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Note taking

Critical reading

Taking note of note-taking

Tips on note-taking applications, making and organising notes, and annotating electronic texts:

Active or passive note taking

Active or passive? quiz

Note taking can be active or passive. In other words, active notes include your own thoughts, words, and questions, meaning that you are already engaging with the material and not just copying it out. This quiz will help you to identify what is active and what is passive note taking so you can think about how you take notes and what you could improve.

For each note taking example, choose whether it is active or passive. Click on the "Next" arrow to begin.

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Underline words and quotes in the text

Active
Passive

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Write your own explanation of what something says or means

Active
Passive

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Make connections within the text, to your topic and other texts

Active
Passive

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Write notes on everything you read

Active
Passive

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Copy direct quotes

Active
Passive

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Look for answers to questions you have, and make a note of relevant information

Active
Passive

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How do you take notes?
tick

Well done. You got of 6 questions correct.

Now that you've taken the quiz, think about how you take notes. Do you use more of the active or the passive techniques that were listed?

If you use more of the passive note taking techniques, you're less likely to remember things you learn, so you may end up doing more checking of your notes when writing assignments or revising. Try out some more active learning approaches such as those found in this quiz and check the note taking guide for more handy tips.

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Taking note of note-taking applications

Always losing your notes? Need an application which will work across different platforms? We showcase some online note taking applications, looking at how you can annotate PDFs and other online documents to be efficient with you note taking.

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From note-taking to note-making

Good note-making will help you to get the most from lectures and taught sessions:

This video provides four approaches to creating notes: linear written notes, annotated slides, mind maps and an introduction to the Cornell note-taking method.

There's more resources available to help you think about ways of studying and how you engage with lectures and other teaching sessions:

Some common note-taking abbreviations (select to expand)

et al.and others
c. approximately
∵ because
∴ Therefore
cf. compare
↘ decreases, falls
↗ grows, increases
= equal to
≡ equivalent to
> greater than
< less than
← results from
→ results in, leads to
" same as above
≈ similar to
esp. especially
N.B. Important
i.e. that is to say, in other words
pp pages
e.g. for example
v very
re with reference to