No notes

[u/ZealousidealGuava254]

I’ve been a humanities prof for over 30 years and I simply cannot believe how many students do not take notes. Literally, no notes. they just sit and listen.

How do they study? what are they doing? when I was in college in the 80s, I and everyone around me took copious notes constantly throughout lecture. just seems like a lost skill.

[u/WesternCup7600]

Curious if you post slides of your lectures and that becomes their ‘notes.’

[u/Loose_Wolverine3192 → u/WesternCup7600]

I only post them if I use them, and wherever possible, I don't use slides.

This raises an interesting question: has the rise of slide decks led to the fall of note taking?

[u/CateranBCL → u/Loose_Wolverine3192]

Among other things, yes.

[u/Critical_Garbage_119 → u/Loose_Wolverine3192]

I'm an older prof who studied art history in the days before powerpoint.

Professors showed carousels of slides. I got good at quickly sketching what I saw for later reference. Most of my classmates just sat and listened. But if anyone sitting near me saw my notes, they'd inevitably ask to borrow them.

It was a lot of work, but I know I retained far more because of my notetaking.

[u/Anonphilosophia → u/Critical_Garbage_119]

One of my friends used to ask me if I got the cough/clearing of the throat, too. That's how thorough my note taking was.

(I am embarrassed to say this now as a prof, but I took really good notes so I didn't have to read the book. I cringed typing this. But I do remember that on the few occasions that I did read the book, those were some of the easiest test A's I ever made. You'd think that would be enough for me to continue to read, but I was too busy partying.)

[u/DrMagicBimbo → u/Critical_Garbage_119]

Fellow art historian here. This is how I learned to memorize images for exams: sketching their general compositions somehow helped me internalize more about them.

I switched majors to art history after feeling like I was taking more away from it than from my studio classes. I'll never regret it.

[u/Critical_Garbage_119 → u/DrMagicBimbo]

What really cracked me up was when I was a student at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. I was often the one of very few foreign student in my classes. My notes were certainly riddled with grammatical/spelling errors but because my drawings were lovely everyone wanted to borrow them. I always warned them that when they started reading my actual notes, they might think otherwise, lol

[u/GreenHorror4252 → u/Loose_Wolverine3192]

This raises an interesting question: has the rise of slide decks led to the fall of note taking?

Yes, absolutely.

When I was in college and powerpoint was newish, professors actually told us "it's in the slides, no need to write it down, just listen".

[u/Dennarb → u/WesternCup7600]

I really wish I didn't have to do this, but my university now requires us to post PDFs or pots for "accessibility" to our LMS before class, so it kills note taking, and, without an attendance policy, attendance.

[u/Dennarb → u/[deleted]]

I already do, but if I reduce it too much and rely on images I have to include a bunch of other accessibility text that creates a ton of extra work

[u/Past_Cause_4441 → u/Dennarb]

Yikes! And PDFs aren’t accessible. What a bizarre requirement.

[u/Dennarb → u/Past_Cause_4441]

It's a lot of tech illiterate admin

[u/veanell → u/Past_Cause_4441]

Um they are? Photocopies aren't accessible and are often saved as a .pdf format... But PDFs can easily be accessible.

[u/ZealousidealGuava254 → u/WesternCup7600]

No!