Guiding students on note-taking from a Universal Design perspective
Strategies for organizing collaborative note-taking in the classroom.
In the fall of 2023, over 250 students at TCNJ had accommodation plans that included a need for a note-taker. The Accessibility Resource Center coordinates hiring all of those peer note-takers—a large responsibility and one that relies on many different hands to create and distribute the necessary notes that help our students.
As a faculty member, what can you do to support this process and ensure that the taking of notes happens in a fair, equitable, and efficient way? Accommodations Support Specialist Mel Katz created the following resource to help faculty build the bridge to more effective note-taking with a practice that emphasizes collaborative, guided, and annotated note-taking strategies you can begin using right away to promote knowledge-sharing and community-building:
A PDF guide to collaborative note-taking. This guide contains a shareable digital file to share with student note-takers to set them up for success.
Rather watch a video on this topic? Check out Mel’s video overview on collaborative note-taking:
Let us know in the comments how you use note-taking in your classroom.