How to take notes in class (and what to leave out)

The worst class notes are the ones that look impressive. Four pages of near-verbatim text, written at full speed, and a brain that was somewhere else the whole time. Good class notes are shorter than you think and do a different job: they show what you understood and what you still need to find out.

Before class: two minutes that change everything

The UNC Learning Center suggests three small prep moves: glance at the reading, check the syllabus for the day's topic, and skim your last session's notes. You do not have to learn anything. You are just priming your ears for what is coming.

Also label the page. Class name, date, topic. It costs five seconds and saves you ten minutes of hunting through a pile of unlabelled pages in exam week.

During class: write what the slides do not say

Newcastle University's guidance is blunt: you do not need a record of everything. If the slides or the readings already hold something, you can listen instead of copying it. Write down the things that only exist in the room:

• the lecturer's explanations and examples
• connections to something you already know
• questions you want answered
• what the lecturer says is important or likely to come up
• your own summary of a section, in your words

Use bullets and short phrases, with your own abbreviations (b/c, w/, vs). Keep one layout every time so you can scan your notes later. Mark confusing parts with a symbol such as ?? and keep going. You can fix them after class.

How to spot what matters

UNC lists reliable signals that a point is worth noting:

• introductory and closing remarks that summarise the main points
• signal phrases such as "there are four main ideas"
• repeated words or concepts
• gestures, vocal emphasis and anything written on the board

Newcastle adds a useful lens: lecturers make different kinds of statements, such as an overview, a highlight, an explanation, an example, a recommendation for further reading or a recap. Each one suggests a different note. An example, for instance, often needs only a two-word reminder; a definition needs the exact wording.

Facts versus ideas

For conceptual material, capture the main points. For factual material, UNC says writing down most of the lecture can help, but only if you study those notes within 24 hours. In other words, heavy note-taking is a loan: you have to repay it with a quick review.

What good and bad notes look like

Imagine a ten-minute stretch of a lecture about the water cycle. Here is how the same minutes can look.

Over-copied notes, written at full speed: "the water cycle is the continuous movement of water on above and below the surface of the earth and it involves evaporation where water from oceans lakes and rivers turns into vapour and rises into the atmosphere..."

Useful notes, written in about a quarter of the words:

WATER CYCLE (Mon 14 Oct)
- continuous movement of water, 3 main stages
  1. evaporation: sun heats water -> vapour
  2. condensation: vapour cools -> clouds
  3. precipitation: falls as rain/snow
- prof: "exam will ask you to draw this" *
- ?? why does it fall as snow vs rain

The second version keeps the structure, the stage names, the exam hint and a question. The wording is yours, so writing it already did some of the learning.

Three kinds of class, three ways to adapt

• Slides-heavy lecture. Download the slides first and write only what the lecturer adds: examples, emphasis, asides. UNC and Newcastle both suggest reviewing materials beforehand to know what you can leave out.
• Discussion class. Note questions, opposing views and who said what in a line each. Add your own reactions in a different colour or a margin.
• Problem-solving class. Copy the steps of a worked problem completely, and write the reason for each step next to it. A missing step is the usual reason you cannot redo it later.
• Online lecture. UNC suggests rewinding after watching to fill gaps and noting timestamps for the parts you want to revisit.

Pen or laptop?

You have probably heard that handwriting beats typing. The original study (Mueller and Oppenheimer, 2014) found that laptop users did worse on conceptual questions, and proposed that typists copy lectures word for word rather than rephrasing. A 2021 replication with 142 students, summarised by the British Psychological Society, found that laptop users did write more words and more verbatim phrases, but did not do worse on conceptual recall. The evidence is more mixed than the headlines.

A balanced rule from UNC: handwriting is handy for diagrams and can reduce distraction; typing is faster and easier to edit, back up and search. Pick the one that keeps you attentive, and if you type, fight the urge to transcribe. Put it in your own words.

After class: the 10-minute rescue

Both UNC and Newcastle recommend reviewing within about 24 hours. That is where most of the value of your notes is created.

1. Fix. Read through and clean up anything garbled. Fill gaps while you still remember.
2. Define. Look up the terms and names you flagged.
3. Ask. Turn your ?? marks into questions for office hours, a friend or the next class.
4. Summarise. Write three sentences at the top in your own words.
5. File. Put the notes with the slides, handouts and reading notes so they live in one place.

The mess around the notes

Class generates more than lecture notes. A deadline mentioned in the last minute. A link the teacher dropped. A photo of the whiteboard. A task you now have to do. These are the loose ends that slip out of your head on the walk home.

Capture them in one place straight away. A quick brain dump after class works well, and a phone is usually the fastest tool for it; see how to take notes on your phone.

This is where Nom helps. Nom does not record or transcribe lectures. What it takes is everything around them: share a link, a photo or a screenshot of a slide, say a to-do out loud, or type a worry, and Nom files it and turns the big tasks into tiny quests for the day. Find any of it again by asking in your own words, like "the reading list from Monday".

Common mistakes

• Writing a transcript. You will not read it back, and you will not have thought.
• Never reviewing. Notes that sit untouched until exams are mostly lost.
• A different layout every day. Consistency makes scanning easy.
• Pretty over useful. Colours are fine once the content is right. If you like decorating, see cute and aesthetic notes that stay useful.