Monday Morning Mentor: How Can Effective Note-Taking Improve Online Student Learning

Available April 13 - April 19, 2026
Note: Contact the Teaching and Learning Center to view this week's session; send email to [email protected].

Note-taking is an essential skill for any student, but effective note-taking in an online learning environment is a crucial foundational skill that many students are never taught. Teachers generally have their own approach to note-taking and may assume that students already know how to take notes effectively, but research suggests that many students do not feel confident in their note-taking ability, particularly in the context of online learning.

This 20-Minute Mentor provides guidance on how to help students take notes more effectively online. You'll also explore several steps that you, the teacher, can take to improve the quality of student note-taking in an online course setting.

Learning Goals

After viewing this Magna 20-Minute Mentor, participants will be able to:

• Play a guiding role in helping students take notes more effectively in an online learning environment
• Understand how and why shared class notes can be helpful for online learning
• Recognize why notes shouldn't be used simply for rereading, but as a launch point for retrieval practice
• Help students improve at each of the four phases of note-taking in an online learning environment

Topics Covered

• The importance of note-taking online, including why it's worth devoting valuable class time to help students with note taking and how taking notes online and taking notes in a physical classroom are different
• How to sum up note-taking for students with the 3S framework: Notes should be simple, smart, and sustainable
• How the teacher can provide verbal and visual digital clues to aid digital note taking with signposts and signals
• The four phases of note-taking: prepping, creating, revising and organizing
• How to empower students to refine the system they use for taking and storing digital notes