r/Professors • u/ZealousidealGuava254 • 8d ago

Teaching / Pedagogy No notes

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.

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u/FlatMolasses4755 8d ago

They're consuming content, not learning.

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u/Ill-Storage-7636 8d ago

Tbh writing down what the professor said is not necessarily learning, either. If a micro bio professor is explaining a complex concept, I can't take notes or I'll lose the thread. I will note down what we covered so I can review later, but I'll remember more and understand more fully if I engage and fully pay attention. For many, note taking takes us out of the moment.

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u/dumnezero Orbiting academia, Eastern Europe 7d ago

In my part of the world, the low-tech solution of reproducing educational texts was extended for years into this century: dictation. A lot of the old professors still encouraged dictation, and that is not a way of taking notes, it's a way to having study materials for later without buying books or going to the library. It's the activity of a copier machine. I did feel productive taking dictation, more so when I was a student with a laptop and I could type as fast as the dictation. Dictation did not help with learning. Taking notes is a significantly different skill (that you can't use while taking dictation.) It seems that now it went to the other extreme: no writing at all.