Transcript

John

I think that is a very useful point to remember Gerry. Esther I think it might be useful just to try and think through an example of how one might go about note taking.

Esther

OK if I was studying chapter two in book one on disability and just starting the chapter, I would always start with the course guide because that would tell me what the whole chapter was about, what the key issues were, what I should be looking out for. It would also suggest for me what chunks to read it in, so that would be helpful, you know, when perhaps to stop and take notes and in fact I might start my notes on this chapter by saying, well from the course guide the impression I have got is that this is what the chapter is going to be about, so I would already have a framework in my head and I’d…be useful to write that down. I would then read the introduction to the chapter, which I imagine would give me more detail about what the chapter was going to be about and it would tell me what it was going to cover and I am one of these people who likes to go to the end as well.

I know not everybody does and I would probably also kind of flick through to the conclusion and think, ah where am I going to get to when I get to the end of this chapter, and I would read the conclusion and realise I don’t understand all this now, but it would give me a sense of perhaps what to look for when I was going through the chapter and I would probably make one or two notes as I say about just what the main points of this chapter seemed to be, it would help me perhaps to distinguish between those points and the detailed illustrations that I am going to come across and I think the main thing I would get out of that would be, it would show me that disability is being used as an example to develop the idea of social constructionism, the social constructionist approach that I have been reading about in chapter one.

So I know that is how disability is being approached. In the introduction there are two ideas that might be quite new to me, one is it uses the phrase the medical discourse on disability and although I have come across the term discourse in chapter one, perhaps it is quite a difficult one. It also talks about the social model of disability and I don’t at this stage have any idea what that is. So I would make a note of those. I would perhaps on the course text just asterisk them and think, put a question mark – I think I don’t know what these are. So I am going to keep a particular eye out for being able to sort out what they are.

I would then start section two which is on popular representations of disabled people which sounds quite nice because I think I know what that means, seems quite straightforward and I would probably flick through to see how long this section is and its fairly long it is about eight pages, but most of it seems to be activities, reading extracts about different kinds of views of disabled people. So I would work on that chunk and I think probably my way of doing it would be to skim read the whole section, see what kinds of extracts they are, look at the summary of the sections so I have got a sense of what is coming up and perhaps make a few notes on what the outcome is going to be, and then I would study the section much more carefully and slowly and the notes I would take would be ones that fitted in with these general points that I had identified. I don’t need all the detail, I can always go back to the detail and the illustrations, but it is telling me about different kinds of popular representations of disability and it would be the different kinds that I would be trying to identify.

So every time I felt I came across another point, I would note that one down. And then I would try to put the book aside as I said earlier and just list for myself having read that section, well what are the main things I have got out of it, what questions are left for me and what examples did I pick up from the activity. So that would be how I would start and then I would probably stop and have a pause and have a drink and think, well I have done a good bit of studying and then I would come back to the next one.

John

Sounds a very nice approach. I mean I was very taken by the idea that you gave there of turning to the end first as a way of giving you a sense of what the chapter might be about. I mean it is one that I can’t cope with personally because I need to have the sense of working through it in the sequence that somebody has set it out for me and I don’t want to know who did it before I get to the end of the chapter, so part of it for me is discovering the points as I work through it. But in other respects it seems to be that what you were talking about there is an absolutely sort of ideal example of the process of actively engaging with the material and being selective about pulling out, what we talked about, about the important points and you know, noting illustrations, examples, and things as sort of lower order matters that we don’t need full notes on. That’s been useful I think but one of the things that we might talk about briefly is whether there are things to avoid in this process of note taking, things that might make things go wrong. What about you Esther, have you got things that you think are worth avoiding?

Esther

The thing that is a real danger for me and that I have to avoid is too much use of highlighters. I think they can be very helpful for picking up particular points on a text and obviously your eye goes to them very quickly when you come back to it, but I also think they are quite dangerous because they are a very passive way of making notes and I can find that I read something and I am highlighting and I think I am working very hard, but actually I am not thinking very much at all and when I look back at it I might have highlighted half the text, or even more sometimes because it feels like every word is important. The trouble with highlighting is that you are not reworking the material in the way we have been talking about and it is a very passive way of doing it. So I don’t want to say never use a highlighter. Sometimes I use it for things like when a text says, there are three main points here and I might highlight the bit that says firstly, secondly and finally or something like that, but I’d still feel I’ve got to, if I’m going to do it properly, I have got to make notes in my own words and reflect on it in the way we have been describing.

