Bright High Schoolers who lack this Key Skill can end up losing their Scholarships!!

Dateline: CLEMSON,SC ... Newspaper Article

Many students who didn't need to take notes to do well in high school set themselves up for a financially fatal folly by not taking notes in college classes.

Some of the smartest college freshmen don't even know how, said Linda Nilson, director of Clemson University's Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation.

"I never had to before, why should I now," is the mantra Nilson often hears.

Her response: A 45-percentage point difference on test scores between the best and worst note takers is the difference between an "A" and a failing grade.

For South Carolina students, that can be the difference between keeping and losing a LIFE scholarship worth $20,000 over a four-year college career.

"They think taking notes means taking down dictation, and its not," Nilson said.

Only about 33 percent of students take "decent" notes, according to one study Nilson cites. Another study finds that average note takers record about 40 percent of the important ideas presented.

“Making notes involves selecting what's most important and putting it in one's own words," Nilson said. "That forces the students to think about the meaning of what they just heard."

Note taking is an essential skill at the college level, said Rene Sawyer, counselor for Technical Business and lead instructor of College Skills classes at Greenville Technical College.

Because the demands of college are different from high school, many high school students who did take notes will need to change they way they take notes, and older, nontraditional students returning to school should brush up on their note taking skills, Sawyer said.

Note taking is like math "if you don"t use it, you need the review, Sawyer said.

Students need to adapt their note taking style to their individual learning style, and may need to take notes differently in different classes because different professors teach different ways, Sawyer said.

"There"s not one clear cut method of note taking that everybody should follow. Individual preference, learning style and the class all play in," Sawyer said.

Accuracy is an issue as well. One of the studies Nilson cites finds the most frequent inaccuracies in students' notes happen when they copy diagrams, equations, numbers and information from slides and transparencies.

Most institutions offer some instruction or guidance to help students learn to take better notes, and there are other resources online, Nilson said.

"These are skills that children should learn in elementary school, but they're not," Nilson said.

Article by Anna Simon
CLEMSON BUREAU
Published: Monday, August 27, 2007 - Greenville News - Greenville, South Carolina

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