When I was a student, the one thing that I was absolutely lousy at was taking notes. There were a lot of people in my class who seemed to know what they were doing, but not me! I just sort of scribbled along with the things that the teacher wrote on the board and what they said that seemed important. There was really never any way to know whether I was doing it “right,” however, or even if I was doing it “good enough,” or even “passable.” My high school grades actually indicates that I probably did not.
Fast forward to today… I’m a college professor with students, and they ask me how to take good notes. I’m like,… “uhhh…. yeah, about that…” I don’t really feel like I can help, as note-taking actually played no part in my educational success. What I did learn from my own experience was that paying attention in class and actively participating in discussion played way more of a role in my success than any notes that I took. Wouldn’t it be great if we could do both? Can we have good notes that reflect the lecture accurately AND actively participate in class? Based on my previous experience, the answer is NO. However, I have discovered that if you have a professor, or are a professor, who is cool with the lecture being recorded, the closed captioning feature in the Canvas LMS can give you the text file you need to blast into the AI engine of your choice to make accurate, reflective lecture notes, study materials, and outlines of content.
I put together a little video (it’s on YouTube as well!) that walks through the “how-to.” Check it out if this seems like something of interest to you, and, of course, it can work for a lot more than just science lectures.
Let me know what you think, folks! Enjoy!
Paul
