The Note-Taking Fix They Don't Teach in Most Academic Coach Training Programs

What do you do when a student shows up to a coaching session with notes that are too incomplete to actually study from?

This is one of those academic coaching problems that seems simple until you're sitting there looking at half-finished sentences, mysterious abbreviations, and an arrow pointing to absolutely nothing.

Do you work with what they've got? Teach a better note-taking strategy for next time? Go back to the textbook or slides and reconstruct what's missing?

Last week, I listened as a group of college coaches in our Certified Coaches Hangout bemoaned how hard it can be to teach students to take effective notes. And it reminded me of a question a coach in our certification cohort — we'll call her Amy — asked this past summer.

She'd just worked through our Powerful Note-Taking module, where we teach students to first Get It Down — capture the information — and then Hone It — turn those raw notes into something useful for studying.

And she ran straight into a problem:

Have you ever had a session where the student's notes were super confusing and incomplete, and you had to go back to the text or slides and help them make better Get It Down Notes before you could even get to Hone It Notes or any of the other Anti-Boring strategies?

My answer at the time:

Amy, so many kids don't take great Get It Down Notes; only the perfectionists do!! So yes — sometimes you need to look for supports like PowerPoint slides, textbooks, objectives from the syllabus, etc. to recreate things for students. But I'm putting this on my list to blog about because it's such a good question.

Turns out there's real research behind that answer. And the blog post you're reading is the one I promised Amy! I learned some cool stuff digging into it, and I hope you do, too.

Incomplete notes are the norm, not the exception

Here's what's reassuring: incomplete notes are extremely common. Research on note-taking has found that students typically capture only a fraction of the important information presented in a lecture — often around a third (Kiewra, 1989).

And once something important doesn't make it onto the page, students aren't particularly likely to remember it later. Research suggests that information students don't record in their notes is much less likely to be recalled later (Einstein, Morris, & Smith, 1985). In other words: if it's not on the page, there's a pretty good chance it's gone.

Now, you'll notice that some of the research I'm citing here is pretty old. That's worth saying out loud. There's plenty of newer research on note-taking (more on that later!), but these older studies are still cited in the more recent literature. I'm not going to treat one decades-old study as the final word. What interests me is that it fits with a bigger pattern in the research: students' notes are often incomplete, and information they don't write down can be really hard to remember later.

And there's a reason for that.

Taking notes is HARD on working memory. Students have to listen, understand what they're hearing, figure out what's important, and somehow write it down at the same time (Piolat, Olive, & Kellogg, 2005).

That's a lot for any brain to juggle, let alone one that's already struggling with executive function.

So incomplete notes aren't necessarily a motivation problem. Sometimes the problem is simply that note-taking asks the brain to do a LOT of things at once.

Which means that when you open a student's notebook and find fragments, half-finished sentences, and an arrow pointing to nothing, you may not be looking at a student who needs to "try harder" at taking notes.

You may be looking at a student who needs a strategy for what to do with those incomplete notes afterward.

Note-taking doesn't end when class ends

Here's the part that made me ridiculously happy when I found it in the research.

In the Lab, we've long taught note-taking as a two-part process: first Get It Down — capture the information — and then Hone It — go back and turn those raw notes into something useful.

It turns out researchers have studied something remarkably similar.

Luo, Kiewra, and Samuelson call it revision: going back to your notes after you've first taken them, but before you start using them to study (Luo, Kiewra, & Samuelson, 2016).

Revision means adding what you missed, fixing what's unclear, and filling in gaps. In the study, students who revised their notes — instead of simply recopying them — added more information and did somewhat better on questions that asked them to understand how ideas were related.

The researchers also found that timing mattered. Revising during pauses worked better than waiting until the whole lecture was over. Revising with a partner helped a little, too, especially with how much information students got into their notes.

Sound familiar?

This isn't exactly the same thing as our Hone It process, and we didn't build our process around this study — we'd been teaching Hone It Notes long before I found it. But I was pretty delighted to discover that researchers who study note-taking had landed on something so similar to what I'd already been teaching.

(We're aware that's a satisfying thing to notice, and we're staying honestly a little suspicious of how satisfying it is — one study is one study, not proof.)

