil. Don’t type them on some kind of device. There’s a very small number of exceptions to this — people who need to take their notes electronically by typing or whatever, we’ll talk about that in a little bit. The main thing I want to emphasize here is that this is not my opinion. This is not what’s worked for me. No, no. This is what science has proven to be more effective when taking notes.

A study from 2016 found that “average final exam scores among students assigned to classrooms that allowed computers were .18 of a standard deviation lower [than] exam scores of students in classrooms that prohibited computers.” Why is this?

Well, there are several reasons, and we will go through several of them, but the first and most obvious reason is that if students have their laptop in front of them, or their phone, or whatever, well then they will click away and look at all the other stuff on the internet. They will go and seek out all the much more fun, much more interesting stuff.

A paper from 2008, published in the academic journal Computers and Education, [found that] “students who use laptops in class spent considerable time multitasking. The level of laptop use was negatively related to several measures of student learning, including self-reported understanding of course material and overall course performance.” That means they got worse grades.

A 2016 paper published in Psychological Science: “Our results showed that non-academic Internet use was common among students who brought laptops to class and was inversely related to class performance.” That means they got worse grades.

Oh, you think you’re not going to click away? You have the entire internet at your fingertips, every website, much more interesting things than the lecture that’s in front of you, and you think you’re not going to be tempted to click away? Who do you think you are? Are you kidding me?

I’m a college professor, I go to faculty meetings with all the other faculty. If I have my laptop at a faculty meeting, I click away to look at other stuff. And I look around at all the other professors and guess what they do if they’ve got a laptop in front of them or a tablet or something? They click away! They’re checking their emails!

No one is immune to this. No one is powerful enough to not go do other things.

A study from 2013 found that “participants who multitasked on a laptop during a lecture scored lower on a test compared to those who did not multitask, and participants who were in direct view of a multitasking peer scored lower on a test compared to those who were not.” What this shows is that not only can you not bring a laptop or a tablet or whatever to class, if you’re in a class where the professor permits students to take notes electronically, you have to sit at the front!

Because you’re paying tuition and what are you gonna do, you’re gonna… you’re gonna sit at the back and be distracted by the stuff that’s on everyone else’s screen? Of course you’re gonna look at it, are you kidding me? And you’re gonna get worse grades, get less out of your tuition dollars. Why? Because they want to play a video game or shop for boots or whatever. No! Sit in the front, don’t use a computer, and don’t get distracted by those other schmoes who were using their computers!

A paper from 2018: “Divided attention reduced long-term retention of the classroom lecture, which impaired subsequent unit exam and final exam performance.”

This paper from 2012: “Participants who did not use any technologies in the lectures outperformed students who used some form of technology.”

Okay, but what if I’m only using the internet to look up stuff that’s related to the class? Like, if I hear something and I don’t know what it is, so I quickly Google it to understand it in class. That’s the only way I’m going to use the internet during class.

Oh yeah, that’s the only way. Mm-hmm. Yeah, who are you kidding?

But even if you could do that, even if that’s the case, there’s this 2016 paper, published in Psychological Science: “Class-related internet use was not associated with a benefit to classroom performance.”

Okay, okay. What if you use a device that simply can’t connect to the internet and there’s nothing else on it? The only thing it will do is allow you to take notes by typing those notes. What about that? Is that better?

It is not. Here’s a study from 2014: “Even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning.”

That’s the point! The problem with taking notes by typing those notes out, even if you’re totally immune to the powers of temptation to be looking other things up on the internet, okay, even if you’re totally immune to that, the problem with typing out your notes is that you can type too fast. You can type so quickly that you can almost type word for word everything that’s going on.

But if you do that, your processing will be shallower. You won’t think through the information. Instead, what you need to do is take notes by hand because that will force you to summarize what you’re hearing, and that will force you to process the information, to think about the meanings of the words that you’re hearing. And that’s how you absorb the material. That’s how you do it. That’s how this works.

A paper from 2003: “Students in the open-laptop condition suffered decrements on traditional measures of memory for lecture content.” A second experiment replicated the results of the first.

The word “decrements” means reductions, lowering of a certain number. What number? Their scores. On what? That paper called [them] “traditional measurements of memory”. That just means quizzes. They gave them quizzes to see if they understood and remembered things, and they didn’t.

From 2009: “Once they experience not using a laptop in the law school classroom environment, they often change their method of taking notes and report improved learning and classroom experiences.”

And finally, a 2017 paper: “Students have a clear preference for digital texts, but students recalled key points linked to the main idea and other relevant information better when engaged with print.”

Okay, have I gone through enough of the science? This is clear at this point. We know this as a species. We have proven it: if you want to retain information, you need to take notes by hand, not by typing those notes on any device.

Now, there are some exceptions to this. Obviously there are students who have some disability that makes it physically impossible for them to write. You know, if you have a… a problem with your hand, of course then you need to get that registered with your university’s office of disability services so that you can type.

If you need to type to take notes, you need to type. And there’s also a very small number of students who are neurodiverse in one way or another and really and truly need to take notes by typing them.

Yes, yes, yes. If that’s you, of course you need to take notes in the way that’s going to work for you. But I want to emphasize the following: the mere fact that you want to take notes by typing, or the mere fact that you think it will be easier for you, or you think it will be better for you to take notes by typing, no, that doesn’t mean that it’s better for you to take notes by typing. You need to have a real, genuine disability. You need to be genuinely neurodiverse in a way that has been… that has been examined by medical professionals if you’re going to give yourself permission rationally to type your notes rather than take them by hand.

Okay, that’s what I’ve got. That’s how to take notes.

Kaplan, Jeffrey. Lecture #11: Taking Notes Effectively — which words should you write down?. YouTube Channel Jeffrey Kaplan, 15 October 2021. <https://youtu.be/N73GXN_pb7g?si=HWXRbsDx1-vYITpf>.

[Transcribed by professor Henrique Napoleão Alves; unofficial transcription for educational purposes only]