During a Lecture

Video resource: General Overview of Helpful Tips for Writing Notes in Lecture

1. Consider Your Sensory Needs

Your environment can have a big impact on your ability to focus during lectures. Everyone has different levels of tolerance for different sensory stimuli (i.e. noise, light, textures, smells).

Consider what kind of stimuli your environment has and if you find them helpful or harmful. For in-person classes, this may involve sitting away from students on computers or talking, or sitting near the aisle if you need to take breaks. If you find classroom lighting creates a glare, wearing a baseball cap may help. For remote classes, this may involve moving to a different room in your home that is quiet, putting on headphones to help focus sound, or choosing to take notes on paper if you get distracted by internet browsing on your laptop. Remember that stress can impact your ability to tolerate different stimuli, and be patient with yourself as you navigate your sensory needs.

2. Format Your Notes

Labelling: your lecture notes should include the class, lecture number, and date. This will help you to organize your notes so you can identify what each note is for. This can help you when you're creating a study plan. 

Colours: Using different colours or highlighting your notes can help emphasize important information or show connections between different topics.  

3. Use Abbreviations 

• Shortening words, using acronyms, and using symbols are all excellent ways to decrease the amount of writing needed for your notes. Instead of writing out an entire word, you can just write part of it. For example, you can write "Monday" as "M-o-n". This will help you cut down the time it takes to write out the entire word.  
• Symbols are useful for students with strong visual skills as they incorporate small images into your notes. For example, you might draw a star or put an exclamation point in front of information that is very important. Just like with other abbreviations, make sure that you include a legend in your notes so you can refer back to what these symbols mean.  
• The table below shows you examples of other words that have been shortened. You can create your own table and copy this into your notes if you need help remembering abbreviations when you first start using them. Abbreviations should be simple and easily recognizable to you.  

4. Keep Track of Your Questions

Recording your questions (i.e. in the page margin, on a separate page) that come up during lecture can help you better understand confusing topics later as you can use these questions to direct your study sessions and seek advice from your professor, TA, or classmates. Writing down your questions can also be helpful if you often get distracted by questions or curiosity during lecture. This method allows you to track your questions without needing to look everything up in the moment.  

5. Look for Cues

Lectures are always designed with a purpose in mind. There are a few things you can look for to help identify what is important.  
 

Learning Objectives  

Sometimes professors may list the learning objectives at the beginning of their lecture. Copying this into your notes will help you identify what to focus on in the lecture.  
 

Repetition 

Your professor may repeat or explain the same information in multiple ways to emphasize important topics. They may also give multiple examples on the same topic to help with comprehension. Multiple examples may also be shown to highlight different ways that a skill is used and how it needs to be modified in different situations. Overall, professors emphasize the importance of different topics or skills by spending more time on them. This may also be indicated on your course syllabi by how many weeks or lectures are devoted to a particular topic.  
 

Transitional Words or Phrases 

Professors may use certain words to emphasize key information and could be using these phrases to tell us that we're reaching our learning goal. Examples of this include: 

• “in summary”, “in conclusion”, “overall”, and “at the end of the day” could indicate that the professor is about to share the main idea or key information on a topic.
• "as an aside" or "by the way" may indicate the professor is about to give extra information not integral to the lecture. 
• "first", "second", "third" or "before", "during", and "after" can indicate a process or list of information that needs to be remembered in a particular order.

6. Take Breaks

Lectures are often longer than most adults can focus for. Focusing during lecture may be particularly challenging if you have difficulties with focus. Taking movement breaks throughout long lectures can increase focus and reasoning abilities which are needed during lectures. How often and how long you need these breaks may vary, but a good indicator is when your notes start to look emptier or they don’t make sense. If you are worried about missing information or taking breaks during your lecture, speak to your accessibility office about accommodations that can support this.  

7. If Your Lecturer Speaks Too Fast

• As an accommodation, you may be able to record the lecture while taking notes. There are many apps and assistive technologies that can also sync your typing (or handwriting) to the recording. You can search the phrase “note taking apps” online or speak with the assistive technology staff in your accessibility office to find a tool that works for you. If you miss information in lecture, you can write the time (i.e. 45 min, 65 min) in your notes with a symbol (i.e. question mark) to indicate what time you want to return to and review. You can also leave spaces in your notes to fill in missing information after you've consulted with a textbook, a peer, or the course instructor.  
• Try to prioritize what information you pay attention to by focusing on key points, words, and summaries. Each time the professor changes the lecture slide is another opportunity for you to refocus and pay attention in class. 
• Use office hours to ask questions and get clarification on anything that you've missed.  
• Invest more time in before-class activities so you can make decisions on what content to pay attention to. This means that you may be doing more practice questions or completing the class readings before the lecture occurs.

Did you know you have free access to Microsoft OneNote that you can use for notetaking?