The Cornell Note Taking System • Hacker News Board

Re: The Cornell Note Taking System

#31

Post by twojacobtwo » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 8:51 PM UTC

maphew wrote: post #24

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.

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

Re: The Cornell Note Taking System

#32

Post by gcarvalho » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 8:54 PM UTC

chazeon wrote: post #26

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.

> 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.

Re: The Cornell Note Taking System

#33

Post by arkitaip » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 9:02 PM UTC

eBombzor wrote: post #25

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.

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

Re: The Cornell Note Taking System

#34

Post by spritefs » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

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

Re: The Cornell Note Taking System

#35

Post by quartesixte » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 9:10 PM UTC

maphew wrote: post #24

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.

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.

Re: The Cornell Note Taking System

#36

Post by davikr » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 9:17 PM UTC

eBombzor wrote: post #25

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.

I haven't taken notes in months and I haven't seen any degradation to my learning, anedoctally.

Re: The Cornell Note Taking System

#37

Post by all2 » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

mywacaday wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Re: The Cornell Note Taking System

#38

Post by garbagecoder » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

quartesixte wrote: post #9

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 m…

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.

Re: The Cornell Note Taking System

#39

Post by DwnVoteHoneyPot » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 9:27 PM UTC

eBombzor wrote: post #25

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.

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.

Re: The Cornell Note Taking System

#40

Post by jimbob45 » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 9:31 PM UTC

maphew wrote: post #24

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.

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