IIT prof's advice on making notes to maximize study output
Summary
TLDRThis video addresses common note-taking pitfalls among students and offers strategies to enhance study efficiency. The speaker, a faculty member, emphasizes the importance of personal note-making during lectures and while reading, highlighting how it improves information retention. They caution against relying solely on lecture notes or borrowed notes, advocating for the active engagement of summarizing key insights to foster a deeper understanding of concepts, especially in scientific and technical subjects. The video targets school and undergraduate students, providing practical advice for effective learning.
Takeaways
- 📚 The video discusses common mistakes students make with note-taking and offers advice on how to improve study habits.
- 👨🏫 The speaker, a faculty member, demonstrates credibility by showing his own extensive notes taken throughout his academic career.
- 🎯 The video is primarily aimed at school and undergraduate students, especially those preparing for exams like JEE and board exams.
- 🚫 One of the main mistakes highlighted is students not taking notes while reading, which the speaker considers an inefficient way to study.
- 🔍 The speaker emphasizes that note-taking is not just for rote learning but is essential for deeper understanding and concept retention.
- ✏️ Students are advised to make their own notes by hand during lectures and while reading, as it aids in better information retention.
- 🔄 Merely underlining or highlighting text is insufficient for true learning; students need to engage more actively with the material.
- 📘 Relying solely on lecture notes provided by teachers can limit understanding, as these notes are often exam-focused rather than comprehensive.
- 🤔 The speaker warns against developing bad study habits, such as relying on notes from others, which can hinder independent learning in higher education.
- 💡 The importance of recording personal insights and connections made while studying or solving problems is stressed, as these are unique to the individual.
- 📝 For school students, especially for board exams, writing notes in one's own words can enhance understanding and preparation for descriptive questions.
- 🌐 While there are many note-taking techniques available online, the speaker advises students to be practical and choose methods that are relevant to their academic level and needs.
Q & A
What is the main topic of the video?
-The main topic of the video is discussing the common mistakes students make with note-taking and how to overcome these mistakes to maximize study time and output.
Why does the speaker emphasize that they have been taking notes throughout their academic career?
-The speaker emphasizes their note-taking to establish credibility and to show that they are not just giving advice without personal experience.
Who is the target audience for this video?
-The target audience for this video is primarily school students, especially those studying in classes 6 to 10, those preparing for exams like JEE, and undergraduate students.
Why does the speaker say that not taking proper notes is a significant factor behind students' suffering in exams?
-The speaker believes that not taking proper notes leads to a lack of retention and understanding of concepts, causing students to struggle when they need to apply their knowledge independently.
What is the speaker's view on the notion that note-taking is only related to rote learning?
-The speaker refutes this notion, stating that note-taking is not just for rote learning but is essential for a deeper understanding of concepts, especially in scientific and technical subjects.
What is the biggest mistake students make according to the speaker?
-The biggest mistake, according to the speaker, is that students do not take notes while reading from books, which is an inefficient way of studying.
Why is relying solely on lecture notes provided by teachers not sufficient for real knowledge acquisition?
-Relying solely on lecture notes is not sufficient because these notes are primarily geared towards examination preparation and may not cover the full comprehensive concepts present in the actual textbooks.
What is the problem with students borrowing notes from their peers?
-Borrowing notes from peers is problematic because it relies on borrowed thoughts, which do not facilitate the same level of understanding and retention as making one's own notes.
What does the speaker suggest as the best method for note-taking during lectures and while reading books?
-The speaker suggests making one's own notes, preferably by hand, as it helps to engage more with the material and retain information better.
Why is it important to record 'golden nuggets of information' while studying?
-Recording 'golden nuggets of information' is important because these are unique insights and connections made by the student during problem-solving, which enhance understanding and should not be lost.
What advice does the speaker give regarding the use of digital note-taking techniques and other stylish methods promoted on YouTube?
-The speaker advises being practical and not to artificially borrow advice that may not be directly relevant to the student's current level, focusing instead on what is necessary for their learning journey.
Outlines
📚 Importance of Note-Taking for Students
The speaker emphasizes the significance of note-taking for students, particularly for those in school and undergraduate studies. They share their personal experience as a faculty member and student, showing their extensive collection of notes taken during their academic career. The video targets students from class 6 to 10, especially those preparing for exams like JEE and undergraduate students, but may not be as relevant for PhD students. The speaker highlights common issues students face when they don't take proper notes, such as feeling confident during lectures but struggling to apply knowledge later.
🙅♂️ Common Mistakes in Note-Taking
This paragraph outlines the common mistakes students make regarding note-taking. The first mistake is not taking notes at all while reading, which the speaker deems inefficient. The second is relying on underlining and marginal notes, which only offers superficial familiarity with the text rather than true knowledge. The third mistake is relying exclusively on lecture notes provided by teachers, which may be good for exam preparation but insufficient for deep understanding. The speaker also warns against the habit of borrowing notes from peers, as it does not facilitate personal understanding and can lead to poor study habits.