In fact, I got curious enough about what else the research has to say about note-taking that we're making it the topic of our October Masterclass inside the Lab. There's a LOT more research on note-taking — including much more recent research — than I could possibly get into here. So we'll be digging into more of it there, and looking at what it means for how we actually teach students to take and use notes.

Going back to the source is the strategy, not a workaround

Which brings us back to Amy's question.

What if the student's notes are so incomplete that there isn't enough there to revise?

Go back to the source.

Sometimes you can do that right there in the coaching session. And sometimes the coaching is helping the student figure out where else they can get the information that's missing.

Depending on the class, that might mean:

• Pulling up the professor's slides or other materials on the course website

• Going back to the textbook or assigned readings

• Checking a study guide, syllabus, or learning objectives

• Rewatching part of a recorded lecture, if one exists

• Comparing notes with a classmate

• Bringing specific questions to the professor's or TA's office hours

• Working with a study group

• Using a tutoring or academic support center

• Looking into note-taking supports available through the student's accommodations

The point isn't that you, the coach, have to reconstruct the notes for them. You can help the student build a plan for how they can get the information they need.

And that may actually be the more important skill: recognizing, "My notes aren't complete enough for me to learn from yet," and knowing what to do next.

That's not cheating. And it's not giving up on teaching the student to take better notes.

It's part of learning how to use notes in the real world.

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Sidebar: what about guided notes?

There's one more thing I found in the research that I think is worth knowing about: guided notes.

These are partially completed notes that a teacher gives students to fill in during class. And research suggests they can help students take more complete notes and do better academically. A review of multiple studies found guided notes to be especially helpful for school-age students (Konrad, Joseph, & Eveleigh, 2009).

Guided notes have also been studied with students with disabilities and other students who benefit from more structure.

Of course, as coaches, we can't make a teacher provide guided notes. But I like knowing they're an option. And if a parent or teacher is genuinely asking what might help, they're something we can put on the table.

What this looks like in a session

So what might this actually look like with a student?

Maybe the first fifteen minutes of the session are spent pulling up the slide deck together. You're asking, "Wait, what do you think this abbreviation meant?" You're figuring out what that mysterious arrow was pointing to. You're filling in enough of the missing pieces that the student now has notes they can actually work with.

And then you can Hone It.

FAQ: Helping Students Take Better Notes

Phew! You already read a whole article, and now we’re giving you an FAQ?! What gives?! You’ve already read all the new content in this post—we promise. But Q&As make it easier for skimmers to find what they need and for AI to understand and share our work. So this section is for the humans and the robots.

Why do students take incomplete notes?

Taking notes asks the brain to do a lot at once. A student has to listen, understand what's being said, decide what's important, and write it down — all while the lecture keeps moving. That puts a lot of pressure on working memory, so incomplete notes are extremely common. It's one reason we don't treat messy notes as evidence that a student isn't trying hard enough.

What should I do when a student's notes are too incomplete to study from?

Go back to the source material with them. Pull up the slides, textbook, syllabus objectives, or whatever else is available and help the student fill in enough missing information that the notes become useful.

In the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, this fits into what we call Get It Down → Hone It. Get It Down is the initial job of capturing information. Hone It is what happens afterward, when the student goes back and turns those raw notes into something they can actually use. Sometimes you can't Hone It until you've gone back and filled in what never got down in the first place.

Where can a student find missing information if their notes are incomplete?

Start with whatever course materials are already available: slides, textbook readings, study guides, learning objectives, the course website, or recorded lectures. But don't stop there. Students can compare notes with classmates, go to professor or TA office hours, work with a study group, use a tutoring or academic support center, or explore note-taking supports available through their accommodations.

In academic coaching, I wouldn't just help the student find the missing information this time. I'd use it as an opportunity to help them build a plan for what to do the next time they realize, "Uh-oh. These notes aren't actually enough to study from." That's the kind of resourcefulness we're trying to build.

Should students revise their notes after class?

Yes — and this is one place where I was delighted to discover that the research lines up nicely with something we've been teaching in the Anti-Boring Toolkit for years.

