Do you discourage note-taking in your classes?

[polly_mer]

I was reading the comments on https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2019/06/11/teaching-strategies-helping-make-students-more-responsible-their-own-learning and ran across a comment I wanted to upvote multiple times related to needing to take notes because of a processing disorder( http://disq.us/p/22dzp7f).

To the best of my knowledge, I don't have a processing disorder, I just really like to take my own damn notes so I have records of what happened in the class/seminar/workshop/whatever.

I, too, have experienced people trying to discourage me from taking notes.  I understand why the president of the college might prefer I not take notes in certain meetings on certain topics.  I am much less understanding of why a teacher wants to prevent a student from taking notes during a lecture class.

Am I the outlier here or am I missing something related to why taking notes should be discouraged in classes where the point is to learn the material?

[mythbuster]

What is being described here sounds to me like a flipped class. In that case, he is focusing on the listening and discussion part in class. For that I can understand down playing note taking.
     However, this article fails to address the fact that most students conflate note taking with transcription of the lecture. I know many students in my classes that record lectures so they can create a transcript that they then try to memorize. This approach does poorly on my test questions of application. But it is the only method that they know, and leads to students who are unable to discern the important concepts from context and illustrative details.
    Also,I don't take attendance for large lectures either. But I have no interest in hearing about why they missed.

[polly_mer]

What is being described here sounds to me like a flipped class. In that case, he is focusing on the listening and discussion part in class. For that I can understand down playing note taking.

I used to teach flipped classes for certain subjects; what I'm reading doesn't seem like a flipped class (i.e., do the material overview at home and active learning together in class) to me.

"All of my lectures are online. I go over them, point by point, in class" 

along with

"At the start of every semester, I inform students that my main objective is to teach them how to listen"

and

"[n]ote taking by hand has variables, too. Instructors are not automatons. They speak at different speeds. Some enunciate better than others. We cope with lecture hall acoustics. And a few of us profess to whiteboards rather than to the class."

looks to me like someone is doing a lecture and insisting that somehow taking notes detracts from listening during the lecture, which is why lecture notes are provided.

That's a different beast from "put down that pen and let's have a real discussion" or, as I did during flipped classes, "the time for listening to a lecture was before class, so I hope you did.  Now, we're going to do hands-on explorations to see what those ideas mean as we do activities in groups."

I agree that reading/listening to the lecture and then having an active discussion in class is one way to do a flipped classroom, but I didn't get the impression from reading that article that the professor was proposing that in-class involvement.  I got the impression that somehow people are supposed to be great listeners without ever taking notes.  Socrates may have disapproved of writing as being the weak way to learn things that should have been memorized, but I approve of writing as a way of acquiring knowledge.

[Hegemony]

The students who don't take notes in my classes are the ones who miss important points.  Sometimes I glare at them and say, "This is a point where you should be taking notes."  I know memorizing dates is unfashionable right now, but it's helpful to know that Dickens comes after Shakespeare, and they won't remember their dates, or even their centuries, unless they write them down.

[aside]

I do not discourage note-taking, but encourage proper note-taking.  If they try to transcribe the lecture, as mentioned above, they will be too busy writing to really process what they are hearing.  In other words, they are concentrating on the wrong task.  I don't expect them to try  to write down everything I say.  When I make a point the students really need to write down, I pause, or repeat it, or write something on the board myself.  The classes I teach are not traditionally taught as pure lecture courses, though one does lecture part of the time, so this strategy works.

The author's notion that his lectures are all online and the students can access them again at any point would be a hard sell to my students.  I can't see myself telling them not to take notes in class because they can listen to the lecture again outside of class.

I find note-taking extremely valuable, especially if done by hand.  There is something about the physical and mental processes of writing something down that facilitates learning the material.  Taking notes on a computer has other advantages, of course, yet does not have quite the same effect on understanding the material, as a study the author cites has shown.

I may be a dinosaur, but the way I studied was to copy my notes over by hand into a neater and better-organized version.  Once I had rewritten them, I essentially knew them. 

[polly_mer]

The author's notion that his lectures are all online and the students can access them again at any point would be a hard sell to my students.  I can't see myself telling them not to take notes in class because they can listen to the lecture again outside of class.

Some of the most useful workshops I've attended in the past decade handed out nicely bound paper copies of slides at the beginning of the workshop with the expectation that people would take notes on the notes during the workshop.  These weren't the guided notes (e.g., https://www.studygs.net/guidednotes.htm) beloved by some, but were full sets of notes with blank pages facing or 3-to-a-page slides with much white space to the side.