✍️ Overcoming Note-Taking Mistakes
The speaker suggests ways to overcome the mistakes in note-taking. They stress the importance of making one's own notes during lectures and while reading, as studies show that hand-written notes improve retention and engagement. The speaker advises against relying solely on digital notes or slides provided by teachers, recommending that students use these as supplementary material to their own notes. They also discuss the value of noting down personal insights and connections made while solving problems, which are unique to the individual and crucial for understanding.
🚀 Practical Advice for Effective Note-Taking
In the final paragraph, the speaker offers practical advice for students on note-taking. They encourage students to be discerning about the advice they follow, especially when it comes from sources like YouTube, which may not always be relevant to their academic level. The speaker emphasizes the importance of developing the ability to interpret and describe concepts in one's own words, a skill that is essential for higher studies and scientific endeavors. They conclude by wishing students the best in their note-taking and learning journey.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Note-taking
💡Mistakes
💡Concepts
💡Lecture Notes
💡Underlining and Highlighting
💡Familiarity
💡Acquisition of Knowledge
💡Scientific and Technical Subjects
💡Borrowed Notes
💡Handwriting
💡Problem Solving
Highlights
The importance of note-taking for maximizing study time and output.
The speaker's personal experience with note-taking as a faculty member.
The extensive notes taken during undergraduate studies, including various subjects.
Continuation of note-taking as a faculty to clarify concepts before teaching.
The primary audience for the video: school and undergraduate students.
The common issue of students feeling confident in concepts during lectures but struggling with problem-solving later.
The misconception that note-taking is only for rote learning.
The focus on scientific and technical subjects for note-taking advice.
The first mistake: not taking notes while reading from books.
The second mistake: relying on underlining and marginal notes, which is insufficient for true understanding.
The third mistake: relying exclusively on lecture notes provided by teachers, which may not foster deep understanding.
The risks of developing bad study habits by relying on lecture notes without engaging with the original textbooks.
The fourth mistake: borrowing notes from peers, which hinders personal understanding and thought processes.
The necessity of making one's own notes for better retention and engagement with the material.
The benefits of hand-written note-taking for increased class engagement and information retention.
The importance of recording personal insights and connections made while studying and solving problems.
The value of writing notes in one's own words for better absorption of information, especially for descriptive questions.
Advice for students to be practical and avoid adopting note-taking methods that are not directly relevant to their needs.
Transcripts
hello everyone in this video I'm going
to discuss some of the biggest mistakes
students make with regards to notes
making and how you can overcome these
mistakes so as to make the best use of
your study time and to maximize your
output now since this video is all about
note taking I just want to show that I
am not being a hypocrite here uh because
all my life I have been taking notes
even now as a faculty here at I kakur so
let me just go back and show you some of
the notes that I have made so this is
these are the bunch of notes only a
small fraction mind you of the notes
that I had made during my undergraduate
days so it covers all the uh many of the
subjects and I have another couple of
boxes at home uh containing many such
copies like this so This contains fluid
mechanics mechanics of materials
Dynamics uh even the tutorial sheets
thermodynamics etc etc uh now all of
these were taken during class mind you
by hand now uh going beyond that now
that I'm a faculty I have continued to
make notes uh before going to class and
just to clear things up in my own head
so these are some of the notes again
mind you these are not the complete set
of notes uh this is a bigger Bunch
actually this is all that I had here in
my office it's quite heavy actually I
hope I don't drop it
so you see these are all my notes um
and there's quite a few uh these do not
contain any fluid mechanics notes these
are mostly solid mechanics elasticity
Etc uh anyway so I just wanted to show
you that uh I'm not um shooting off my
mouth here so who is this video meant
for this video is primarily meant for
school students students especially
studying in class 6 to 10 but primarily
those who are studying in 10 plus2
preparing for J need Etc and uh uh
certainly the students who are already
in undergraduate classes uh it may not
be so useful for PhD students because uh
there a different sort of dynamic is at
play with regards to reading and note
making so I'll not get into that so this
is primarily menant for school students
and undergraduate students now uh
keeping this objective in mind uh of uh
the importance of not taking and how the
students suffer if they don't take
proper notes I just want to uh discuss
some of the biggest mistakes that
student make and uh and up front I want
to say that when they do not take this
proper notes and this is actually one of
the big factors behind them suffering is
that uh while attending a lecture or
while reading from a book many times it
happens that the students are absolutely
clear on the concepts they feel that
they're quite confident with the
concepts despite that feeling when it
comes to actually solving the problems
on their own later on or maybe tackling
some kind of an examination or maybe uh
going for some kind of mock to
uh what happens is that the students
feel that all their knowledge all their
Concepts which they had felt quite
confident about while reading or while
attending the lectures uh somehow that
knowledge has completely deserted them
it has completely left them so a big
reason behind this I feel is not taking
proper notes now please mind U you that
some people have a notion that note
taking is only related to um like road
kind of learning this is completely far