Researchers call it revision: going back to notes to add missing information, clarify confusing parts, and fill in gaps before studying. In the Lab, that overlaps quite a bit with what we call Hone It Notes. One study found that students who revised their notes added more information and did somewhat better on questions about relationships among ideas (Luo, Kiewra, & Samuelson, 2016).

What's the difference between revising notes and studying notes?

Revision is about making the notes more complete and usable. Studying is what you do with those notes afterward to learn and remember the material.

That's an important distinction in academic coaching. Sometimes we think we're teaching a student how to study, when the actual problem is one step earlier: they don't yet have good enough information to study from.

Can a student just try to remember information they forgot to write down?

Sure — ask what they remember first. But don't spend forever trying to drag missing information out of their brain. Research suggests that important information students didn't write down can be surprisingly hard to remember later (Einstein, Morris, & Smith, 1985). If the information is available somewhere else, go find it.

How can an academic coach help a student improve their note-taking?

Don't just teach a note-taking format and send the student off to try harder next time. Look at their actual notes together. What did they manage to capture? What's missing? What's confusing? Can they tell what's important? And what happens when they try to study from those notes later?

That's how we approach note-taking in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab. Rather than teaching one "correct" note-taking system, we give coaches a toolkit of strategies they can teach students for both getting information down and honing it afterward. The goal isn't prettier notes; it's notes the student can actually use to learn.

Are guided notes helpful for students who struggle with note-taking?

They can be. Guided notes are partially completed notes provided by a teacher that students fill in during class. Research has found that they can improve note-taking and academic performance, particularly for school-age students (Konrad, Joseph, & Eveleigh, 2009).

Academic coaches usually don't control whether a teacher provides guided notes, of course. But knowing they exist gives us one more possible support to discuss with a student, parent, or teacher.

Are incomplete notes a sign that a student isn't paying attention?

Not necessarily. Note-taking itself asks the brain to do a lot at once. A student can be paying attention and still miss important information because they're trying to listen, understand, decide what matters, and write at the same time (Piolat, Olive, & Kellogg, 2005).

This matters in coaching because it changes the question from "Why didn't you take better notes?" to something much more useful: "What made this hard, and what could we try next time?"

What's the best note-taking method for students with ADHD or executive function challenges?

I don't think there is one "best" note-taking format for every student. Cornell Notes, sketchnoting, mind maps, outlines, annotations, and other approaches can all be useful depending on the student, the class, and what they're trying to learn.

That's why the Anti-Boring approach is less about finding the perfect note-taking method and more about building a toolkit. Students need ways to Get It Down while information is coming at them, and ways to Hone It afterward so those notes become useful for learning and studying.

In Closing

Amy ended her reflection by saying she hoped to do a deeper dive into sketchnoting and mind mapping down the line. I loved that — it's the same curiosity that led to her original question.

The strategies we teach aren't separate boxes to check. They bump into each other. Sometimes you start trying to teach one thing and discover that you actually need to back up and work on something else first.

Which is, honestly, a pretty good description of academic coaching.

Your turn

Have you had your own "wait, are the notes just too messy to work with?" moment in a session? I'd love to hear how you handled it — drop it in the comments or bring it to our next All About Students call.

If you want more of this kind of thing — practical strategies grounded in what a real coaching session looks like — our free resource library has more where this came from.

Works Cited

Einstein, G. O., Morris, J., & Smith, S. (1985). Note-taking, individual differences, and memory for lecture information. Journal of Educational Psychology, 77(5), 522–532. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.77.5.522

Kiewra, K. A. (1989). A review of note-taking: The encoding-storage paradigm and beyond. Educational Psychology Review, 1, 147–172. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01326640

Konrad, M., Joseph, L. M., & Eveleigh, E. (2009). A meta-analytic review of guided notes. Education and Treatment of Children, 32(3), 421–444. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42900031

Luo, L., Kiewra, K. A., & Samuelson, L. (2016). Revising lecture notes: How revision, pauses, and partners affect note taking and achievement. Instructional Science, 44, 45–67. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-016-9370-4

Piolat, A., Olive, T., & Kellogg, R. T. (2005). Cognitive effort during note taking. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19(3), 291–312. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1086