[HN Gopher] The Cornell Note Taking System
___________________________________________________________________
The Cornell Note Taking System
Author : spking
Score : 97 points
Date : 2023-01-07 16:05 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lsc.cornell.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (lsc.cornell.edu)
| [deleted]
| chazeon wrote:
| On a personal note, I found any form of notetaking is distraction
| for me to grasping information... I really don't understand how
| someone could take good note while also listen... I found this
| only when I starting my PhD. I hope I know this sooner.
|
| Also, notetaking in any designed system is worse than a blank
| piece of paper for me. Not sure if any one would agree.
| baq wrote:
| that's right there in the article:
|
| > Research shows that taking notes by hand is more effective
| than typing on a laptop.
|
| IMHO this is an understatement made on purpose to stay as
| neutral in tone as possible and not offend anyone who
| disagrees. pen and paper note taking improves retention so much
| you shouldn't need the notes after you take them (well, unless
| you're writing down equations or whatever...)
| gcarvalho wrote:
| > I really don't understand how someone could take good note
| while also listen...
|
| I type moderately fast, only write when I think "I won't
| remember this" and review notes as soon as possible to address
| the pending points. I'm not bottle-necked by this, unless I'm
| doing a presentation.
| spritefs wrote:
| Imo taking notes just takes your attention away from the lecturer
| and it's best to only write down major details, if anything is
| written down at all
|
| Also since most lectures have some kind of recorded equivalent
| now, there is no scarcity with respect to the info the lecturer
| is communicating. So you can always go back and rewatch. Taking
| notes just gives you an excuse to not remember what you're
| hearing
| mywacaday wrote:
| I wish this had been taught week 1 of college when I went in the
| mid 90s. All college's should have a mandatory module on note
| taking, learning techniques and general planning and
| productivity.
| all2 wrote:
| Most of the colleges I'm familiar with have "college success"
| courses that purport to teach things like this. I took one. I
| recall not paying much attention to it because it was in
| addition to my normal course load.
| zopa wrote:
| Not so sure about mandatory. A system like this is pretty
| useless unless you're motivated to use it. How much benefit
| would the students taking the module only because it's required
| really see?
| seper8 wrote:
| Sounds like a force multiplier for other courses
| 63 wrote:
| I'd also add general theory of education content to that. How
| do we expect people to learn if they don't understand teaching?
| vincent-manis wrote:
| This, like any system, works better for some individuals than
| others, depending on their learning style. I liked the
| presentation here, basically "try this, you may find it
| valuable". I'm sure that some people found it useless, others
| very useful. When I was teaching, students would sometimes ask me
| for permission to record the lectures. I always said yes, because
| I know that some students learn best aurally, and find note-
| taking interferes with their learning style.
|
| Teachers (or school systems) that mandate this system, and, even
| worse, GRADE NOTEBOOKS completely misunderstand the point of it.
| In K-12, one of the goals is to help students become effective
| learners, which involves students identifying the tools that help
| them learn best.
|
| I really like the SUMMARY section, asking the student to
| synthesize some kind of big picture. I always said that in a
| 50-minute university class, you can thoroughly explain one
| sentence and its ramifications. The space given for SUMMARY
| really asks the student to identify that sentence. And it also
| gives room for a really good question from a student: "Hey,
| teach, I can't figure out the summary for that class on
| recursion, can you help me?", though, to be fair, no student ever
| called me "teach".
| quartesixte wrote:
| Goodness gracious.
|
| There is an entire generation of school children (at the very
| least in my locality) who were forced to use an incredibly poor
| implementation of this method by teachers who barely understood
| the intent themselves.
|
| On which we were punished for not doing correctly.
|
| The biggest gripe I had about this method was that the lessons in
| middle school and high school never had enough information
| density to make this meaningful in any way.
|
| Anyways, I can't take notes like this anymore. Being punished an
| entire letter grade for not having enough questions on my notes
| when I was aceing every single test made me never want to take
| notes like this ever again.
