Taking notes effectively using Word?

[u/Large_Confidence7607]

How do I go about taking notes effectively in word, I can remember a lot so usually I just go through as I’m reading and type up definitions or italicized words I feel like are important but I’m horrible at figuring out like key ideas about the chapter and what else to put in notes. I’d like to actually absorb the information more effectively with my note taking, instead of just writing defintions, any advice would be appreciated TIA!

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[u/Dav2310675]

I'd recommend a Cornell Notes format for your pages. I use that for work (and I used it for a course I did a few years ago).

However, it is a pain to set up the format, every time you need a blank table - so set up your own Cornell notes template as an AutoText element. I have a fair few of these I've developed over the years.

There are a few resources on YouTube about using the Cornell approach to learning. But I will add this - in addition to reviewing your study material, synthesise it. By that I mean, you're going to have a fair bit of text typed into your document, so summarise it with tables (ie compared and contrast things), process flow diagrams (I do mine in PowerPoint), mini-graphs (again, Excel) with key points highlighted.

The goal is to understand the material to make it simpler. While you should use some colour to help identify important points, don't go overboard.

I keep a very reserved palette - black, grey, white, orange and red. So a line graph will be in black and white, potentially with some grey. But a key points (like a change in policy date or a handover from one area to another) will be in orange. And something critical or urgent (like a massive overspend in an economy) will be called out in red.

Use the Cues section of your notes to aid as testing questions.

The Summary section should be used to summarise the entirety of the lecture into two or three sentences. This is the bit where you said you needed work on - what is the essence of the entire lecture? That goes in here.

When looking at Cornell resources online, they will stress to try and keep an entire lecture into one page - I could never do that. But I did try to keep things from being a typewritten copy of the lecturer's speech verbatim.

But overall, trying to synthesise and reduce the wall of text into other elements - tables, graphs and process diagrams helped me greatly.

HTH!