question

Question for the sciency people--or the people who take their science classes seriously.

There is this thing? Where people taking notes use *multiple colored pens* to do their notes. I'd noticed it before in class when I was younger and did not care and had no study method. I now have a study method--or building one, anyway.

Why is that? What's the pattern on it? As it seems to work, or so a million science students seem to think.

Comments

[mz-bstone.livejournal.com]

You can do it in English, too. And anthropology. It's simply colour-coding the types of information: key ideas, supporting details,vocabulary. It involved the section of the brain that is visual, as opposed to language. The more of your brain involved in making a memory, the better the memory.

B

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Hmm. True. I wonder how I used to do my notes for English?

I need to go see fi I have those notebooks still.

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

Seconding B, here. I've heard learners described as being of four kinds: visual, aural, reading, & kinesthetic. Visual learners are more likely to remember things that are visually striking, so like, on a test, they might remember a color-coded answer better, literally recalling that it was written in pink on the left side of the page. Your aural learners work well by saying stuff aloud, or talking through things with others, or they're the tape-recorder kids. Reading's obvious enough; they're like, yeah, yeah, lecture, gimme the article. Kinesthetic, my favorite, literally carry knowledge on the body in--they like to move, they remember how their body was, or they have to "do" something to understand it.

Anyway, I say this because hey, if color coding works for you, great, but there are other things too. Most of us are some combination of these things, and as B says, good studying might involve doing more than one of them!

(I realize that this is probably lots more than you wanted to know. Er. Sorry.)

[springwoof.livejournal.com]

yes! I'm a deeply kinesthetic learner--I'm the person stepping up and volunteering to do the demo, because otherwise I won't learn about it, even though I listened carefully and read the material.

In school, I had to read the material, attend the lecture, and take notes on the lecture to retain the information--and oddly, it was the physical act of note-taking that mattered, not the actual notes I took. Sometimes, I'd just draw random sketches in the notebook instead of writing anything that was said. One professor, obviously annoyed that I was apparently blowing off the class (I was sitting front and center, right under his nose), asked me irritatedly if I'd been paying attention to the lecture at all--so I proceeded to repeat, verbatim, the last five minutes of his lecture, including the asides. He was perplexed, but didn't question my drawing again. (I also learned not to sit in front if I was going to draw. ::grin::) So I have to be physically doing something or else I'm not learning--but it doesn't necessarily have to be related to what it is that I'm learning.

When I'm teaching, I try to remember to engage as many of the student's senses as possible. I was told that the more senses you engage, the greater the percentage of what you're trying to convey will be retained....

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

Actually, wow, that's AMAZING--you're really textbook kinesthetic! That's wildly cool; I might use you as my example for my students (and you're right, it's really about engaging as many ways as possible.)

[springwoof.livejournal.com]

I know. Once I discovered my "learning style" it was so much easier to retain information. In order to learn, I need to touch and/or manipulate something, and if the instructor wasn't providing something, I had to come up with an alternate of some kind...

I might use you as my example for my students
feel free.

Are you teaching them about learning styles for them to become instructors themselves, or just for their own benefit as students?

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

No, usually to help them become better students. It's amazing how mystifying these things are made to be--studying is (fingers waggling) mysterious! writing is (fingers waggling) mysterious! There's a lie that you know, some people are "just' good at it, other people are not: one of the (ten zillion things) I like best about fandom is that we tend to DE-MYSTIFY stuff here.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*thoughtful* I feel very unself-aware--i really have no idea how I learn. It's this random morass of sometimes it's photographic level and sometimes I can not even remember *reading* something though I have proof I have in notes. I know, in theory, there's a pattern to it, but I've never found one. that's kind of half the reason I want to try this in color while taking notes; it requires a lot of attention, since just taking notes doesn't really require my attention at all, but changing color wiht topic or with whatever will require me to pay specific attention to what's being said.

Seriously. I'm in awe.

[springwoof.livejournal.com]

hmm...I seem to remember an online test to determine your "learning style". you might try googling for that, also googling for NLP (neurolinguistic programming), to see if you are oriented towards visual, aural, or kinesthetic learning... the way you ingest information will determine the best way to organize your studying... as Ces says, you may be a "tape recorder" person who learns best by making up little jingles to sing to herself, or a very visual person for whom color coding will be da bomb... but don't waste time/energy on one system when it doesn't fit *you*.

VARK

[black-bird-777.livejournal.com]

go here:

http://www.vark-learn.com/english/index.asp

[reginagiraffe]

I'm *totally* a visual learner. I'll remember your face forever but if I don't write your name down on a piece of paper where I can see it, it'll take me several reminders to remember it.

Although, now that I think about it, I'm a bit kinesthetic, too. I remember phone numbers and PINs partially by the pattern they make on the number panel.

Cool stuff.