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You don’t need to take notes – the slides will be available……

One of the things that I notice when I observe lectures is that either very few students make any notes, or students have laptops and make occasional notes while watching the powerpoint on their screen.  There are a number of issues here:

Is note taking a necessary academic/professional skill - I often notice that when I give the observation feedback the lecturer general makes notes - we do make notes, and our students don't - is this a problem.

When the laptop option becomes predominant there are other problems - in giving feedback to a lecturer I often comment on their eye contact with the students - if there aren't any students looking at the lecturer - that becomes problematic.

At a deeper level there is a question about the value of handwritten note-taking, I use my tablet a lot so I am not sure about this - but two recent articles about the importance of handwritten notes - http://chronicle.com/article/The-Benefits-of-No-Tech-Note/228089/  and

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/does-losing-handwriting-in-school-mean-losing-other-skills-too/

Useful literature review from Sandra Sinfield - http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/TLTC/learnhigher/Resources/resources/Notemaking/Staff/Note-takingliteraturereview%20FINISHEDv2.pdf

Useful Infographichttp://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/the-ultimate-guide-note-taking-infographic.html?ref=fbp&n=1

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