|
| Edit: I'm sure this system works for some people but it
| definitely did not click with the way my brain retains
| information but being forced to try to learn in a manner that my
| brain did not want to learn has left me with a burning desire to
| never do it again.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| Thanks for the edit because most students have no clue how to
| do it at all. Sure, doesn't work for everyone, but at least a
| way to do it can be taught. It's like handwriting. Almost no
| one reproduces the letters perfectly, we all have our own
| writing but if we didn't start with the standard letters we'd
| have no place to start. I imaging most people on this site did
| ok in school.
| xattt wrote:
| Don't forget the argument made at the time that this is the way
| they learn in $OrganizationHeldInHighRegard, so you should do
| it too!
| mathman314 wrote:
| Were? It still happens. My friend's kids are forced to use such
| a system now.
|
| Note taking is about the note taker's relationship with the
| subject so it's idiosyncratic. A potentially useful technique
| can become a harmful prescription by stupid teachers.
|
| Showing student's lots of techniques and helping them develop
| there own methods seems more useful.
|
| But it is easier to make a rubric to test stuff like this then
| help a kid figure out what works.
| [deleted]
| motoboi wrote:
| I believe note systems are great! The only problem, and I see
| people talking too little about it, is that you need to create
| your own, for it to be effective.
|
| It's like trying to use spaced repetition with cards made by
| someone else, you loose 80% of the benefit.
|
| Creating, perfecting (and using) your own note system is what
| makes you a learning machine, as it let's you understand how your
| mind process and learn information. Your system is a reflex of
| your own mind, and exposes (reasonably) to you how the inner
| words.
|
| Very hard, thought, as you need a very high level of meta
| thought. Hence a lot of people see someone's else system and try
| to use it, benefit poorly from it.
|
| You can and should learn from other's systems, but to perfect
| what you made yourself.
| kupopuffs wrote:
| perhaps even before that, people in general still lack the
| discipline and practice of note taking
|
| so a gentle reminder to start taking notes!
| Veen wrote:
| The main thing I learned watching these videos is that Cornell
| students--or Americans more generally, perhaps--hold pens in a
| way that seems unusual to me. For example, with the thumb wrapped
| round the pen or with it gripped by the tips of all five fingers.
|
| Is that normal in the US? In the UK, I was taught to grip the pen
| with my thumb and forefinger tips and rest it on my middle
| finger. Most people I see writing hold the pen that way too.
| gaetgu wrote:
| I am a student here in the US.
|
| I was certainly taught to hold and write with pens/pencils in
| the way that you describe. That being said, I have noticed that
| I and many of my peers somehow moved over to holding it with
| the thumb wrapped around the pen, and the pen held more
| straight up and down.
|
| I am not quite sure what causes this, but I think that is is
| related to the way that you must hold many cheap ballpoint pens
| for them to write consistently. I personally fixed this bad
| habit when I switched over to fountain pens.
| ragingrobot wrote:
| At least in the NYC public schools in the 80's, we were taught
| to hold a pen/pencil as you describe.
|
| I remember having one friend who held the writing instrument
| between his index and middle fingers, the thumb at the tip.
| Really odd in the way he held it, and every teacher we had for
| 4 years, at the least, tried to correct him.
|
| I tried holding a pen as in the video, and even just miming, it
| felt really unnatural.
| _dain_ wrote:
| Also UK here, I don't remember being taught how to hold a pen.
| Mine rests on the third knuckle of the ring finger, with the
| middle fingertip bracing the pen tip and the index fingertip
| bracing about a third of the way up. Then the upper part of the
| pen rests in the crook of the thumb and palm. The thumb-tip
| rests across part of the index finger and middle finger,
| providing some stability.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I'm unsure about these descriptions but in Canada/Qc this is
| the way I was taught to hold a pencil:
| https://www.fergusonvalues.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Ha...
| dunefox wrote:
| Which is the correct way.
