This week’s lesson was about my most important learning strategy in university: note taking. I have been using onenote for more than 2 years. Handwriting is the most common way of taking notes, but it is too slow for me, as an international student who takes more time to both understand class content and write down note on paper. Moreover, handwriting need to use colored pens, pencils and notebooks, which are less convenient to keep and carry to classroom than electronic devices. Typing is much faster than handwriting, and typed notes can be easily copied and stored on cloud storage. However, typing is less flexible than handwriting notes on designing spatial distribution and format of notes, and less convenient to represent diagrams or relationship links of board notes. In comparison with paper handwriting and typing notes, I found that using onenote on laptop is the best way for taking notes, because it can be used to take notes in both two ways. In addition, electronic notes can include additional information from e-textbook and internet sources, and even insert pictures and screen shots or photo of class notes. Moreover, on electronic notes, students can type in text then draw relationship on the typed text, which can save a lot of time on writing text or creating relationship on microsoft Word and mindmap software.
(Source: Excerpted from page 9 in e-Learning Companion: A Student’s Guide to Online Success)
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/advice-for-students-taking-notes-that-work.html