Based on my personal experience as a student and instructor, I know that note taking is essential to student learning and therefore success in class. One important reason is that note taking is a form of active learning. One must engage with the terminology, ideas, and concepts of the topic by identifying what is significant and recording it in their notes. The second notable reason is that there is a preponderance of evidence that we remember things better by committing notes in handwriting as opposed to typing. Some evidence for this points to the richness of the psychomotor experience of handwriting is more involved than touch typing. The richer the experience, the more memorable it is. It is with this in mind that I built note taking into a substantial part of this class’ grading structure as detailed on the syllabus. In lecture, I will describe one note taking strategy that I think works particularly well in any situations from classes to the workplace, but students may choose the note taking style that works best for them as long as their notes are handwritten. For the assignments at midterm and at the end of the semester, students will need to scan their handwritten notes into a PDF, which they can submit to Prof. Ellis via the Dropbox link below.
Submit your midterm notebooks here via Dropbox.
Submit your final notebooks here via Dropbox.