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| I have had terrible handwriting all my life. Could it be
| because I have been holding it wrong all this time?
|
| I hold by the tip of my index finger, middle finger, and
| thumb.
| bluedino wrote:
| That isn't normal, most people hold a pen as you describe.
| vl wrote:
| The secret is that American school doesn't really bother itself
| with that much teaching. Nobody teaches children how to hold
| pens properly, cursive writing, etc.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah sad but true. I think cursive is still taught for a year
| or two in elementary school but after that it's not required
| and most kids just print or develop their own personal blend
| of printing/cursive handwriting.
|
| I still take notes by hand, on paper, using cursive. I prefer
| a quality wood pencil and a separate rubber-type eraser for
| note-taking. For writing text, typing is faster but for note-
| taking during lectures or presentations I find handwriting
| more effective, as I can quickly add drawings and arrows and
| other notation as needed.
| woodruffw wrote:
| That's very weird. I'm an American and I hold my pen the way
| you do, which is the way I was taught. I had never noticed it
| before but now that I see it, the way the students are holding
| it in the video is _very_ strange to me.
|
| Edit: apparently I do the "quadrupod" grip, while you do the
| "tripod" grip. But neither of those is what some of the
| students in the video were doing.
| easton wrote:
| They forced us to use this in middle and a little bit in high
| school, never really liked it. The usable space on the page to
| write details was so low compared to a blank piece of paper, and
| the summarizing I didn't think really helped (especially if you
| needed all the details from the notes like in a history class).
|
| Other people like it though, maybe I was just doing it wrong.
| blahedo wrote:
| Ooooooh I have a burning hate for this system (the dislike is
| rational, the burning part is not entirely rational but
| justified). Way back in high school my AP history teacher not
| only taught us this (cool, that's part of his job) and checked
| that we were able to do it (reasonable), he required us to submit
| notes in this exact format, for every reading, all year, which he
| graded. After I determined that my comprehension and retention
| rate went _down_ as a result of having to constantly interrupt my
| reading to follow the format, I stopped doing them and he got big
| mad that I was still doing great on all his tests using my own
| strategies. With a >90% test average he still gave me a C- in
| the class and tried to pressure me to cancel my AP exam and take
| a partial refund for it. I got a 4. (For the non-US folks: that's
| a 4 on a 5-point scale and generally means it will count for
| university credit, as indeed it did for me.)
|
| When I visited on a schoolday the next year, he saw me in the
| hallway and had the tremendous arrogance to ask me to pop into
| his class _and tell them how much the notes helped_. I was too
| unconfident at that point to do more than politely decline to do
| so, but modern me probably would have accepted the offer and then
| told the class exactly what I thought of them....
|
| If they work for you, great! But no system is perfect for
| everyone. Assess what works for you, jettison the stuff that's
| wasting your time.
|
| ETA: This episode did teach me something very important, which
| was that as a teacher, when I'm teaching _techniques_ if I think
| it 's important enough I can require students to learn the
| technique and assess whether they are able to do it, but then I
| let _them_ decide whether to use it in general or find something
| better.
| maphew wrote:
| The rash of "no way" responses makes me wonder: what note taking
| system(s) have you encountered that actually work for you? (And
| why, if known.)
|
| From someone who episodically takes notes in haphazard fashion
| and very rarely looks at them again, and thinks he's probably
| woefully working harder than he should as a result.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The notes are ultimately for the person taking notes. As such,
| it's a bit aggressive to tell someone they will enjoy your
| system better than their own. Given that we know that everyone
| learns differently, it's silly to try to fit everyone in one
| box. You might as well force everyone to sleep on their
| stomach.
|
| The ideal note-taking instruction would present each note-
| taking strategy (Cornell notes, verbatim notes, strict
| memorization, etc) and then let the student choose for
| themselves. The way it is now, most students (myself included)
| won't ever use Cornell notes again out of principle even if we
| can admit that the system is better than our own.
|
| Even better, apply Auftragstaktik[0] and let the students use
| whatever they will to complete the task, judge their results
| afterwards for being able to recall a block of material, and
| make a competition out of it.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics
| quartesixte wrote:
| I type moderately fast (can hit 150 wpm, average 110wpm on
| typing tests) so one of my favorite methods is transcription. I
| just verbatim type out what the speaker is saying. I can keep
| up if I leave out filler words, blow past typos and ignore
| punctuation.
|
| If I need to recall I just go back and read it again.
