11 ms·

I will sit there in a meeting (or retrospectively in a university lecture) and regularly derive nothing of value at all from my notes, be they written or typed.

• austincheney 9y ago
  Sounds like ADHD.
  • bebe3000 9y ago
    Or a too hard course. Or a bad lecturer. Or you skipped the previous lecture and it's all gibberish again.
    • cjsuk 9y ago
      Hard course (electrical engineering, laplace fun!), shit lecturer (complacent, dismissive of questions), skipped lecture (never although I probably should have just stuck my face in the course books).
      • cholantesh 9y ago
        Do Laplace Transforms get very difficult? I'm taking a course right now that teaches Differential and Integral Calculus, followed by Differential Equations and Laplace Transforms. Laplace Transforms have, so far, been the least challenging portion of the course.
        • cjsuk 9y ago
          If you get them crammed into one hour then yes. In your own time they are quite easy. I required a bit of tutor support if I'm honest but if you can get over the basic calculus hill you will be fine. There's a lot more material out there to support you than there was in the mid-1990s! No having to fight for the last copy of referenced text in the university library either. I have literally never used anything I learned on that part of the course however.
          • cholantesh 9y ago
            I found integration to be nothing short of brutal, personally. Laplace has been taught over 3 weeks and has been fairly pleasant - pure algebra. I'm doing this course as part of the requirements for a degree in Eng. Technology, focusing on Software. It's common to all streams, but none of the subsequent courses Software students have to take will use this material. Damned if it isn't fun though.
• hashkb 9y ago
  Note taking exists to combat what you're talking about. You can improve your note taking, and how you use your notes, on paper or on a device.
  • Joe-Z 9y ago
    Also I'd say you _can_ pause a lecture. Simply lift up your hand and ask a question: That's the great thing about person-to-person teaching. Painting all lectures and meetings as 'broken' because one would prefer to have video for everything (that's how I understood it) is pretty hyperbolic.
    • cjsuk 9y ago
      I don't want a video. I want the material written down in a formal tutorial style that can be reviewed and updated and consumed at a suitable pace. That pace can be faster for the bits I understand and slower for the bits I don't.
      • mseebach 9y ago
        That's basically a textbook, and lectures are supposed to augment the book, not replace it. From personal experience, and anecdotal supporting evidence, lectures are the hardest when you haven't actually prepared for them (at the other end of the scale are the lectures you did prepare for, but enough others did, and the lecturer decides to indulge them by re-stating what's already covered in the book instead of, well, lecturing).
        • cjsuk 9y ago
          Yes and no. The textbooks we were given were reference structured. Ergo the path through them was defined by the lectures and the course which was mostly undocumented. There needs to be a course guide that spans the entire material with independent guidance. A good modern example of this is The Art of Electronics which is a textbook format. There is a companion book which is Learning the Art of Electronics which contains exactly the structure I want to see, which is your lectures, tutorials and labs in a structured format on paper. You can complete these with guidance, without guidance, with or without lectures and tutorials. The lectures should be more interactive and be a result of the above. Build your knowledge on more than one pillar and some structure so to speak. Some of the course ecosystems you see are very closed with respect to structure and you are carried through without being permitted to see the path.
• lvoudour 9y ago
  Agree 100%. I went to college before tablets and affordable laptops became ubiquitous, but the same problem applied to handwritten notes. After a few tries to keep notes and re-read them at my leisure I gave up, it was exhausting to take them and in the end I was missing too much. The best solution is audio/video recording. I think every lecturer can record their lectures and publish them online later in the college's database or wherever. Cheap, easy and you don't have to worry about taking notes and missing anything
  • afarrell 9y ago
    > publish them online later Note that you also need to have someone add captions to them for accessibility.
    • lvoudour 9y ago
      Most professors are experts at delegating the menial tasks to others :)
      • cjsuk 9y ago
        They are however terrible at remembering to delegate them from experience!
