How to study - Bonus episode

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Rachel: Hi and welcome to this bonus episode of the UTS Student Hacks podcast. In this episode David Taplin shares more of his advice on note-taking and time management. Enjoy the episode! 

David: Hi there. I’m David Taplin, one of the counsellors in the counselling service which is part of the student services unit. My specific role is a learning skills counsellor, and I meet with students in conversations about how to learn effectively and how to be efficient and organised in study.  

Kelly: So our first question would be what is good time management? 

David: Good time management is making sure you have time to get the things done that are important to you within the time frame that is appropriate for getting those things done.  

Kelly: In order to get those things done, what would be your key tips in getting those things done efficiently and effectively? 

David: When we say time management, we really mean ‘self-management’ which is about prioritisation and organisational strategies.  

Rachel: Why do you think it’s a good practice to start managing your time, even though it's still pretty early in the semester? 

David: The reason that I think you would start thinking about time and managing yourself is because what you do at university, it is really hard work for your brain. Thinking takes brain energy and what is referred to in the literature is the cognitive load. And if you are managing yourself and your time well, what happens is, some of the aspects of your organisational and planning tasks become automatized, become automatic and therefore their not requiring intense thinking effort and therefore there's more thinking 'power’ available for the key thinking tasks of university which is learning the contents of the subjects.  

Kelly: So getting into a habit so you don’t need to think about ‘Oh I need to do this today’, more like there's something that I should be doing to make sure I’m more on track with things? 

David: Exactly. We often associate habits with bad habits, but actually good habits are really good. And if you’ve got a plan and structure to your week and your semester that reflects doing things in an organised and regular routine way then there's a lot less effort involved in that process of initiating a task which is often where many students become derailed. Once they finally get started with a task, they can do the task, but there is often a lot of avoidance, procrastination and delay with actually getting started with a task and that’s where some of the time and self-management strategies are really helpful because it allows you to push you into that getting started earlier so that last part of the semester is significantly less stressful.  

Kelly: I know one key task I would assume all students go through is note-taking especially during class or just making notes for finals. When do you think is the most effective time for note-taking?  

David: Yes to all those times. I would think of effective notetaking as a process rather than a venting time. So particularly if you're doing subjects with flipped tasks, your note-taking process would start prior to task in relation to some of the preparation work that academics would be expecting students to do. Then there would be note-taking activities during the learning event, whether that’s a lab, a studio, a lecture style class or whatever, and then as soon as possible afterwards, which is practically isn’t immediately afterwards, but certainly ideally the same day where this is an additional notetaking or note elaboration which is about consolidating your learning and activity around those notes.  

David: So for example, one of the things that I always encourage students to do when their taking notes in a lecture or a tutorial style class is leave large gaps in their notes to represent things like, this was a really important point in the class and I want to come back and elaborate some details of this important issue. Or I found this really hard to follow, or confusing, or challenging so I’ve left a gap to signal that I need to do more work on this particular part of the class material. Or I got distracted or I fell behind and I’m not that clear about what should have been there. And so by leaving some spaces you signal to yourself there should be more there than is currently there and that means that when you do that review process to your notes, you have a focus and a target to what you’re adding to that.  

David: And then the final step of notetaking which no longer the note-taking part, it’s the note-using part, is each week I would be aiming to set aside a small amount of time to review the previous weeks topic. Go back over the notes you’ve taken from the previous week in that subject, do some elaboration, checking and re-engaging with the material before it fades too strongly in your memory.  

Rachel: We know that notetaking is important during classes. But will it actually help them retain information? Or is it just to summarise what the lecturer has been saying? What would you say would be the importance of notetaking? 

David: The importance of notetaking relates to why you’re taking notes. Some people would be taking notes primarily as an aid to try and direct their focus in the learning event. And other people are taking notes almost as a record of the learning event. And what you see some students do is take notes as a record of the learning event and then they never look at them again, or they look at them the night before the exam. That’s not very effective utilisation of the notes. So if you're thinking of notetaking as part of a learning process you would be taking notes as a focus aid while your actually in the learning event and then they become a partial record of that learning event which you can subsequently elaborate and detail to then be a structure to assist you with the review and revision processes particularly for when you have exam-based assessments at the of the semester.  

Rachel: It’s really great that you mentioned the why. Some students just want to write everything that the lecturer has been saying, and there’s research that shows the average lecturer speaks 122/180 words per minute but the typing speed just reaches 33 words. So what would be your advice for new student’s that don’t really know what’s important to write and what to leave out?  

David: If they have done the pre-work in preparation for that learning event, they should have some sense of what would be significant or important. If I was meeting a student and they were saying something, along the lines of, ‘I don’t know how to recognise what’s important’, then I would suggest that they need to do more preparation for that class activity so they’ve for a stronger sense of what’s important, because the answer to the question what’s important becomes what's important to you.  

David: It’s identifying things that are either new learning, things that you want to carry forward or identifying elements of the learning that you’re finding confusing or hard to access that you need to signal to yourself that you need to do more work on. That kind of style of notetaking, which is ‘I’m trying to take some semi verbatim record of the event that I’m going to come back and I’m going to re-read the notes as if I’m reiterating the lecture, as you observe Rachel you can’t keep up with that pace and if you think of it in terms of cognitive thinking processes, if you are to engage with trying to keep a record you're not actually engaging with thinking about the content that you are supposed to be learning.  

Kelly: Any final remarks?  

David: The final remark that I would make would be in relation to UTS in your bedroom which is a common experience of many students last semester and possibly this semester. That to think of the reality that we’re in the same physical space that we have to be in two headspaces. So really thinking of some ways that you can signal to your brain, that even though you’re in the same physical space, you’re now in the headspace to do your university work. So that’s things like, trying to avoid being in bed when you’re trying to study, because beds aren’t for study, they’re for other things. If you are recreating with a screen in the same space that you are studying with a screen, trying at least to make some ways that that feels different. To help your brain develop the habit of ‘Oh now it’s at home UTS study time’ rather than having a sense of that there’ no differentiation between the moments when you’re at home, at home and the moments you’re at home, at university.  

Kelly: You have reached the end of this episode. Now, to recap on how to manage your time effectively.   

Rachel: Step one: plan.   

Kelly: Understand why you are writing notes.   

Rachel: Step three: take care of yourself.   

Kelly: We hope you find these tips helpful.   

Rachel: See you in our next podcast episode, until then.   

Rachel and Kelly: Stay organised.   

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