from the truth all right uh I also want
to make it clear that whatever I'm going
to discuss primarily is associated with
scientific and Technical subjects uh
this I I don't have the required
expertise to advise you on taking notes
in social sciences and the humanities so
that's that all right what is the
biggest mistake the biggest mistake of
course is that uh the students do not
take notes while reading from the books
okay this is the most inefficient way
way of studying from books I feel uh
some of you may feel that okay I'm
studying from books and then I'm solving
problems uh and uh note taking is just
Road Road learning it's not okay so this
is the most inefficient way of studying
from books and I will expand on this
later uh the next is that some students
they uh they are not as uh inefficient
as not taking any notes at all in the
sense that they do make some underlines
they make some highlights and make in
the margins they will write some notes
uh but although it is a little bit
better than the first mistake but still
it is far from
sufficient okay so the only thing which
these kinds of things accomplishes like
reading and rereading and maybe
rereading with a little bit of an
emphasis on the underlined and the
highlighted Parts uh is just to make you
familiar more and more familiar with the
text now familiarity is not really true
knowledge it doesn't give you an
in-depth understanding of the concepts
any new insights into the various
connections that may exist so just
underlining or just rereading and
revising the same thing over and over
again may make you feel that you are
becoming more and more familiar with the
concept so to speak but you are not
really absorbing them this is something
very very fundamental which you should
understand
the next thing is that some students
they rely exclusively on the lecture
notes which are provided by their
tuition teachers or their coaching
teachers now you may feel that this is a
little bit more efficient as compared to
books maybe so because after all these
lecture notes are prepared by quite
experienced teachers who have a lot of
experience in coaching the students in
preparing the students for the various
examins but by the very definition of
that please try to understand that these
lecture notes are geared primarily
towards examination preparation so if
you are relying exclusively on that then
uh you may be preparing somewhat well
for your exams but in terms of the real
acquisition of the knowledge this is not
sufficient
so and and and see this is like an
intermediary between the actual
book the concepts the full comprehensive
concept which is present in the books
and your
brain so if you only rely on these notes
on these lecture notes which are given
to you then you'll be at a loss plus a
big thing is that if you um keep on
reading only from these notes without
going through the books then the actual
textbooks then it kind of develops bad
study habits in your
brain so maybe at the school level at 10
plus2 level it would be okay but once
you get into the undergraduate days and
even go for higher
studies uh this kind of bad study habits
is going to bite back at you because at
that level there will be no tution
teachers there will be no coaching
teachers to handhold you and give you
rade notes like this which will help you
directly in your examination preparation
so when you don't have those notes what
are you going to do and this is a
problem which I have seen many many
students face in their actual
undergraduate studies there are many
students who have done quite well during
their J preparation during their 10 plus
two but once they come to the
undergraduate there are a number of
other factors of course but this is one
factor which I feel is at the very Crux
of Why students failed to perform as
well as they were doing earlier before
coming to the undergraduate days another
mistake which students make is that so
this is my next Point uh is that
students many a time and this is quite
common in their in the undergraduate uh
level is that they don't take their own
notes they attend the lectures sometimes
they miss the lectures but at the end of
the day what they will do is not even at
the end of the day before the exams they
will go around collecting the notes from
some of the students who were more
attentive or or more serious in um in
attending the lectures regularly and
perhaps a little bit more serious in
taking the notes themselves so these
students the rest of the students they
will take these notes and they will
photocopy them on and now now maybe they
will just take photographs or maybe scan
them and study from this and this seems
like a shortcut very efficient way of um
going about the thing but mind you this
is a massive mistake U all these notes
that I showed
you all of these on an average have at
least gone to 5 to 10 other of my
batchmates all of these some of some
some sometimes what happened was my
notes were shared by so many students
and then it went to another hostel um
another Hall of residents and I had to
go about searching where my notes are uh
that has also happened so I know this
has been going on forever people
photocopy notes from their uh from their
friends but this doesn't really help you
because see these notes are again some
kind of an intermediary between what the
teacher taught in class and what you are
supposed to learning these notes are
actually prepared by somebody who has
his own way of thinking own way of
understanding now if you artificially
borrow these notes you are only trying
to kind of rely on borrowed thoughts
those thoughts are not your own so the
kind of understand understanding that
you would have had if you had made the
notes yourself this is not at all
comparable to what you would gain by
just reading from these kinds of
borrowed notes I hope I made myself
clear okay this is a very very subtle
point but very important point so these
are some of the biggest mistakes what
can you do to overcome these mistakes
now the first thing if it is not
apparently clear by now is that you have
to necessarily make your own notes when
you are sitting in a lecture when you
are reading through a book make your own
notes this is very very important in the
undergraduate days uh in the in the plus
two level that you have to make your own
notes preferably by hand because there
