In my first self-designed study, I wanted to find out if using this style of note taking would help to increase my understanding of the material being taught, and it most definitely did. I was struggling with finding a way of projecting my studies on paper that would be beneficial to my deeper understanding of the material. I was first introduced to this style of note taking early in the semester by a wise man named Joey Thames and it has proven highly effective in retention of information.

You start by creating three boxes on a piece of paper. The top left box is for a visual/conceptual view of the material and should be denoted using charts, graphs or pictures. The top left box is for factual points. This is where you will be doing most of your note taking, providing bullet points or a step-by-step procedure. The box on the bottom is a space to either provide a summary of the information in your own words, or an example with a solution if you are studying mathematics. It doesn't particularly matter which box you start with and it would depend on the type of information that you are receiving.

Reflection

As shown in the photo of my notes above, everything is pieced together on one piece of paper in a method that is easily readable and the information is easily extractable. I find that providing a visual for myself on the same sheet of paper that I take notes on gives me a deeper understanding of the material that I don't always have when simply reading and writing. Summarizing the lesson in my own words at the end of class is an important aspect of this and is the final step. By gathering everything that I had just learned in a short period of time and putting it all into a few sentences helps to simplify the material for me and provides an overview of the lesson.