Class-wide Notetaking Approaches

Originally published in November 2024

A Universal Design for Learning Lens on Notetaking

Notetaking is an important activity in The Study Cycle which distributes and reinforces learning over the term. In the Study Cycle, students engage in a process that instructs them to prepare for a lecture or class with a preview of the materials, followed by highlighting and organizing information during the class through notetaking, and then reconstructing, reviewing, and making further connections post-class to enhance recall for future assessments.

Notetaking is often considered an individual activity left to students to develop their approach on their own. This individualized approach is also commonly applied to notetaking accommodations. Adopting a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) lens to evaluate and reconceive notetaking approaches at a class-wide level can help instructors address barriers in the learning environment and support all students through proactive steps to maximize equitable access to academic success (CAST 2024).

Through the strategies below, we invite instructors to consider how class-wide notetaking approaches can become a part of the design and practice of the course itself, supporting students by enhancing accessibility and inclusion, developing important academic skills, or building the learning community. More information and practical steps to implement these strategies can be found in this Guide.

Instructor-led Approaches

In these approaches, instructors offer one or more additional means in the study cycle to represent their lecture and share with all of the students in the class. For example:

Preview: Posting and sharing the PowerPoint Slides and/or key questions connected to the readings or materials on MyLS in advance.
During Class: Providing guided lecture notes that include an outline, blank spaces for completion, or a series of questions to be answered throughout the lecture.
Review: Providing video, audio, or transcripts of lectures on MyLS post-class to fill in gaps from live class notetaking and make connections across the term.

Student-led Approaches

With student-led class-wide approaches to notetaking, students take part in quality notetaking practices that reinforce student learning, offer diverse representations and expressions of in-class learning, and foster interdependence and mutual support (i.e. “I create notes and contribute to learning for peers as they will also do for me”). By making these approaches to notetaking a part of the learning outcomes, activities, and assessment strategies, students can develop and value the academic skills involved in notetaking, participate in collaborative learning, and can more effectively engage in a study cycle that prepares them for success.

Collaborative Notetaking

In groups or pairs, students work together to create a set of notes in an instructor-shared word document that is made available to the whole class.
Student participation in this approach can be limited to one class or week in a semester, expanded to a choice of weeks (4x in a semester), or as a practice and demonstration of engagement in every class.
Instructors can speak directly to the notetaking outputs early in the term to guide students on evaluating what is key information from the lecture or reading materials to highlight (for example, background knowledge or key concepts/theories or what will be on test).
As an assessment, it can be connected to a learning outcome that involves a synthesis of the lecture topic, including identifying main ideas, relevant examples, and making comparisons or connections within the class or across classes.
As an activity, students have a structured opportunity to also participate in collaborative learning with the lecture materials and their peers by together enhancing details and examples, accuracy, or the organization of the information.
It is more effectively implemented when instructors explicitly discuss expectations, roles, and purposes of the collaborative notetaking approach (Harbin 2020) and create pauses in lectures for students to review and make revisions with their partners (Luo, Kiewra, Samuelson 2016).
This approach can provide an effective alternative to recorded lectures, particularly for virtual synchronous courses, and offer instructors a valuable opportunity to gain insights into student learning during the course (Patson 2021; Harbin 2020).

Find more strategies and technologies to implement collaborative notetaking in this Guide.

Class Note-sharing

This approach is also called the “rotating notetaker assignment’ (Maier 2016; Gravett 2021).
Students sign up for a week where they take the responsibility of a class notetaker who then shares their notes with the entire class in an effort to build community, accountability, and peer learning through comparison.
The number of notetakers in any given class will depend on the number of students in the class but consider a minimum of 2 in order to have more than one set of notes for each class. For larger classes, this could be organized by tutorial sections or alphabetically by last name. Instructors may also set up a maximum to ensure a relatively equal number of notetakers each week.
On MyLS, the instructor sets up a Discussion Board Topic called “Class Note-Sharing” and organizes the threads by date. Students are then able to upload their notes into their assigned date, making them available to all students in the class.

Explore more strategies and technologies to implement class note-sharing in this Guide

Notetaking Formats

Sharing one or more notetaking formats or templates with students supports their skill development, provides options to represent the lecture materials, and can reduce the time students spend on digital distractions during class (Wu and Xie 2018). Examples include:

Instructor-designed skeleton notes or handouts with interactive prompts for students to develop in further detail.
Templates that organize the information using the Cornell method, to quickly capture and reinforce main ideas, or a T-chart to list advantages or disadvantages or opposing perspectives.
Visual approaches, such as Venn diagrams, to focus students on similarities and differences between 2 or more ideas or theorists; mindmaps or concept maps to show relationships between concepts, causes, and impacts; or more creative drawing approaches, like sketch notes.
Audio recordings with transcripts that summarize lectures or class discussions.
Students can use digital tools with templates from Office365 like Whiteboard or PowerPoint, or use Word for writing or audio recording with transcription functions, or can handwrite notes and take a picture to share with others on MyLS.

Instructors can also inform students of the Student Success supports available to further develop their notetaking skills. The Academic Skills (ASk) Certificate includes a workshop on Notetaking 101, in addition to offerings on the Study Cycle and how to Tame Digital Distractions - encourage your students to register for upcoming sessions today! Instructors are also welcome to connect with the Study Skills team to request an in-course workshop on topics such as notetaking and the Active Study Cycle.

Accessible Notes

While the diversity of notetaking methods can be valuable to demonstrate ways in which students represent learning and information, introducing students to accessible formatting and practices (such as headings, alt-text, or audio transcripts) can support a range of learners’ engagement with their notes. Encourage students to use accessible document guidelines and turn on Microsoft’s built-in accessibility checker while they work to resolve accessibility issues in documents in real-time.

The top four ways documents can be made accessible are:

using the style headings and subheadings
making links accessible
Creating accessible lists to organize information
adding alt-text to images, tables and graphs, and using an equation editor for math.

Explore the Universal Design for Learning section in this Guide with these notetaking approaches incorporated >>