Taking Notes (Digital Notes and Manual Notes)
May 2024.
Some students can be put at more of an advantage or disadvantage due to their individual privileges when they are engaging in the learning and retaining of information. This can be visually demonstrated by using the ‘Privilege Walk’ (Bryan 2022). Having reflected on this, I considered the issues students encounter with regards to their notetaking methodology. I have observed this issue through conversations I have had in the past with students. I have also seen students take notes for their independently submitted work as well as when they are notetaking for their personal use to build knowledge.
My intervention aims to enhance and improve students core knowledge and note taking in BA/ MA/ PGT, and whilst they are creating their own individual notes for their assessed project. I have seen how some students struggled to take notes whilst trying to keep up with the lessons. I can personally relate to this challenge as a neurodivergent staff member, and through my past experiences as a former student, and currently whilst being on the PgCert.
In my CAD/CAM teaching practice, students are required to take digital notes in taught lessons. The notes help students create the portfolio with notes required for submission and supports them during their independent learning in supervised studio. I myself and other students agree that taking notes is valuable to learning and becoming self-dependent. However, it can be difficult multitasking by take notes when in a taught lesson.
There are many reasons for this difficulty:
- The encouragement provided for students to take notes, is only briefly introduced for the first 5 minutes in every lesson. As a result, students have to learn simultaneously the software’s we teach as well as how to take notes using it.
- Our teaching practice uses windows PCs. However, across home and international students, they are often more familiar with apple computers or touch screen computers.
- There can also be a language barrier. For example, we have a majority of the student cohort being international students, whereby they find it difficult to note-take in English where it may not be their primary language. In the end, they end up taking notes in their mother tongue. This can create issues when they need to translate their notes back into English. If done later, the translation may not be entirely accurate.
- Neuro-divergent students can find there are too many things going on at the same time and therefore they do not have time to take proper notes and keep up with the lesson.
In order to conduct my intervention I plan to:
- Conduct a series of surveys to collect data and information to inform key points of my research from staff, students, tutors and peers.
- Have conversations with staff, peers and students around the topic of notetaking and getting their feedback.
- Look at the UAL Data to inform my research and approach.
- Widen my research into theories with the aim of conducting a series of inclusive teaching practice methods to help create a workshop for notetaking.
- Plan to research inclusive note taking software.
- Hold a small focus group regarding the best software of taking digital notes.
- Create a workshop that is to be presented prior to the start of the first taught lesson that helps students know how to create notes.
- Time and resource permitting, I will look at the assessment requirement to see whether students whose mother tongue is not English, can submit in their mother tongue.
References
Adepitan, A. (2020). ‘Ade Adepitan gives amazing explanation of systemic racism’. Interview with Ade Adepitan. Interviewed by Nick Webborn for ParalympicsGB, 16 October. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAsxndpgagU (Accessed: 27 May 2024).
As/Is (2015) What Is Privilege?. 4 July. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD5f8GuNuGQ (Accessed: 27 May 2024).
Bryan, J. (2022). Privilege Walk [Online]. University of Warwick, n.d. Available from https://warwick.ac.uk/services/dean-of-students-office/community-valueseducation/educationresources/privilegewalk (Accessed 27 May 2024).
Crenshaw, K. (1990) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review 43 (6), pp.1241-1299. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039?saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiJjODZhMDgzZi01OGI2LTRmY2MtODMxYy1kNmIzZWU2NGI1NjciLCJlbWFpbCI6IjEzMzgwMzUxQGFydHMuYWMudWsiLCJpbnN0aXR1dGlvbklkcyI6WyI5ZDA5NDcxMy00Nzc0LTQ5ZmQtOTZkNS1kYzRmMTdlMDQ0NDQiXX0&seq=1 (Accessed 27 May 2024).
Davies, M. (2022) ‘The White Spaces of Dyslexic Difference: An Intersectional Analysis’, in S. Broadhead (ed.) Access and Widening Participation in Arts Higher Education: Practice and Research. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 143–158. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97450-3_7 (Accessed 27 May 2024).
Kim, C. S. (2023) ‘Christine Sun Kim in “Friends & Strangers” – Season 11 | Art21’. Interview with Christine Sun Kim. Interviewed for Art21, 1 November. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NpRaEDlLsI&t=1s (Accessed 27 May 2024).
The Best Note-Taking Methods for College Students & Serious Note-takers (2023) Available at: https://www.goodnotes.com/blog/note-taking-methods (Accessed: 28 May 2024).
University of the Arts London (2024) Active Dashboard – Student profiles: characteristics 2022/23. Available at: https://dashboards.arts.ac.uk/dashboard/ActiveDashboards/DashboardPage.aspx?dashboardid=5c6bb274-7645-4500-bb75-7e334f68ff24&dashcontextid=638524920468662402 (Accessed: 28 May 2024).
University of the Arts London (2024) Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual report 2022/23. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/432141/SPCB23435-EDI-report-2022-23.pdf (Accessed: 28 May 2024)
University of the Arts London (2024) Note taking, writing and referencing. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/students/assistive-technology/note-taking-writing-and-referencing#notetaking (Accessed: 28 May 2024).