Taking Notes

Some students take very good lecture notes in class. A few even take the time to reorganize and rewrite those notes shortly after class. Other students don’t take good notes in class, often incomplete and occasionally riddled with errors. You can probably guess which students get higher grades and which ones don’t do well (on average, because there are always outliers). I suspect, but I can’t prove, that the students who read ahead take better notes than those who don’t. (In G-Chem, I explicitly tell students what to read in the textbook and what to pay attention to, be they definitions, figures, or sample worked problems.) However, I think the percentage of students who actually read ahead is small. If more students read ahead, they would likely understand more during class and perform better on quizzes and exams.

 

I do not give out my lecture notes to G-Chem students. Students who miss class have to find a friend to get those notes. (These days that’s easy with smartphones with good cameras.) My feeling is that if I provided my lecture notes, more students would skip class and their learning would be diminished. I also think that the act of taking your own notes is part of learning; you allow the material to percolate through your mind and sift through it. Preparing your mind (by reading ahead) will aid this process of note-taking and engaged learning in class. But the reality is that students who are unprepared, come to class expecting to be spoonfed the material, and take notes like zombies. Their minds are disengaged and they’re just writing down what I write on the board in the hope that it will make sense to them later – usually during last-minute studying right before an exam.

 

Part of the problem is that the pace of my class is brisk. That’s my fault, I suppose. I expect students to read beforehand (and remind them regularly to do so). The semester is peppered with five-minute quizzes at the beginning of class – and those who are prepared ace the questions, while those who don’t… well, don’t. Part of the problem is that I often teach the 8am MWF section, and it’s tough for many 18-20 year-old students who are simply less alert because of their biological clock. That being said, the grade averages aren’t worse for the 8am class, so the starting time itself isn’t necessarily problematic.

 

But I wonder if my policy of not giving my own lecture notes simply hurts the academically weaker students who don’t know how to take good notes, and exacerbates the gulf between the high-scoring and low-scoring students. These last few post-pandemic years I’ve noticed that widening gulf. I suspect that students did not learn as much of the background content knowledge (especially in math and science) and did not learn how to take good notes as proficiently, compared to in-person class. Maybe I should be giving out my own lecture notes to level the playing field. But would that cause students to skip class or perhaps not give them practice in learning how to take good notes? I suppose I won’t know for sure unless I try the experiment.

 

One thing I have done the last three years is beef up the preparatory information I provide students. Here’s what you should read. Here are some pre-class questions to think about ahead of time so you’re prepared when we talk about them in class. Here are the most important points we’ll be covering in class. After today’s class, these are things you should be able to do. Please be sure to work these problems right after class, and certainly before the next class. Since this is college, I treat the students as adults and let them make their own choices. Maybe that’s part of the problem. In any case, I’ve been thinking about whether to expand this information into pre-class worksheets that students need to turn in. Or maybe I need to have more worksheets in class. It feels like college is becoming more like grade school. Maybe that’s part of the problem.

 

I still have a couple of weeks before the start of the new semester to decide whether or not to provide my G-Chem students with lecture notes so they aren’t zombie-copying notes that I write on the board. Or whether I will instead work on pre-class or post-class worksheets that don’t need to be turned in. (Honestly, I don’t want to have to grade these for each class meeting.) Do I keep treating the students like adults or do I shift a little towards grade-school practices? I don’t know. Or perhaps I need to teach students how to take good notes. I’m not sure I know how to do that, nor do I understand how I evolved my own note-taking abilities. Lots of questions. Not many answers. Teaching still keeps me on my toes.