Evidence-Based Note-Taking Strategies That Help Students Retain More

Students are often told to take 'good notes,' but research on learning and memory points to specific, testable habits rather than a single trick. Two threads of evidence are central: a large review of study techniques published by the Association for Psychological Science, and newer work on how notes should be reviewed after they are written.

What the research review of study techniques found

In 2013, cognitive psychologists John Dunlosky, Katherine Rawson, Elizabeth Marsh, Mitchell Nathan and Daniel Willingham published a review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest evaluating ten common learning techniques, according to the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the journal's publisher. The review rated each technique's 'utility' based on how consistently it improved learning across ages, subjects and testing conditions.

• Practice testing (quizzing yourself) was rated high utility, with benefits documented across different ages, ability levels and subject areas, per the APS summary.
• Distributed practice — spacing study sessions out over time instead of cramming — was also rated high utility for the same reasons.
• Underlining/highlighting, rereading material, and mnemonic devices were rated low utility; the authors found they were hard to apply consistently and produced uneven gains, per the APS summary.

The review did not test note-taking as a single method. Its relevance to note-taking is indirect: once notes exist, the techniques used to review them — quizzing versus rereading, spaced sessions versus one long session — are what the evidence favors or disfavors.

Step-by-step: the Cornell method

One structured format frequently recommended by university learning centers is the Cornell Note-Taking System, created by Cornell education professor Walter Pauk in the 1950s and popularized in his book 'How to Study in College,' according to Cornell University's alumni magazine. The system splits a page into three parts used in sequence.

1. Divide the page: a wide column on the right for notes, a narrower column on the left for cues, and a horizontal strip at the bottom for a summary.
2. During class or reading, write notes — in your own words, abbreviated — only in the wide right-hand column.
3. Soon afterward, while the material is still fresh, write questions or key-word cues in the left column based on what you captured on the right.
4. Cover the right column and try to answer your own cue questions from memory, then check against the notes.
5. Write a short summary of the page's content in the bottom strip, in your own words.

Cornell's alumni magazine notes that the method's durability comes from forcing students to capture, question and synthesize material at separate stages rather than copying it down once and moving on.

Retrieval practice: reviewing notes by recalling, not rereading

RetrievalPractice.org, a research-to-practice project run by cognitive scientist Pooja Agarwal, describes retrieval practice as deliberately bringing information to mind from memory rather than looking it up again. The site states that a large body of cognitive-science research — more than a century of findings — supports recall as a stronger driver of learning than simply re-exposing oneself to material.

The same organization describes a variant called 'retrieve-taking': instead of writing notes with a book or slides open, students first read or listen without writing, then close the material and write down everything they remember, and only afterward reopen the source to check accuracy and fill gaps. According to the site, this reorders traditional note-taking so that recall happens at the moment notes are created, not only afterward.

Handwriting versus typing: a disputed finding

A widely cited 2014 study by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, published in Psychological Science, found that students who took longhand notes performed better on conceptual questions than those who typed, reportedly because handwriting is slower and forces more selective, paraphrased notes rather than verbatim transcription. That finding was used for years to justify laptop bans in classrooms.

A 2019 direct replication by Morehead, Dunlosky and Rawson produced different results, according to a summary published by the Learning Scientists. In the replication, handwritten notes showed an advantage only on factual — not conceptual — questions immediately after study; two days later, there was no meaningful difference between handwriting and typing; and when students were allowed to review their notes before a test, the gap between methods largely disappeared. The replication also confirmed typists wrote more words and more verbatim text than handwriters, but this did not clearly hurt their results.

The Learning Scientists' conclusion is that the content and later use of notes — whether students engage in retrieval and spaced review — matters more than the physical act of writing versus typing.

Comparing the techniques

Putting it together

1. Take notes in your own words rather than copying verbatim, regardless of whether you write or type.
2. Build in a review step soon after class, such as the Cornell method's cue-column and summary stage.
3. Replace rereading with self-quizzing: cover your notes and try to recall the material before checking it.
4. Space review sessions across several days rather than reviewing once right before a test.
5. If using retrieve-taking, attempt to recall material from memory first, then reopen the source only to check and correct.