After: Add value

It is important to add value to your notes as soon as you can after a lecture.

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Simply writing out a neat copy doesn’t really add value and would take up a lot of time. You want to be able to understand the ideas for yourself.

Revisit your notes

  • Ideally revisit your notes as soon as possible (within 24 hours)
  • Look over them again a few days later (within a week)
  • Use them again as the basis for your exam revision (within the semester)

Go through your notes adding material

  • Clarification, definitions and links to other notes you may have.
  • Aim to relate the material to what you already know.

Slide lecture notes: If there are slide lecture notes provided on the VLE, it is worth checking them for anything you missed and add this to your own notes. You probably won’t want to print out all or some of the slide lecture notes for every lecture, but it is worth saving them on your computer or a memory stick to have offline for revision purposes.

Lecture summary sheet: You can make a note of the details of the lecture on a cover sheet with a summary of the main points, examples used and anything you need to follow up.

Learning Objectives: Check that your notes cover all the stated learning objectives (these can also make excellent starting points for flash cards/mindmaps etc.

Flash cards: You may want to create some question/answer flash cards to help with revision/re-call.

Mindmaps/Spider Diagrams: You may want to create some mindmaps to illustrate connections, links that will help you understand the materials.

Diagrams: These are particularly useful for anatomy where creating your own diagrams (or tracing) that you can then label.