Class Notes

From ElateWiki

Taking “class notes” may seem like a holdover from the face-to-face (F2F) learning realm, but in actuality, this skill is very critical for success in online learning. Some students may assume that because digital files and student commentary are archived in an online course that they do not need to create their own set of notes. However, there are many solid pedagogical reasons for taking notes for online courses.

1 Reasons for Taking Individualized Notes
2 Requesting Instructor Permission
3 Different Digital Capture Methods
4 Storing Notes
5 Quality Notes
6 Specialized Notes
7 The Purchase of Online Class Notes
8 See Also
9 References

Reasons for Taking Individualized Notes

First, deep learning emphasizes the importance of each learner’s comprehension and application of the learning. Note-taking is not necessarily about the end product but about the process of acquiring knowledge. Many online courses involve online lectures, readings, field trips, and assignments—and integrating these disparate pieces may reveal deeper insights to the learners. Note-taking helps synthesize information. It is part of the learning process.

Second, note-taking enhances memory retention and performance. This act of reviewing information helps head off potential negative learning. It also may enhance the quality of a paper, presentation, research project, slideshow, or other digital learning artifact.

Third, individualized notes help personalize the learning to the individual student. Students have different knowledge backgrounds, learning style preferences, and understandings. A helpful set of notes for one learner may be very different than for another. This is one of the limitations of commercial note-taking—because the notes are not tailored to the needs of any one learner but are written to a generalized audience (and often are taken without editing or other quality controls).

Lastly, having individualized notes makes students less dependent on the vicissitudes of what appears online in the course shell. There are no guarantees that faculty members will make particular online resources or message boards available all term. Relying on the “stability” of an online course for important information may be a problematic approach. Besides the access challenges of some online courses, it may be difficult to sift through the reams of posted information to find a small reference. Capturing that initial detail with screen captures or a copy-and-paste of text into a word-processing document will make a huge difference.

Requesting Instructor Permission

It is often a good idea to request permission to do a video or audio capture of live events in a course. Most courses allow de facto downloading of digital files for student self-study but *not* for dissemination, publishing, copying, or commercial uses. Those are basic intellectual property understandings currently. It would be important to document the permissions release as well.

Different Digital Capture Methods

Students have a range of tools they may use for the digital capture of information. This is true in F2F classes (where students may often bring laptops and mobile devices and smart phones). This is especially true for online courses, where students may have access to open-source and commercial software programs that enable word-processing, screen shots, audio recordings, screen captures, and video captures.

More specifically, downloaded slideshows, instructor notes, articles, and other elements provide a student with virtually anytime access for reading, study, research citation, and review. A screenshot may capture a visual model presented as a video (in which case the screenshot is a video still). Text may be copied and pasted—with annotations and citations and elaborations added by the learner.

When reading an e-book, a student may add “sticky notes” throughout the document. This makes for an easily searchable function within those contents.

Some learners may want to take notes long-hand, if that’s what they’re most comfortable with—or they could use a tablet PC for long-hand notes…with some pretty smart technologies that enable handwriting searches.

Notes to a class belong to the originating student, generally. That said, these should generally not be sold because students do not have derivative rights to take copyrighted materials (like screenshot images)…and to profit off of others’ ideas. For academic integrity sake, it may be a good idea not to share the notes—unless it’s for a course project…and there’s permission to share notes and collaborate.

It’s not advisable to post videos or audio of classes on video sharing sites like YouTube or Vimeo or Flickr, again because of intellectual property issues.

Storing Notes

Many students find it easier to store notes in the “cloud” for easy access from any computer. Some have found that they like to use their own hard drives and other memory devices.

Quality Notes

Quality class notes are those that help clarify knowledge of the learning domain for the learners. Quality notes are accurate, comprehensive, original, clearly cited, searchable, usable-for-study and readable. They help learners extract core principles, understand important relationships, troubleshoot and problem-solve, understand core research methods, analyze information, and remember key facts and details. Quality notes enhance learner performance. They help promote deep learning.

Specialized Notes

Digital Labs Different types of specialized notes in online learning involve different learning contexts. For example, digital notes may be taken in relation to a digital “wet lab” simulation—of dissection in a life sciences course, of creating a chemical reaction in a simulated chemistry experiment, or of the analysis of geological rock samples in a geology course, or insect samples in an entomology course. Such notes may be helpful also in remote labs (real physical labs accessed from a distance via the Internet). Research lab notes are critical in evolving learner awarenesses. They also involve recorded observations with dispassionate accuracy.

Research Papers Students working on a research paper may maintain a research journal about the progress of their research and their evolving ideas as they work on their research paper.

Self Development: E-Portfolios, Service Learning, Apprenticeships, and Study Abroad Endeavors Students who are in degree programs that require cumulative e-portfolios will need self-reflection notes and papers about their learning progress and the evolution of their relevant skillsets.

These types of self-development notes also apply to situations of service learning, apprenticeships, and study abroad endeavors. They help students mentally process a complex set of experiences for their learning values.

Real-time Events Other specialized notes may involve synchronous real-time events. Here, sometimes instructors will require the use of learner notes to capture the learning—to add debriefing value post-event.

Field Trips Students who participate in digital fieldtrips or real and localized field trips will benefit, too, from using notes and other documentation of their experiences. The uses of imagery (screen captures, digital photographs) may also enhance the value of their experiences.

The Purchase of Online Class Notes

Online class notes are written to a general audience. They are taken by fellow students who may or may not have greater understandings of the lecture or subject matter at hand. The notes may be dated out given the updating cycles of many online classes. Such notes are often filtered through certain points-of-view. Some of these notes may be written for particular courses taught by different instructors.