For my current job, I'm walking through the slides of a course that was last offered a couple years ago and taking notes of the high points that answer questions I've been having as I come up to speed in a new area.  Transcript-type notes wouldn't be nearly as helpful as the "oh, that's why we ..." realizations.  I've read textbooks in this area, but the lecture notes prepared especially for people in my job have been much more useful. 

Even more useful, though, has been the actual interactive lectures by humans where we could do discussions as a small group of newbies and a patient expert.  Having the human who can go well outside the prepared material to follow a string of burning questions and fill in the missing background has been incredibly useful for this highly motivated group of students where the only grades are "good enough to keep" and "fired".  So far, no patient expert lecturing to us has insisted we don't take notes; indeed, a few have asked if they could circulate slides/notes/reading/handouts ahead of time so people could come prepared to take notes on what was said, not just what is listed on the written material.

[spork]

When it comes to learning and teaching effectiveness, this guy has no idea what he's talking about. First, he mentions "learning styles," which don't exist. Second, he assumes his evaluation scores, in and of themselves without any comparisons, actually mean something. Third, he's ignorant of all the cognitive science research indicating that simultaneously engaging multiple areas of the brain when performing a task (in this case, auditory processing of language coupled with activation of motor pathways used for writing notes) aids memory.

I could go on, but I won't.

[marshwiggle]

Here's a quote from his "10 Tenets":

Here's my attendance policy: If you miss a class, you have to email me, stating the real reason for missing the class. Otherwise, there will be a penalty.
.
.
.
Come and Go as You Please ...

But sit in the last rows by the exit doors. You may come late because you missed your bus or need to leave early for any reason. These are your "liberty" seats. Feel free to sit here if you want to engage in social media or text friends. It's your tuition dollar. Just do not disturb anyone else.

Translation: Show up for a few minutes sometime during any class rather than skipping entirely, and you're totally OK!!!!

Does anyone else find this ridiculously inconsistent?

[Puget]

When it comes to learning and teaching effectiveness, this guy has no idea what he's talking about. First, he mentions "learning styles," which don't exist. Second, he assumes his evaluation scores, in and of themselves without any comparisons, actually mean something. Third, he's ignorant of all the cognitive science research indicating that simultaneously engaging multiple areas of the brain when performing a task (in this case, auditory processing of language coupled with activation of motor pathways used for writing notes) aids memory.

I could go on, but I won't.

Amen. There's nothing that drives people in my field more nuts than when the education "sciences" spout this sort of nonsense and claim it came from us. (Well, we also find it very strange when certain humanities fields still take psychoanalytic theories seriously, but that's more bemused than enraged).

There certainly are times it would be good for students to pause, think, discuss, and THEN write. And they certainly do need to learn to get real benefit from note taking by extracting key points rather than attempting to transcribe.  But that's a very different from claiming they should listen to whole lectures without taking notes.

Beyond the clear benefits of note taking to memory (both through the act of taking the notes and effective review of them), unless this guy is spellbinding sitting quietly and inactively during a lecture is a sure recipe for loss of attention and mind wondering.

[ciao_yall]

When it comes to learning and teaching effectiveness, this guy has no idea what he's talking about. First, he mentions "learning styles," which don't exist. Second, he assumes his evaluation scores, in and of themselves without any comparisons, actually mean something. Third, he's ignorant of all the cognitive science research indicating that simultaneously engaging multiple areas of the brain when performing a task (in this case, auditory processing of language coupled with activation of motor pathways used for writing notes) aids memory.

I could go on, but I won't.

Amen. There's nothing that drives people in my field more nuts than when the education "sciences" spout this sort of nonsense and claim it came from us. (Well, we also find it very strange when certain humanities fields still take psychoanalytic theories seriously, but that's more bemused than enraged).

There certainly are times it would be good for students to pause, think, discuss, and THEN write. And they certainly do need to learn to get real benefit from note taking by extracting key points rather than attempting to transcribe.  But that's a very different from claiming they should listen to whole lectures without taking notes.

Beyond the clear benefits of note taking to memory (both through the act of taking the notes and effective review of them), unless this guy is spellbinding sitting quietly and inactively during a lecture is a sure recipe for loss of attention and mind wondering.

Good point. Lately I have been visiting training sites for social workers. The facilitators put out squeeze toys, Play-Doh, and other things to let people keep their hands busy even if they aren't taking notes.

