Note-taking methods
Academic Skills Centre
University of Canterbury
03 369 3900
www.academicskills.canterbury.ac.nz
No note-taking method is better than any other. All that matters is that you find one that works for you. This
document gives you a few suggestions. There’s no reason you can’t switch between methods or combine
them. Important: note-taking doesn’t end when the lecture ends. Your best learning takes place when you
process your notes: reorganise them, condense them, summarise them.
Cornell method
This is an excellent method because it gives you room to organise,
learn and summarise the information in your notes. Use the large
column on the right to write down as much detail as you can during
the lecture. You don’t need to write in full sentences. In the
narrower left-hand column, during or after the lecture, write
keywords to show the main ideas covered in the large column at
that point, and write questions about the material in the notes.
When you revise, test yourself on these without looking at the large
column. The box at the bottom is for writing a summary of that page
after the lecture.
Outline method
This popular and intuitive method helps you to keep your notes
highly organised. The point is to get you to think about where each
bit of the lecture content sits within the overall lecture topic. The key
here is to use headings, subheadings, indentations and bullet
points so that it’s always really clear what the categories of
information are, and how the main ideas are distinguished from less
important ones. You can use this method to take notes during a
lecture or to rewrite your notes after a lecture. If possible, use your
lecturer’s slides or handouts to help you decide on your headings.
Sentence method
This method is useful when the lecture is fast-paced and/or is not
clearly structured. All you do is write down a sentence, in your own
words if you can, for each point that you hear. Start a new line for
each new sentence. Some people like to number the sentences.
What you end up with is obviously unstructured, so you will need to
rewrite or reorganise your notes after the lecture in a structured
way.
Annotating slides
This method helps you to keep up with the lecturer and gives you a
starting point for your own notes. Some people will print out the
slides and write on them by hand, while others will annotate a PDF
or PPT file on an electronic device. However, be careful: just
because the slides contain a lot of important information, you
shouldn’t think the lecturer has done a lot of the work for you. The
best way to learn is still to create your own set of notes. After
annotating slides in class, you could then summarise the content in
your own words.
Note-taking apps
There are heaps of note-taking apps and websites that you can use. All students at the University of
Canterbury get free access to Office 365, which contains OneNote. Plenty of other apps, including free ones,
can be found if you search for note-taking apps on the web.
Graphic organisers
Graphic organisers can be useful both for taking notes and for rewriting your notes after lectures. Some topics
lend themselves better to using graphic organisers than others. Here are some types:
Flow chart
T-chart
Timeline
Venn diagram
Table/Chart
Tree diagram
Concept map