Iterative Note Review
Iterative Note Review
Transcript
So, let's talk a little bit about how the average student takes notes and then what they do with their notes after they take them. In general there's a lecture or a moment of instruction. It might be a lab. It might be a discussion section, but let's call it a lecture for our purposes. The student goes to lecture. They open their notebook. They take their notes, and then they close their notebook and leave class and go about their business. They don't open their notes for that class again until the next lecture. When they open their notebook again, they take their notes for the second lecture, then they close their notebook and they go about their business. Lecture three, lecture four, lecture five, and so on.
The notebook is only open during lecture to take the actual notes, but it doesn't get opened for the purposes of review or study until a couple of weeks, or more often, a couple of days before the exam. Again, this is what most students do, but it's not a particularly active way to study for an exam and it's not a particularly effective use of the notes that you're taking in class. This cycle requires an intervention, and the intervention I'd like to offer today is a system of note review that I call iterative note review. What does the word iterative mean? Iterative simply means a process that uses thoughtful, deliberate repetition with the goal of achieving a desired outcome.
In this case, that outcome is progress. We do something once, then we do it again to get better, and then we do it again to get even better. With that definition of iterative in mind, iterative note review then, is a process of note review that encourages multiple engagements with your notes over time with the goal of increased comprehension and retention. Essentially, what iterative note review does is it creates a system that allows you to engage with your notes multiple times over a longer duration than you normally would.
This method increases the number of engagements and the amount of time that you're engaging your notes actively. The outcome is increased comprehension and retention and the transformation of mere familiarity with material into deep knowledge. How does the process actually work? It's basically three steps that get repeated over and over. First, you actively take notes in lecture. That means you attend, you listen attentively, and you do your best to capture the most important information in your notes. Then you have a process called distillation, and this is key.
A moment of distillation three to five minutes, happens immediately after lecture. So, maybe while people are getting their things together and getting up, you stay seated to engage in a moment of distillation. All this is, is a moment where you take a second to identify after the lecture what the most important thing in lecture was. So, one question you might ask would be what was the most significant thing I learned in this lecture? Another question that's useful might be, why did the professor give this lecture in the first place? When you identify that significance you've essentially distilled the lecture down into its key or crucial component. Again, this can be done immediately after lecture or it can be done later on in the day. It just needs to be while the lecture material is still fresh.
Recalling that lecture, after it's already happened really does a lot to concretize your knowledge and to concretize your information in your mind. Finally, you're going to review that distillation and that happens before the end of the day, the same day of lecture. You'll notice that this process requires three separate engagements on the same day, and that's one of the keys to iterative note review.
So, let's talk a little bit about what this looks like in real time. I want you to imagine that you're taking a class that meets on Monday and Wednesday. So, a student that's doing regular note review would go to lecture on Monday, take notes, then go to lecture on Wednesday, take notes again, et cetera, et cetera, and would only review their notes a couple days before the exam. But the student who's practicing iterative note review will do the following.
On Monday, the day of the first lecture, they will go to lecture, they will listen actively, capturing the most important information in their notes. Then immediately after lecture they're going to distill their notes by asking what's the most significant information I learned, and then at the end of the day on Monday, they're going to review that distillation for about five minutes. Tuesday passes.
Wednesday they go to lecture two. They actively listen to lecture two, and they distill their information from the lecture. Then at the end of the day on Wednesday they review the information from lecture one for five minutes, and they spend an additional five minutes reviewing lecture two. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday pass. We've now placed four days in between any engagement with the material.
Then we have Monday, the third lecture. Student goes to lecture three. They actively listen to lecture three and capture the most important information in their notes and at the end of the day on Monday they review five minutes for lecture one, five minutes for lecture two, and five minutes for lecture three, for a total investment of study time of about 15 minutes. Tuesday passes. Wednesday is where we realize the true power of iterative note review, and this is where we see the benefit.
On Wednesday, the student goes to lecture four. They actively listen to lecture four and then they distill lecture four immediately after class. Then they go home and they prepare to review lecture one material and something extraordinary has happened. The information from lecture one is like second nature to them. They know it like the back of their hand. Why? Because they engaged it during the initial lecture. They engaged it again during the distillation. They engaged it yet again in the review on Monday, the review on Wednesday and the third review on Monday again.
So, they've now engaged the material one, two, three, four, five separate times, and they find that instead of merely being familiar with it they now know it. So, two things happen. First, they can move on to their review of lecture two, three, and four, which means that the investment of time of 15 minutes doesn't get any greater than 15 minutes. It'll be two, three, and four, and then three, four, and five, and then four, five, and six. But something else really cool happens. That information from lecture one that is now part of their working knowledge, that knowledge is informing their review of lecture two, three, and four, so that the process is not only iterative, it's accumulative. It means that your growing knowledge is working and it continues to affect the additional knowledge that you gain.
The benefits and the outcomes are pretty astonishing with this simple method. Again, with 15 minutes of review twice a week for any given lecture you change one engagement into five separate engagements with the material. It turns zero minutes of post-lecture review and engagement into over 20 minutes. It turns zero days of post-lecture review into eight days of post-lecture review. This means more engagements. It means a longer duration of engagement. It means increased comprehension and retention and it means that your familiarity becomes deep knowledge.