      • afarrell 9y ago
        Sure, but that requires a budget
  • cjsuk 9y ago
    To clarify, I too was before the time of laptops and recording technology being available. MiniDiscs had just come on the scene then and the notes are worth nothing without what appears on the OHP and the contextual timing of them. Video recording was impossible. Really every lecture should be recorded and links handed out to students. A big killer is that the lecturer has been doing the same lecture for 20 odd years and is complacent or prefers to defer feedback to the end. Everyone is lost then. Same with meetings. Questions at the end? Context gone!
• dmartinez 9y ago
  I wonder if the answer to meetings is making participation more meaningful? In some MBA programs, the purpose of the class is the discussion of some case that everyone has read. In this way, you get more out of participation by listening to other people’s thoughts and combining them with yours. There is also a strong case to be made for the “radical transparency” that has made Bridgewater so successful [0]. This system has the capacity to accelerate learning if it were implemented more widely. [0] https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_dalio_how_to_build_a_company_where_the_best_ideas_win#t-546470 https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_dalio_how_to_build_a_company_w...
• chrisper 9y ago
  When I was in college I preferred laptops for this reason. I can type way faster than I can write by hand. So it was way easier to keep up and write everything down. I read my notes on some other day to learn, but during the lecture it was all about writing down enough to be able to recall the lecture from my notes on some later day.
• ptero 9y ago
  People learn in different ways and my experience is completely different: note taking, on paper, was critical for me to learn. Whether it is a differential geometry lecture (in college) or a test planning meeting having written notes is very important for me -- it allows me to think through the topics again at leisure. The most important thing for me is to keep note taking at the "high secondary" importance level: not preempt thinking or participation in real time but high enough to ensure writing at least a couple of words or a quick diagram for each main topic. Break either and note taking starts to be a problem and not a help. Just my 2c, YMMV.
  • dkarl 9y ago
    In school, I never got anything out of looking at my notes, but I had much better retention when I took notes. Now I take a lot of notes and actually use them, because I take down tons of information that isn't very interesting and can't be learned by connecting it to a conceptual framework but which I will definitely need later.
    • coding123 9y ago
      Same here, I would write down everything I heard and everything I understood, and I would draw arrows connecting concepts. A given lecture would probably fill up like 5 pages back and front in a notebook. I rarely actually read the notes - everything got retained simply by writing them in the first place.
  • ChuckMcM 9y ago
    People learn in different ways is the answer. Different people have different ways of cementing understanding in their heads. My ideal form is to record the meeting, and then later review it and write notes.
    • Griffinsauce 9y ago
      Ideal for learning yes but very time consuming. Do you feel it's worth it in that way?
• Dave_TRS 9y ago
  Completely agree. One time I faced a laptop ban and purchased a tiny tripod to take steady pictures in dim light of what the professor was writing on the board. For many of us it's mentally taxing to write with pen and paper what the professor is saying, banning technology is not the best way to get students to learn.
• kurthr 9y ago
  As far as I understand meetings (and lectures) are to derive consensus. Slides are regularly available before meetings while reading is normally required before lectures. Lecture presentation is not the time for the details of complex unfamiliar derivations, but for familiar motivation of larger goals and big questions. If you feel the need to take notes of every point rather than summarising the most salient/important concepts, or recording your questions/disagreements, someone is doing it wrong. At a lecture communication should be about conclusions, possibly single critical details, but not the entire texture and flow of every detail. If the material is so unfamiliar and surprising that you don't understand and can't ask relevant questions, I would say it's a failure of the speaker or yourself. Certainly, after a convincing talk, question, and answer, you should feel like you understand both the material and the motivation/goal better even without notes.
• bpyne 9y ago
  I'm of the same opinion. I realized in college that I can write or think about the material being presented, but I can't do them simultaneously. So, I stopped taking notes and relied much more on memory and text books. I'm still that way in the work world. My major was math. It would have been significantly better for my learning if we spent class time solving problems rather than watching the professor write out a proof, which was often enough already in the text. Active learning is really critical for me.
