Top Note-Taking Hacks for Tertiary Students

With the development of educational technology for tertiary institutions, it’s well and truly an exciting time to be a university or college student. New opportunities to study remotely without sacrificing on course quality and access to teacher or university resources has provided modern tertiary students with improved flexibility and autonomy when compared to previous generations.

But even with the advancement of educational tech, studying is still hard work. And being able to take notes and retain information effectively will go a long way towards ensuring you’re successful in all your academic pursuits.

Naturally, the best way for students to adapt to the digitization of the education sector is to equip themselves with a solid understanding of technological tools like note takers and other tech-savvy, future-oriented revision hacks. Stick with us as we share our top tried and tested note taking hacks for modern tertiary students.

Convert Journal Articles to Word Documents

Arguably our most high-impact hack is to find a way to transform academic journal articles into your very own notes. Thankfully, there are software solutions that you can use to convert PDF files to Word docs with minimal fuss, basically allowing modern students to transform their readings into editable .docx files.

Yes, this means you can convert a long journal article into a Word document, where you can use Microsoft Word to take notes, highlight key sections and even leave comments in the margin. This note-taking hack will ensure that you can parse those dense journal articles correctly and fully understand what the author/s are getting across. As a PDF file doesn’t have this function, converting it will allow effective note-taking that can help you maintain greater control over your note taking processes as a tertiary student.

Write in Short Phrases

With recording software, it’s easier than ever for students to record lectures and tutorials for playback during their revision processes. But there is proven value to taking hand-written notes during classes as the process of memorizing and rewriting teachings in your own words immensely aids in knowledge retention. 

The only downside of active note taking is your hands usually can’t write or type faster than your ears hear. If you’re looking to improve the speed and efficiency of your note taking, learning how to write notes in short-hand can be a game changer. At an entry level, writing notes in short-hand means writing in phrases, not full sentences. This will save time and make reading your notes when it comes time to turn them into an essay or assignment much easier. 

A good rule of thumb is to ensure that you only record the keywords that you need to write down to get an idea of the point. You should also skip words like “the” and “a” that don’t add additional meaning to the lecture or tutorial content. Retain key technical or discipline-specific terms for those studying specific fields like science, medicine or technology.

Use Your Own Words

Of course, learning how to take notes fast is just one half of the equation when it comes to experiencing the benefits of manual or hand-written note taking. Personal interpretation of course materials and rephrasing in your own words helps recontextualise your teacher’s notes as your own.

To do this, you’ll naturally need to actually make sure that you take notes in your own words so you can better understand what you’ve written when it comes time to review your notes. You may want to paraphrase what you hear your professor or tutor say so that it makes sense to you. This will help you to understand and remember what you hear and absorb the information perfectly. Remember: try to paraphrase everything except in cases where information needs to be noted exactly for exams or other circumstances.

Structure Your Notes Properly

After 12 weeks of classes, it’s easy for notes to become disorganized. So we highly recommend taking efforts to ensure that you structure your notes with relevant headings, subheadings and numbered lists as needed. You should use headings to delineate topic areas or to include bibliographic details of the sources of information for your reference lists. 

Try to also use different methods such as an outline form or a numbering system and note indentation to help you distinguish major and important points from minor points and as a clear way of recording and indicating the structure of lecture or lesson information.

Color Code Your Notes 

Color coordination can be an elegantly simplistic way to stay on top of your note organization. Here, use different colors to highlight major sections, main points and diagrams that you learn about in a lecture or class. You can also use different colors to help you to classify and link concepts or information by topic. 

Use a key so you know which color represents which topic. However, don’t focus too much on color coding when you’re in the lecture. Arrange your color coding system before important lectures. This is because note-taking requires time and concentration, so it’s more useful to do most of the highlighting and underlining when you’re revising your notes later or sorting your color system beforehand.

Utilize Symbols and Abbreviations

This is an incredibly useful note-taking hack. Ensure that you use emphasis and symbols to help you track your notes. For instance, underline, circle, star, or otherwise mark up your notes to assist you in identifying key information, examples, definitions, or other important materials that you need to learn. You might want to devise your marking code to indicate specific information. 

Symbols and abbreviations for frequently used words, phrases, concepts or names are useful for note-taking in lectures when speed and accuracy are essential. It’s important to be consistent with this. Hence, you remember what each symbol or abbreviation represents and can use them easily when it comes to transforming your notes into assignments or essays. Make sure that you keep a key list of frequently used symbols and abbreviations and their meanings so that you can refer to them in the future when it comes to making sense of your notes.

Miss Something? 

If you miss something in a lecture or lesson, as holding concentration can be difficult all the time, ensure that you write keywords, skip a few spaces, and get the information later. You can ask the professor or refer to your reading material to fill in the gaps. Make sure that you leave a space on the page for your notes and comments.

With all these note taking hacks, you should not only be able to elevate your note-taking game to the next level, but also ensure that you build revision and note habits that are optimized to your own study processes. Finding the habits and approaches that work best for your own revision style is ultimately the difference between attaining passing grades and graduating with a high distinction.