John

OK I think that is a very useful warning. I mean precisely about the passivity of it, I mean my own experience of using highlighters is that I start very judicially so the first page may only have a quick flash of yellow once or twice, but by the sort of last page of the chapter it is very difficult to see anything that is not covered in yellow highlighter and that just sort of grows on me as I go through. I start thinking more and more things are important and that is about I think about the passivity of it, that I have stopped thinking and I have just started underlying or highlighting practically everything. That is one version then. Gerry is there anything that you would want to add about things to avoid?

Gerry

Yes I think if you take a passive approach to taking down notes you will end up writing too much and basically if we remember what the key aim here is for you to develop usable notes which help you to reflect on what you have read, then notes that are just as long as the original chapter are certainly not going to work in that particular way, nor are they going to help when it comes to revision towards the end of the course. When you read back your notes on chapter whatever it is, from book whatever it is, you find out that they are longer than the original chapter, then you have also got a little problem there. What I would also emphasize however is that it is important to be flexible and adaptable. Some chapters, some sources of material may lend themselves to the use of more highlighters, or more notes than others and you have to vary your approach accordingly, but it is important whatever you do you look at your material in an active rigorous way as opposed to sitting back and thinking that it is all going to come out simply by looking at it.

John

That seems to me yet again to have emphasized I think the point that this tape is really all about, which is it is about the active use of taking notes as a way of being engaged with this sort of material. OK lets assume happily that we have all made good notes on the course material, what do you do with the notes when you have got them – Gerry?

Gerry

Well we have already highlighted that it is important that you would use the notes for TMAs, for revision purposes, but I think also notes are important in terms of giving you a sense of the course as a whole and in that sense it is a useful place where you can cross reference the ways in which different concepts, or themes, or arguments recur – it is allowing you to basically pick out the threads of the course and subsequently when you come to do your studying in later parts of the course, you may find yourself saying, oh I have come across that before and you can go back and add in to your earlier notes where things are coming up time and time again. So the course is coherent and I think that an active and rigorous way of note taking helps you gain a sense of that which I think is obviously very very useful in terms of revision.

John

Gerry that’s helpful. Esther is there anything that you would want to add to that?

Esther

A couple of things. One of the things your notes will also do is help you identify what you haven’t understood or what is very difficult and this might be something you want to contact your tutor about. It may not be the best time to contact your tutor, you may be studying late at night, but you can note it down, I didn’t understand this. If you feel you still don’t understand it when you have reflected on it later, you might want to ring your tutor up or you might be going to a tutorial in which it will be a question you can take along. So note taking can also be useful in that way.

The other thing that occurred to me while Gerry was describing using notes, is an important aspect of note taking if they are going to be very useful is that you reference them as you go along and that as you are making them you are very clear for yourself that - which chapter they are from, which section of the chapter, perhaps sometimes you will put page numbers next to it. There is nothing more infuriating than coming back to notes some months later and you can’t remember where they are from and you have to spend ages looking back through the course book. Or you might have written down a short quote that you thought was particularly interesting you would like to use in your TMA, but you did not reference it in the notes, you didn’t put down who was being quoted, the date on which they had said it and again you can’t make use of it until you have gone, you know, right back through the book and found it again.

So if your notes are going to be useful be a bit over pedantic about it I always think. I mean I am very careful when I start making notes and I write down exactly where it is from, and the date, and during the notes I kind of if I’m writing down the views of a particular person, write down their name as well, who it is that you are referring to, and then when you come to use them for TMA and revision, your notes are particularly helpful to you.

John

OK you have just depressingly described the stack of index cards that sits at the side of my desk, which are imperfectly referenced and therefore deeply unusable. So I hope everybody else learns the lesson from that. Lets finally review what we have been talking about here, lets imagine that somebody had been taking notes from this tape, what would you hope that they had identified as the key points, Esther let me start with you?

Esther

Well I think three main points – firstly that note taking must be an active process involving thinking about what you are doing while you are doing it. Secondly develop your own technique, have a look at the ideas that are suggested to you in the course guide, in the good study guide, perhaps from your own tutor because as we have said people have worked on these techniques and developed good ideas, but develop one that works for you. And thirdly keep your notes in an organised form so that they are useful for you when you come back to them.

John

OK that’s three. Gerry would you like to add one further main point to this?

Gerry

Yes there is one thing I would like to emphasize and that’s that note taking is not about trying to write down everything in case you forget it, the name of the game is not about remembering, but it is about understanding and good note taking is a means by which your understanding of a particular issue or part of the course can be enhanced, and I would say finally that it is important that you keep reflecting on how you go about taking notes.

John

OK that’s good, and I think if I am allowed one as well, mine would be about the importance of turning the material that you are reading into your own words, both as a way of understanding and as we’ve said earlier as a way of avoiding just plonking undigested bits of course material into your TMAs. Thanks to both of you and good luck with your note taking!