Why should every student record the lecture with notes? Isn't it better if they get a copy of the lecture notes, and they only add their own notes, thereby paying more attention to the lecture instead of copying things manually which can be printed/photocopied for all sutdents?
It's not about conveying the information, it's about how to get your brain to integrate and hang on to the information. The process of writing it down, and the other steps described are all about cajoling the brain to learn new material quickly.
Personally I think it takes more than a note taking process, there has to be some personal intrinsic motivation to understand and a genuine desire to know. Otherwise its just test cramming and will be forgotton soon after.
Because often the instructor or professor may ad lib based on a question from a student. It may result in a really good answer that probably won't be in the official lecture notes. Instructors with decades of experience have anecdotes that may not be suitable for lecture notes but may give express an idea better using analogy that is spur of the moment.
I went back to college late in life and now with cellphones and cloud storage people often recorded lectures with permission. One person used OBS most others used their mobile phone's note recorder app. Many used Microsoft OneNote (free Office 365 with tuition) to record and photos of whiteboard notes and diagrams. OneNote can OCR the text and even adjust skew of the image.
I still wrote my own notes though at first hand written because I wrote in cursive which is far faster than block printing. But I was persuaded by the masses typed my notes into a document on my laptop. I regret that now because I noticed a significant difference in retention between hand-written versus typed. When I wrote by hand I recalled much more of the material.
And take this with a grain of salt because I'm friggin' old.
> Because often the instructor or professor may ad lib based on a question from a student. It may result in a really good answer that probably won't be in the official lecture notes.
Exactly, that's why I said everyone should get a copy of the official notes beforehand and write down their own notes on them.
It's much more efficient than slavishly copying everything you hear, making it harder to pay attention.
I don't think most students have A/B tested themselves on it. Meanwhile outside of school much is remembered without note taking, and what's not is captured for later lookup in superior ways.
Most people find it helpful. If I had a coworker on a team in a dev meeting, and they didn't take any notes, though, I'd be super suspicious they weren't going to retain all the important parts.
Sorry, bad attempt to humorously go even beyond the previous peak. ("I've never used/seen x and I don't miss it" -- so how would you even know anything about the value of x -- is a sentiment seen on many HN programming language threads.) I do occasionally take notes. For meetings specifically, notes of them tend to serve first the function of a discussion log, second as reminders either to follow up on something or to transfer anything really important to a more structured form of knowledge share like documentation, a titled google doc, or the details section of a specific work item.
My preference would be both. Take notes during the lecture, and then receive the professor's outline. This would allow me to focus and reinforce lecture material during the first iteration, while also seeing where the holes in my knowledge reside (e.g. what I considered important during the lecture/note-taking vs. what the professor deemed important).
At that point, I can refactor my notes including the professor's outline, adding details I missed or elaborating on parts of the outline that might have been sparse.
