# Transcript

John Clarke

In this programme we are going to be talking about one of the most useful skills for studying D218, and any other course for that matter. The subject is note taking. To talk about why it’s important and to suggest some ways of going about it, I’m joined by Gerry Mooney and Esther Saraga, both members of the D218 course team, and experienced Open University tutors. Esther if I can start with you with what’s probably the most basic question, what do we mean by note taking?

Esther Saraga

Note taking is a very central part of the process of studying. It’s a way of making sense of what you’re studying and keeping a record for yourself, a record that you can go back to later on whether it’s for writing TMAs, revising for exams, or for making links with later parts of the course. As students you will be using a variety of course materials and you will make notes in a variety of ways probably. You will be using course books, which you may be reading, or listening to on tape, course cassettes like this one you will be listening to, watching TV programmes and reading newspaper articles that you have been collecting for your resource file. And when you make notes you may make notes on the course texts themselves in the margins, you may make notes on cards or in a notebook or you may record notes for yourself onto a cassette tape. But however you do it, what you are doing is keeping a record, but crucially it is not a minute or a verbatim record or a shorthand version of what you have been reading, it is a selection and it needs to be organised and it will include the most important or interesting parts of the material that you have been studying.

John

OK Gerry, why is it such an important part of studying?

Gerry Mooney

Yes I think note taking is a crucial skill and one which we would encourage you to develop as early as possible in your studies. It is very much about studying actively as opposed to passively and by that we mean making sense of what you are working on at that particular point in time. I would also say that effective note taking helps to avoid the problems of plagiarism where you simply reproduce what others have written down in a way that is not reflective or doesn’t involve much thinking.

John

So plagiarism is one of the key failings in writing essays and assignments and that part of what note taking can do for you is make you translate the material into your own words at the time. What else does it help you with Gerry?

Gerry

I think it helps in a number of different tasks, for example it is helpful in preparing for TMAs, it is obviously helpful for revision towards the end of the course and I would also say that it is helpful partly as a basis for future study and reflecting on previous parts of the course.

John

OK so it is a way of beginning to pull things together for yourself. Esther is there anything that you would want to add to what Gerry is saying there?

Esther

Well I’d really want to agree with him and emphasise making it an active process. It’s very easy to kind of want to get through things very quickly, I mean that is very understandable. There’s a lot of course material to get through, you may feel you haven’t got a lot of time, but you need to balance the desire to get through things quickly with the need to do it in a way that involves thinking about the material, reflecting on it and so that your notes are sort of the end product of that thinking process rather than simply taking things down more or less word for word as it is in the original text. So balance off the desire to get through the material with the need to think about it as you do it.

John

OK so that identifies a sort of note taking as a focus for some tensions between speed and grasping the material. But you have both emphasized the importance of it as a process of making sense of the course material as you work on it. That’s fine but Gerry how do we go about doing that in practice?

Gerry

Well let me say first of all that there is no one single way of going about taking down notes and I would always say that the best way is the way that works for you and suits your own needs at that particular point in time. But clearly there are certain techniques, which we would encourage you to try and develop during the course of the studies this year. In particular I think you should go about note taking initially by dividing up your work task into manageable sections. From that it is important to be selective and one of the ways you would do that is by picking out important words, topics, issues, arguments, what about the key debates in a particular part of a chapter, or key debates that have come across in a television programme, what are the theories, what are the themes. These are all highlighting the kind of important material you should be reflecting on through your note taking.

John

I have a slightly sneaking feeling about that point that it gets ahead of where some of us might be with note taking which is you have said about picking important words and debates and arguments. How do we know what is important?

Gerry

I think very much it’s looking for the clues that are contained within the various parts of the course. Obviously TMA questions is an obvious point to start with, but there are often key words highlighted in various sections of chapters, there are a variety of summary sections, areas within chapters in other parts of the course where activities are focused where certain questions are raised, end of chapter conclusions and overviews. Basically where you are being encouraged to pause and reflect on what you have read, that has encouraged you to think about – well there is something important here which I might have to take notes on.

John

So even if it is not like reading a novel, there are ways of reading that involve you structuring your reading with sets of questions to start with?

Esther

Yes that’s right and I think some of the ways in which people make notes in an organised way that is useful for them is for example to try to identify for yourself a list of key points, probably no more than five or six, that is what I would imagine from a section, say one section of one of the chapters in D218. Having decided what are the six key points, which you may get out of the introduction to the chapter or the introduction to that section. Then under each of those you might put some subsidiary points or examples that illustrate what these main points are and so in that way you are organising your notes as you make them and when you come back to them they are much easier to understand and they are also much easier to remember later on, and if you are making notes on tape you could do something very similar – again sort of key points and then subsidiary points.

Another way that some people like to do it is to do it diagrammatically, they might have a piece of paper on which they would draw circles or boxes and put some of the central questions or themes into those and then make links between ideas in one box and another big idea that is in another box and again you could have little subsidiary boxes or circles that make cross links. Again the emphasis is on some sort of pattern or organisation, there is a good example of this in the good study guide if that is a resource that you are using as well.

Another way of making notes is to make notes on the actual text itself when you are reading it, you may do this by underlying key words or phrases, but I think one of the most useful things to do is to make little notes for yourself in the margin, you might make a note which says this paragraph deals with a particularly key point or it defines a term that you have been finding difficult. You might also write in the margin, I don’t really understand this, and note it for yourself as something that you will come back to and maybe later on when you have read more in that chapter or in the next chapter you can come back and you realise, oh I do understand it now and you can put a little explanation for yourself next to it. So sort of annotated notes in the margin is another way of doing it.

But I think however you do it I would really like to suggest its useful to switch off the tape, close the book and think for yourself, what was that paragraph about, what was that section about? Make a few notes for yourself, you can always open it again and check have I got it right, it is a way of doing what Gerry was saying earlier of you know doing it in your own words. There are a lot of students who say, I know I am supposed to do it in my own words, but how do I do that? And as I say I think you know switching off the tape, closing the book is one way of trying it and perhaps imagine telling a friend who is not studying the course, who says, what is that chapter about and then you tell them in your own words what the main points are because they won’t want all the detail and you won’t remember all the detail anyway and then you can make notes in that kind of way.

John

OK and that’s very helpful, certainly I mean one of the things that I found useful when I am reading things is precisely the bit about making notes in the margin because it is a way of feeling engaged with the argument that the person writing it is presenting to me, I do write, well yes that’s important, or I am not sure about that, or I can’t even understand how this works, or something, but it feels like participating in some sort of discussion with the person who has written it. But that is what works for me and it may not work for other people. Gerry is there anything you want to add to what Esther has just said?

Gerry

I would also like to re-emphasise that it is important to take notes using your own words, using your own thoughts in that process, but it is also important that you keep reflecting on how you go about taking notes. We have emphasized thus far that note taking is a very individualized study skill, but once you have developed a system to suit your own needs, it will save you considerable time and effort in the long run. I think it is important that you develop good habits, develop a formula, which works for you, but also you should keep trying to rework and refine that process and it could be that the notes that you are taking towards the end of this course are rather different from the notes that you are taking now. Now what that is illustrating is your own development and your own confidence about what you are doing within the course.