Effective Note Taking

Last Year I did a PLC course; here we were given the tools to help us take notes during lectures.

It had been over eight years since I had been in an academic setting, so I left very overwhelmed by all the information that lectures were throwing at us.

It was hard to decide what information was important that should be taking notes of.

Our communications lecturer was amazing; he really simplified it all for us. He suggested that we should do mind maps. Mind maps are where you take the central topic and using colour or imagery branch of the main points of this topic. Under these points you can expand with some key words that will jog your memory about the topic.

I found this really handy especially for revision. Before the exams I took each subject and did a mind map on each of the topics in that subject. Personally I didn’t use imagery I kept to using different colours to help make each point stand out. When it came to the exam I was sure that the nerves would get to me and I would have a complete mind blank, but in actual fact I was able to picture each page and the positions that each point was on that page.

My only problem with this was that I had concentrated too much on the mind map and the bullet points and not enough on the expanding of the information into essay style answers.

In the end though my hard work had paid off, I aced all my exams, got into 3rd level and have learned from my mistakes along the way.

Here is a link to some Helpful Tips on effective note taking.