  • shortoncash 9y ago
    We are similar and I studied math as well. I solved this problem by just buying a friend coffee regularly in exchange for notes. She used to take fantastic notes and they were probably the reason I even excelled in a lot of classes. However, there was no substitute for being deeply engrossed in whatever the lecturer was saying. My only regret is not having figured this out sooner.
  • sand500 9y ago
    Same for me. I could take notes but then I would just be blindly copying what was on the board.
• amorphid 9y ago
  That's why lectures suck for me. I can't "listen fast enough", and I lost track of the lecture when I try to take notes. This is where something like Khan Academy is way awesome-r for my style of learning.
  • deleted 9y ago
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  • ska 9y ago
    Lectures as part of course are designed to be attended after reviewing the material at least once on your own. That way you know what to look out for, and your notes will be a concise revision. Its astonishing how many students resist this fact, even when it is clearly spelled out for them. Trying to write down everything the lecturer says is at best inefficient, and at worst a complete waste of time when you lose the thread.
    • distances 9y ago
      Interesting, I have never heard of this, and definitely none of my professors instructed me to familiarize with the material before a lecture. So I never did. I suppose this could've been a useful technique.
      • ska 9y ago
        When I was teaching undergrads I always told them that a good minimum target was 3 hours of work for every 1 hour of lecture. Roughly one of those hours was to be spent on the lecture material beforehand. Think about it this way. If all you are doing is rushing to copy down what the lecturer says, you don't really hear it or have a chance to think about it. So you have to review anyway - if you spend that same time beforehand, you are ready with questions and already know what parts you are unsure of. With a short revision of your notes following also, you're in great shape.
        • anotheryou 9y ago
          How much lecture is there than? Here in germany 3 Seminars a day with 2h each are often the norm. That would mean 18h of prep and 6h of seminars a day.
• timthelion 9y ago
  I agree. While not a direct replacement for lectures, I've been prototyping an audio media which does not have these same disadvantages, called push to talk. You can find the prototype here: http://thobbs.cz/push-to-talk/index.html http://thobbs.cz/push-to-talk/index.html Click on the first track, and then use the arrow keys to move through the essay. Note that you can rewind, review, pause to think, just like with text. But it is speech.
  • mtpn 9y ago
    This seems awesome. I can’t get it to play from my phone but the concept is really really useful. I used to want to make something like this for audio-based exams for people with dyslexia, for example. In Ireland people with reading difficulties have a person sit with them and read the questions in a whole other room. It’s expensive compared to just having a group with headphones working through on computers.
    • timthelion 9y ago
      I just tested it and it works with icecat mobile but not Androids default browser. Which browser are you using? Also, I haven't optimized for mobile with regards to "arrow keys" not being a thing on the cell phone. I'll probably have to add arrow buttons that are visible only on the cell phone or something. Perhaps a swipe...
      • mtpn 9y ago
        I’m on chrome on iOS
• AlexCoventry 9y ago
  The ability to stick your hand up and ask a question is orders of magnitude more valuable than a rewind button.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• rockostrich 9y ago
  I don't think your points apply to lectures like they do to meetings, at least for me. Meetings are more collaborative and most of my recall during a meeting is due to participation. If I'm not participating at all then I will most likely forget everything that happened during the meeting. Lectures are different because I tend to use my notes as a way of interacting with the lecture (and usually you can't really interact much in a lecture unless it's a small class). Maybe it was my way of taking notes, but marking up lecture slides or essentially copying proofs/problems during an engineering or math lecture during my undergrad was most of my learning besides doing problem sets. Problem sets were very important, but they were only there to reinforce what I learned while taking my notes during the lecture. I ended up recalling much less whenever I didn't take notes and just tried to listen and participate as much as I could in the lecture.
• r00fus 9y ago
  > You can't rewind a meeting or a lecture. You can't pause to think. You can't review the text in the middle. I disagree about meetings. I often ask to repeat a pivotal discourse in a multi-party meeting simply to emphasize it's being understood by all participants. Also notes help to structure the meeting so you don't take 1hr to discuss 30m of content. I prefer to share my notes on screen (either as email minutes I'm taking or preferably something collaborative like Google Sheets). Notes, well used, can keep everyone on the same page. If the agenda is prepared in advance, it can turn a 1hr ramble-fest that achieves nothing into a concise 10m confirmation session.
