By Shelley A. Gable

Regardless of whether you found note taking to be helpful in college or high school, taking notes can be a helpful learning  strategy for online courses. Are you taking an online course next week for your insurance continuing education? Either way, please read on.

Even if taking notes has never helped you in the past, it can help you now.

From a cognitive psychology perspective, note taking is a form of rehearsal. In other words, writing down information prompts your brain to process that knowledge in an additional way. This repeated exposure to the information and translation of it increases the likelihood that you’ll remember it later.

As a bonus, if your notes are well organized, they may be immensely helpful later when taking an online quiz or studying for a certification exam.

If your notes haven’t helped you in the past, try a different approach to note taking.

For many people, note taking means creating a list of miscellaneous items to remember. So, these people end up with a single, long list of scribbled facts by the end of training. If this system works for you, then it’s not my intent to talk you out of it. If you find this approach to be of little help later, then please keep reading.

There are many ways to organize notes. Lists, outlines, and mapping are just a few.

Have you ever tried creating an advance organizer?

Typically, a course will provide a list of topics or learning objectives that it will cover. Rather than just skipping over this slide in training, take a moment to orient yourself to what’s listed.

Predict what types of subtopics might be addressed for each item listed. Consider how the various items are related, and why they’re being presented in that particular order in the course. Thinking about these relationships in advance will help your brain organize new knowledge more easily throughout the course.

Before moving on, designate a section in your notes for each item listed. If there are five topics, write each topic at the top of a page in your notepad. This not only helps you keep your notes organized by topic, but will also encourage you to capture important points for each topic.

Try elaborating in your own words.

When I was in college, I tended to jot down phrases word-for-word from the displayed PowerPoint slide. But there’s a reason our teachers encouraged us to write notes in our own words. The process of translating someone else’s words to our own helps plant that information a little more firmly into our memories.

Along with this, take an extra moment to connect the notes you write to “real world” examples. If the online course presents an example that makes the content click for you, jot down that example. If it reminds you of something you’re doing on the job, even better – jot that down. If neither of these are true, then take a moment to come up with your own example…and jot it down. Applying newly learned information to realistic scenarios is an important component of remembering what you’ve learned, and the act of writing it all down helps solidify that.

What should you write down?

If you’re somewhat familiar with the subject of the online course or you have a sense of how you’ll be tested, it may be easy for you to discern what you should take note of. When this isn’t the case, you’ll generally find it helpful to make note of content such as:

• Definitions
• Lists
• Cause and effect statements
• Superlatives
• Formulas
• Items that are obviously emphasized (bolded, italicized, etc.)

Think of note taking as a strategy for enhancing your learning. Rather than writing down seemingly important phrases as quickly as possible, reflect on what you’re writing. One of the advantages of online courses is that you control the pace, which allows you to really make this approach work for you.

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Shelley A. Gable is an instructional designer and freelance writer. She has developed training for functions such as financial services, call centers, and engineering education. Shelley has written articles on topics related to training and management for print and online publications. Visit Shelley’s website at http://shelleygable.webs.com.