[apl68]

When it comes to learning and teaching effectiveness, this guy has no idea what he's talking about. First, he mentions "learning styles," which don't exist. Second, he assumes his evaluation scores, in and of themselves without any comparisons, actually mean something. Third, he's ignorant of all the cognitive science research indicating that simultaneously engaging multiple areas of the brain when performing a task (in this case, auditory processing of language coupled with activation of motor pathways used for writing notes) aids memory.

I could go on, but I won't.

Amen. There's nothing that drives people in my field more nuts than when the education "sciences" spout this sort of nonsense and claim it came from us. (Well, we also find it very strange when certain humanities fields still take psychoanalytic theories seriously, but that's more bemused than enraged).

There certainly are times it would be good for students to pause, think, discuss, and THEN write. And they certainly do need to learn to get real benefit from note taking by extracting key points rather than attempting to transcribe.  But that's a very different from claiming they should listen to whole lectures without taking notes.

Beyond the clear benefits of note taking to memory (both through the act of taking the notes and effective review of them), unless this guy is spellbinding sitting quietly and inactively during a lecture is a sure recipe for loss of attention and mind wondering.

Good point. Lately I have been visiting training sites for social workers. The facilitators put out squeeze toys, Play-Doh, and other things to let people keep their hands busy even if they aren't taking notes.

Something to doodle on also helps.  The margins of my notes and session handouts tend to fill up with tiny running and climbing stick figures.  The volume of notes I take is seldom great, but I do need to keep my hands busy in ways that hopefully don't distract those around me.  And it is true that paying attention enough to determine what is most in need of being written down for later helps with focus and retention.

[the_geneticist]

Wow, the author of that piece comes off as super entitled.  The combination of "email me if you'll be absent" and "miss as many classes as you like" is really weird and contradictory.  "Only do three assignments" and "don't worry about grades, do some extra credit".  Really?  He's setting up students who are like himself (and only those students) to succeed. 
Most of his advice is the opposite of what my students need to succeed (buy/rent/obtain the textbook, go to class, take good notes, do all of the assignments, etc.)

[Caracal]

Wow, the author of that piece comes off as super entitled.  The combination of "email me if you'll be absent" and "miss as many classes as you like" is really weird and contradictory.  "Only do three assignments" and "don't worry about grades, do some extra credit".  Really?  He's setting up students who are like himself (and only those students) to succeed. 
Most of his advice is the opposite of what my students need to succeed (buy/rent/obtain the textbook, go to class, take good notes, do all of the assignments, etc.)

In general, the idea of giving students specific instructions on how and whether to take notes strikes me as overstepping in the same way these other suggestions do. I stopped taking notes in college and never did in grad school either. That isn't an approach I'd recommend to anyone else, but I just don't think its my business to offer blanket suggestions to students about what will work best for them. Now, if a student is struggling and asking me, I might ask about their note taking strategies, but thats really different than telling everyone to take notes and singling out those who don't.

[spork]

The purpose of note-taking is to record (for future review) and remember (writing helps build memory) important information. Attentive listening -- to identify the important information that will be written down -- can also be described as beneficial for memory building. While some people in some contexts may not benefit from writing notes, it's been my experience in my twenty years of post-secondary teaching that the undergraduates who do not take notes in class are invariably the worst academic performers.

While I try to help students identify the information that I think they should remember -- by, for example, writing phrases on the board -- I get the sense that a portion of the students in my classes 1) do not know how to identify important information, and/or 2) are not proficient in effective note-taking, and/or 3) believe that simply sitting in a classroom like a block of wood for eight semesters is what constitutes "learning" and thus equates to a bachelor's degree.

The course described in the IHE article that polly originally linked to sounds a lot like a course at Harvard in which there was massive cheating on the final exam, described here -- attendance completely optional, instructor probably uses class time to regurgitate what's already available from photocopies or online, hardly any graded assignments/exams, etc.

[AvidReader]

In general, the idea of giving students specific instructions on how and whether to take notes strikes me as overstepping in the same way these other suggestions do.

I not only encourage students to take notes, but I recommend differing ways of doing so over the semester. It helps that I teach composition, and that the textbook my CC requires has a section on differing methods of note-taking. After we apply one or several of those methods to a written text (as explained in the textbook), we talk about which strategies would (or would not) be useful for oral communication (such as my lectures).

If I write things on the board, many students like to photograph them, which is generally fine with me. I also make powerpoints available on the CMS.

AR.