Now, of course, it's going to take some discipline to do this particular procedure and sometimes students don't do all of it, or sometimes they just do parts of it, but I can guarantee you one thing. Any amount of iterative note review is going to increase your comprehension and retention of material more than none of it will. So, if you can't do all of it, do some of it, and I'll tell you that the benefits will be clear to you immediately.
The notebook is only open during lecture to take the actual notes, but it doesn't get opened for the purposes of review or study until a couple of weeks, or more often, a couple of days before the exam. Again, this is what most students do, but it's not a particularly active way to study for an exam and it's not a particularly effective use of the notes that you're taking in class. This cycle requires an intervention, and the intervention I'd like to offer today is a system of note review that I call iterative note review. What does the word iterative mean? Iterative simply means a process that uses thoughtful, deliberate repetition with the goal of achieving a desired outcome.
In this case, that outcome is progress. We do something once, then we do it again to get better, and then we do it again to get even better. With that definition of iterative in mind, iterative note review then, is a process of note review that encourages multiple engagements with your notes over time with the goal of increased comprehension and retention. Essentially, what iterative note review does is it creates a system that allows you to engage with your notes multiple times over a longer duration than you normally would.
This method increases the number of engagements and the amount of time that you're engaging your notes actively. The outcome is increased comprehension and retention and the transformation of mere familiarity with material into deep knowledge. How does the process actually work? It's basically three steps that get repeated over and over. First, you actively take notes in lecture. That means you attend, you listen attentively, and you do your best to capture the most important information in your notes. Then you have a process called distillation, and this is key.
A moment of distillation three to five minutes, happens immediately after lecture. So, maybe while people are getting their things together and getting up, you stay seated to engage in a moment of distillation. All this is, is a moment where you take a second to identify after the lecture what the most important thing in lecture was. So, one question you might ask would be what was the most significant thing I learned in this lecture? Another question that's useful might be, why did the professor give this lecture in the first place? When you identify that significance you've essentially distilled the lecture down into its key or crucial component. Again, this can be done immediately after lecture or it can be done later on in the day. It just needs to be while the lecture material is still fresh.
Recalling that lecture, after it's already happened really does a lot to concretize your knowledge and to concretize your information in your mind. Finally, you're going to review that distillation and that happens before the end of the day, the same day of lecture. You'll notice that this process requires three separate engagements on the same day, and that's one of the keys to iterative note review.
So, let's talk a little bit about what this looks like in real time. I want you to imagine that you're taking a class that meets on Monday and Wednesday. So, a student that's doing regular note review would go to lecture on Monday, take notes, then go to lecture on Wednesday, take notes again, et cetera, et cetera, and would only review their notes a couple days before the exam. But the student who's practicing iterative note review will do the following.
On Monday, the day of the first lecture, they will go to lecture, they will listen actively, capturing the most important information in their notes. Then immediately after lecture they're going to distill their notes by asking what's the most significant information I learned, and then at the end of the day on Monday, they're going to review that distillation for about five minutes. Tuesday passes.
Wednesday they go to lecture two. They actively listen to lecture two, and they distill their information from the lecture. Then at the end of the day on Wednesday they review the information from lecture one for five minutes, and they spend an additional five minutes reviewing lecture two. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday pass. We've now placed four days in between any engagement with the material.
Then we have Monday, the third lecture. Student goes to lecture three. They actively listen to lecture three and capture the most important information in their notes and at the end of the day on Monday they review five minutes for lecture one, five minutes for lecture two, and five minutes for lecture three, for a total investment of study time of about 15 minutes. Tuesday passes. Wednesday is where we realize the true power of iterative note review, and this is where we see the benefit.
On Wednesday, the student goes to lecture four. They actively listen to lecture four and then they distill lecture four immediately after class. Then they go home and they prepare to review lecture one material and something extraordinary has happened. The information from lecture one is like second nature to them. They know it like the back of their hand. Why? Because they engaged it during the initial lecture. They engaged it again during the distillation. They engaged it yet again in the review on Monday, the review on Wednesday and the third review on Monday again.
So, they've now engaged the material one, two, three, four, five separate times, and they find that instead of merely being familiar with it they now know it. So, two things happen. First, they can move on to their review of lecture two, three, and four, which means that the investment of time of 15 minutes doesn't get any greater than 15 minutes. It'll be two, three, and four, and then three, four, and five, and then four, five, and six. But something else really cool happens. That information from lecture one that is now part of their working knowledge, that knowledge is informing their review of lecture two, three, and four, so that the process is not only iterative, it's accumulative. It means that your growing knowledge is working and it continues to affect the additional knowledge that you gain.
The benefits and the outcomes are pretty astonishing with this simple method. Again, with 15 minutes of review twice a week for any given lecture you change one engagement into five separate engagements with the material. It turns zero minutes of post-lecture review and engagement into over 20 minutes. It turns zero days of post-lecture review into eight days of post-lecture review. This means more engagements. It means a longer duration of engagement. It means increased comprehension and retention and it means that your familiarity becomes deep knowledge.
Now, of course, it's going to take some discipline to do this particular procedure and sometimes students don't do all of it, or sometimes they just do parts of it, but I can guarantee you one thing. Any amount of iterative note review is going to increase your comprehension and retention of material more than none of it will. So, if you can't do all of it, do some of it, and I'll tell you that the benefits will be clear to you immediately.