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How to use Cornell Notes in the 21st Century
Using digital note-taking tools with Cornell Notes
While some students take notes in high school (I did), it’s required of college students.
I had a college friend who every night would go through her handwritten daily class notes while they were still fresh in her mind and rewrite them.
But how do you remember the handwritten notes they have taken other than highlighting or underlining their notes?
Enter the Cornell Notes-taking system. Developed in the 1950s by education professor Walter Paul of Cornell University, he published his system in his book How to Take Notes In College. It was a best seller.
What Are Cornell Notes?
The concept is straightforward: there are three fields on a note page:
The largest column is on the right side of the page and is for your freeform Note
The narrower column on the left side is for memory cues or reminders of the note on the right. This is where a relevant question or a keyword would be recorded for quick review later.
At the bottom of the page is a narrow row for a concise summary of the note. Think of this as the irreducible minimum of the idea(s) in the note.
One can buy notebooks that are pre-printed in the Cornell Notes format.
Digitizing Cornell Notes
This system of condensing and organizing notes on paper lends itself beautifully to modern computer note-taking systems. In the following example, I’ll show you how I use it for a class I’m teaching on American religious history.
Obsidian, like other note-taking programs, offers several organizing tools.
- Cues are like tags. They can act as reminders and connections to similar ideas that use the same tags. Indeed, you can add tags. You can also use them for questions to further your study.
- Summaries are like Atomic Notes. They usually contain a single idea you can link to other connected ideas.
I recommend you check out @TfThacker’s Cornell Notes Learning Vault for Obsidian. You can find it here: https://tfthacker.com/cornell-notes
