Go into any classroom and you will see students taking notes. What do we do when we need to remember things? We write them down.  We all retain and gain our understanding of information differently and so we all take notes differently. So, with note taking being such an important tool in education and training, it is important that, as we move learning to the Internet, we have the tools available to allow us to take notes online.

Let’s look at a few ways we often take notes:

• Writing
  Write down key terms, definitions, keywords, or anything else that helps us  remember or relate our thoughts to a given subject. Online we can provide a simple text box to type it up.
• Drawing and Imaging
  Draw pictures, charts, graphs or a process. Some of us remember and understand pictures much better than bullet point after bullet point. Online we can draw right on the screen with the mouse. Draw a picture or circle an image.
• Highlighting
  We don’t have all the time in the world. Sometimes it is faster to get out the yellow marker and highlight a paragraph or two. Online we can click and drag to hightlight a word or paragraph.
• Bookmarking
  Sometimes we just need to throw a post-it on a page to remember to review what’s on it. Online we can click a button or drag a bookmark on screen.

eLearning is evolving with more features being added all the time. Allowing students to take notes sounds like a no-brainer, but it can be a bit of a hurdle to get something that is easy to use and functional online. Online notes need to be stored, retrieved, and sometimes printed. More complex systems allow drawing pictures with the mouse. This data needs to be stored as well. Depending on the technology used to build your eLearning system, it might already contain a way to take notes or may allow a way to add the functionality required. If not, a custom solution may need to be created. Understand your audience and their needs to define what note taking capabilities they might need.

Why can’t students just keep their notes on paper?
Good question (glad I asked it). Students can certainly keep their notes on paper and some may always keep their notepad by their side. But with eLearning, students are often on the move. We may login at home, a library, coffee shop, or even a mobile device. We may not have our notepads with us, so having our notes online quickly becomes more important. There are a number of other benefits to having our notes online as well, including:

• Keeping Track of Notes
  Keep track of when the notes were taken and keep track of where the note was taken. If a note was taken in Course 3, Section 5, Page 2, that location can be set so the student can jump back at any time or when they are on any given page they can see which notes are associated.
• Instant Study Guides
  Notes can be compiled into a study guide that can be saved, emailed, or printed.
• Ease of Use
  Clicking a sentence to throw it onto a notepad or typing a couple of important words may be a much better and faster experience for a user.
• Analytics of Notes
  Knowing what pages students take the most notes on can be a great way to find out where additional content can be added to present an idea. Notes are often thought of as personal. Keep in mind students may not want notes read by their teachers. Gather what makes sense and use it to better their experience and the content provided.

Part 1 focused on the fundamentals of note taking. In Part 2 we will focus on designs utilizing note taking functionality.