|
| Edit: Why not record? Because people get weird about it, I'm
| not allowed to, or literally illegal. Also, playback at 3x
| speeds still too slow vs reading. Scanning skipping and repeat
| also too much friction.
| gmane wrote:
| I find for me personally, note taking is a way of forcing me to
| actively listen. Most of my notes are like yours: haphazard and
| rarely looked at again.
|
| The two things I do track are specific action items: those get
| a star in the margin so they can be found quickly and sometimes
| executives use specific wording they want you to emulate; that
| gets underlined and then offloaded to a reference document.
|
| I also make sure to be aggressive about giving my notes dates
| and titles for meetings so I know where/when notes are from.
| twojacobtwo wrote:
| Though maybe not very useful directly for taking lecture notes,
| I like the Feynman technique for self driven learning. It's
| pretty sparse for layout and specific details, but the guiding
| principles are simple and keep you moving in the right
| direction: summarize your current understanding of a discrete
| topic in simple terms, iterate toward further simplicity as you
| learn more.
|
| ______
|
| Step One: Choose the Concept You Want to Understand.
|
| Write it on the top of a sheet of paper.
|
| Step Two: Pretend You Are Teaching the Concept to a Child.
|
| Write an explanation of the concept on the paper as though you
| were teaching a child.
|
| Step Three: Stuck? Go Back to the Source Material.
|
| Re-read or re-learn the material until you can complete step
| two.
|
| Step Four: Simplify & Create Analogies.
|
| If your explanation is wordy or confusing, simplify the
| language. Create an analogy to help understand the concept.
|
| _____
|
| https://law-hawaii.libguides.com/notetaking/feynman
| baq wrote:
| he is on record saying you can't really explain magnetism to
| a child ;)
|
| https://youtu.be/MO0r930Sn_8
| GTP wrote:
| The link isn't working for me.
| eBombzor wrote:
| You know there's this going where people are starting to realize
| that extensive/fancy note taking is a gigantic waste of time. The
| only thing it needs to do is to offload cognitive thinking onto
| something external while you're learning so you can hold ideas.
| Most learning comes from recalling, not having beautiful notes.
| arkitaip wrote:
| Yes! Something happens when we take notes and that seems to
| improve learning but recall using flash cards is interestingly
| much more useful than re-reading the same notes.
|
| Anyone who wants to take a course in meta learning that's
| grounded in science is recommended to take the practical and
| free Coursera course Learning How To Learn:
| https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| You know... the website/videos describe this. They say multiple
| times there is trade off between transcribing mindlessly vs.
| focused listening with no notes. The point of the Cornell
| system is activate thinking of the topic which is why they have
| a "cue" section for questioning, "summary" section for "what
| did i learn?". The first step Cornell did forget to mention for
| some people is to actually attend class before commenting.
| davikr wrote:
| I haven't taken notes in months and I haven't seen any
| degradation to my learning, anedoctally.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Cornell Note-Taking System_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21989063 - Jan 2020 (66
| comments)
|
| _The Cornell Note-taking System (2001)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21674946 - Dec 2019 (41
| comments)
| pcurve wrote:
| I attended undergrad there 25 years ago. didn't know this system
| existed!
|
| I thought this thread was going to be about lecture notes that
| you used to be able to buy in case your own notes suck or you
| missed a bunch of lectures. Not sure if they still sell them
| though. (there was a specific name... if anyone here still
| remembers)
| meetingthrower wrote:
| Same. I bought the "takenotes" which were pretty good. Also I
| met my wife after asking to borrow her notes for a class. So I
| thoroughly approve of the Cornell Not Taking Notes system!
| tgflynn wrote:
| The referenced publication is from 2010. I went there too, more
| like 35 years ago. Maybe I would have done better if this sort
| of thing had been available back then.
| quartesixte wrote:
| This lines up with roughly when this system suddenly took
| stranglehold at my local school district.
| the_fury wrote:
| Note that it's the 10th edition. I'm pretty sure the
| technique has been around since the 1950s. I certainly
| remember it from the 90s.
| tgflynn wrote:
| If that's the case it couldn't have been very well
| publicized, since I graduated from Cornell in 91 and never
| heard of it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-01-07 23:01 UTC)