How to Make Study Notes - Outline Notes

There are lots of effective ways to make study notes but the most important thing to remember is that most of your learning comes from making the notes rather than reading over them afterwards (or being given them by a grind school). Actively figuring out what the important concepts are and how they are connected is what its all about. Some popular and effective types of notes are:
  1. Outline notes
  2. Mind maps
  3. Flashcards
This workshop focuses on Outline Notes. Students make notes on a given topic and then we compare and contrast the notes made in the class to identify things that work well. 

What are Outline Notes?

These notes are essentially a list of the key concepts and things to know for each one. In this example colour coding is used to help make things clearer.

Things that work well

If you are wondering how to improve your notes, consider the following things:
  1. Order - organising the information in your mind is learning
  2. Titles - you'll have lots of notes, make sure you can find them
  3. Summarise - figuring out exactly what's important is learning
  4. Neatness- easier to read over but slowing down a little when making your notes gives your brain more time to process the ideas
  5. Examples - our brains love examples, that's why there are examples of all of this below
  6. Diagrams - many concepts are much easier to picture than to explain in words

Examples from our own students

Click on each image to see a gallery of outline notes produced by students in St Colmcille's CS.

​Not all are perfect but all are better than sitting back and reading the book. The interesting question is which examples are better and why?
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3rd Year Technical Graphics
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6th Year Design & Communication Graphics