Library Subject Guides
Tips on note-taking applications, making and organising notes, and annotating electronic texts:
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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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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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.
Take a look at the above link to see a couple of examples of note-taking using a tablet and stylus.
Grid notes is a useful note taking technique for assignments where you need to compare and synthesise information from numerous sources. You collect information under specific headings in a grid or table, which helps you to:
Find out more:
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:
| 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 |
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