  • gowld 9y ago
    Why are you wasting so much meeting time on non-pivotal discourse?
    • r00fus 9y ago
      Where are you finding meetings so regularly effective that they don't need management/facilitation? I'd love to work there. My setting is sales/consulting with customers including multiple parties.
• npsimons 9y ago
  > Lectures and meetings are broken, not the notes. For as long I can remember, I have had trouble staying awake in lectures, meetings and watching videos. It has nothing to do with the content, nothing to do with how 'engaging' it is. It has everything to do with passively sitting and attempting to consume data. Having a way to take notes and edit them in real-time increases my retention enormously. It's also incredibly useful to me as I can org-capture a TODO item to look up references (from which I learn very well) later. If I could have afforded access to a laptop in college and org-mode existed back then, I can't imagine how much more I would have retained, not to mention having greppable notes, as opposed to my paper notes that have vanished over the years. ETA: Lectures/meetings seem really inefficient and ineffective to me. It's a data stream you can't rewind, and if you wait for everyone to "get it", you'll never make any progress, and you can't pack enough information in to justify everyone being in the same place at the same time. Just record a video and make it really good (ala TED) or release your very well refined overview paper/slides with copious references.
• Spooky23 9y ago
  Try changing how you take notes. I felt the same way until I discovered mind mapping. Writing and linking concepts is almost like putting chapter markers in a video or flags on a page. It helps you recall what was said in what context.
• jimbokun 9y ago
  You are not describing a meeting. Meetings should only invite people who will actively participate and provide their input. Anyone not meeting that description should not be invited. You are describing a lecture, or perhaps a presentation, or series of presentations. Which classically have all the problems you cite of losing the thread and not being able to catch up again. In meetings where you actively participate, give input, and ask questions, that shouldn't be a problem.
  • mjevans 9y ago
    I hate the term "meeting" as that's merely a super-class of event. Technically a lecture is a meeting, a movie screening is a meeting, a concert is a meeting. I find things are more productive when there's an actual expectation about what people do when gathered. * brainstorming * problem identification (a type of brain storming) * solution identification (a type of brain storming) * Question and Answer* (I tend to not find these very productive) * Presentation (possibly of answers to submitted questions)
    • Griffinsauce 9y ago
      Your point needs to be applied to your first option. Brainstorming is a method, meetings should not be defined by their method but by their goal (and preferably with a known method to reach that goal).
  • Pyxl101 9y ago
    What's wrong with inviting people who wish to observe the input provided by others, and subsequent discussion?
    • emodendroket 9y ago
      The problem is more having people who don't really want to be there and won't pay attention, or having too many people sidetracking the discussion or making it difficult to reach consensus.
    • jimbokun 9y ago
• emodendroket 9y ago
  The value of taking notes is in my opinion less about going back to them (often I'll never look at them) and often more about the help in recall having to summarize the information is. Similarly, people remember books better if they go through highlighting stuff.
• greggman 9y ago
  I agree lectures are a waste of time. I'm imagining conferences when I think of this. While I enjoy seeing a good presentation live I've mostly realized I can just watch the recording later. Of course I want to meet others between presentations/lectures but the lectures themselves can be more easily consumed on youtube at 2x speed and more easily skipped if the first 5-10mins make it relatively clear it's unlikely to be a good lecture/presentation. A meeting on the other hand, actually discussing things, at least in my situations the notebook is required as reference for things in the discussions. If it's really just a lecture held in a meeting room (no discussion) then it seems like a waste of time. The original article seems to be about lectures at school. Wasn't Khan Academy kind of founded on the principle that lectures are bad schooling? IIRC the suggestion was that lecture material should be something watched at home and classroom time should be for getting help with the material.
• mk89 9y ago
  That's what private lessons are for. If you really want something similar, record your lessons (with a phone or whatever) and listen to them as you wish - maybe transcribe them. It's tedious but worth it.