Whether you’re taking notes from lectures or from your reading, there are a number of possible approaches to explore.

Choosing your tools

Once you’ve identified why you’re taking notes and what you need to take notes of, think about what tool would best help you achieve your purpose. You might not use the same tool every time: some are better than others depending on the job you want them to do. As you experiment with different ones, think about their pros and cons: what are they really good for and what are they not so good for?

Paper versus digital 

When it comes to tools, you have a decision between paper or digital. Think about your own personal preferences and needs here, as well as how you will store and use your notes. Whatever medium you choose, be wary of perfectionist tendencies. It can be counter-productive to spend ages painstakingingly producing a polished set of notes.  

Paper may be better if: 

• You want to prompt your critical and creative thinking by capturing your initial thoughts about your reading either in very rough prose or by doodling or freewriting
• Avoid the distractions of social media etc. when you are readingor listening to a lecture or video
• You sometimes confuse your own notes with someone else’s words or ideas when copying and pasting between the original and your own document

Consider what size paper would serve you best, lined or unlined, which orientation and whether bound in a note-book or looseleaf

Digital may be better if: 

• You feel you need to produce a very neat, ordered set of notes  
• You would like to take advantage of software to aid the notetaking process, like the speech to text function, more flexible organisation or searchability
• You want to have easy access to all of your notes on a portable device wherever you choose to study

There are too many note-taking apps available for us to review and recommend them here, but do explore and ask your peers for suggestions.

It may be that you don’t decide to use either one or the other but a blend of the two. For instance, you might find it useful to use digital tools and software to record, store and re-play key facts and possibly points of action. You may then use paper and pens to jot down your thinking about these initial notes and how you may use them in your assignments. 

Organising your notes

Whether you prefer to use the format of paper and pencil or digital, or both, the strategies below can be adapted to suit your own style and preferences:

• Colour: the use of colour might be helpful to not only categorise, but also draw your attention to different aspects of your notes if/when you revisit them at a later date.  
• Symbols and/or images: the use of symbols or images might be used to represent information, ideas, connections or questions in a different way.   Highlighting aspects of your notes in different ways may provide an aid to more easily recalling or locating this information or may provide a way of creatively engaging with the literature you have read. 
• Space: leaving space in or around your notes might be useful if you revisit them so you amend information and/or thinking.