are studies which show that when you
take notes by hand it helps you to
engage more in classes are proper
scientific studies are done with control
groups and everything that when you take
notes physically in a notebook it helps
you to retain the information better
because you are engaging more in U uh
with the with the teacher and please
don't think that if your handwriting is
a little bit bad or handwriting is slow
you would be missing out because when
you think like that what you're actually
doing is you would be summarizing the
things which are really important from
the from the notes and nowadays many
teachers give their slides give their uh
uh notes also please do not just rely on
them take them definitely take them use
them but your main anchor should be your
own notes this is extremely important
some of you may be thinking that okay in
the technical and scientific subjects uh
who makes notes from books and this is
true that be I mean a quite impractical
thing to say especially to undergraduate
students who sits down and takes notes
from books you read the books you study
you do the problems from the problem
sheets given to you or maybe from the
end of the chapters in the book and
that's that uh if you can solve the
problems you know that you can you're
good with the concepts and then you go
for the exam now what I'm saying is
little bit different and this is
something which I have not found
highlighted being highlighted in any
textbook or any blog which talks about
or in any other video which talks about
uh note making this is my personal thing
so please listen carefully what I'm
saying is that you read from the books
don't take notes then go for the
problems once you have done a few
problems you will automatically discover
certain kinds of links and connections
between what you had already studied
before maybe in the previous classes or
maybe in the other chapters maybe in
other subjects also you will discover
certain links and connections on your
own as you are studying and as you are
solving the problems on your own these
these are the golden nuggets of
information which you have discovered
for yourself these are Uniquely Yours
You must make it a point to note down
these golden nuggets of information
because you if you do not record this
this will get dissipated from your brain
this this little flashes of conceptual
understanding which you discover for
yourself if you do not put this on
record I mean it's a massive loss okay
why would you want to lose this these
flashes of insight okay this br flashes
of insight that you have while solving
the problems so please do not do that so
my suggestion is that first of all study
from the book solve the problems maybe
study from the lecture notes also which
the teacher provides you solve the
problems and when these kinds of
connections these insights you discover
for
yourself record them there are certain
points on which uh like more subjective
kind of notes directly from books would
be necessary and this is more relevant
to the school students because
especially for board exams it was
certainly true in our time that in
addition to the problems there would be
certain subjective kind of questions for
example describe milans oil drop
experiment now if you just study from
the book directly or if you study from
some given lecture not some read made
lecture notes you can probably answer
them but if you write your own notes or
describe the things in your own words
what will happen is that you will really
absorb this thing now you may think now
what's the what's the real benefit of
describing these experiments well the
the benefit may not be evident to you
right away but this is the kind of
descriptive thinking which mind you is
also very scientific in nature which
will be extremely important for you as
you go to higher and higher classes mind
you that all scientific Endeavor even in
extremely technical things is not just
problem solving there are certain
logical steps which you have to take
into account which by which you proceed
scientifically okay I mean I am in a
department where from Day Zero you have
to go for problem solving in mechanics
then in mechanics of materials mechanics
of solids fluid mechanics in everything
there is problem solving despite that
I'm saying this that not everything just
boils down to simple problem solving or
simple in the sense that straight cut
problem solving there are many many
things for which you have to take
logical steps uh in a very coherent very
scientific fashion which are not like
problems which are like decisions and uh
like choices between two
bifurcations uh so when you do a large
project you have to you have to think in
that in those terms so unless you
develop this kind of a mental muscle to
interpret something which is there in
the book in your own words you'll be at
a real loss later on this is my personal
feeling and something which I have
gained by experience all right right so
these are the main things which I wanted
to discuss with you I would like to
point out some things because we are on
YouTube here that if you search about
note making and note taking here on
YouTube you will find a lot of videos
which talks very beautifully uh about
some brilliant techniques of note taking
maybe digital note taking and so on and
so forth many of these are very good but
they are not directly relevant at the
school level
uh my suggestion is that be very
practical about it please do not try
to uh artificially borrow some kind of
an advice which may not be directly
relevant for you okay so as you go
higher and higher maybe those kinds of
advice will be relevant but at this
point whatever you need personally for
you you are the best judge of that try
to do what is necessary rather doing
some kind of cosmetically stylish thing
like I don't know bullets journaling or
many other such kinds of uh taking notes
in pocketbooks field notes and this and
that this I mean YouTube is filled with
these kinds of things um these are all
good but they have a different target
audience they have a different um Target
Paradigm of Interest so what I discussed
here is completely different so I hope
you take the is um you understand this
in the proper spirit and do what is
actually required of you so all the very
best in your note taking and Learning
Journey
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