Trey Ballentine
The first thing I notice concerning my Learning Styles is an absence of any strong preference for any single trait. This is comforting as an indication that I will rarely be entirely unable to learn in any given situation. The only significant concern I see is my moderate preference for intuitive understanding over sensory specifics.
While I treasure my will to understand, I am not so intelligent as to never need the guidance of rules. While it seems as though I am already balanced enough to know when to reach for a specific rule (such as when doing a math problem) instead of creating a process of my own based on known principles, I suspect no harm would come from further permitting myself to depend on rules created by my intellectual forbearers (e.g. Guillaume L’Hopital’s rule for deriving a limit at an undefined point).
Given the analytic, cold, and little varying steps in mathematics, note-taking turns into note-clutching: the frantic grasping for any information that might give color to the elusive principles behind each concept. Unfortunately, math classes are more resistent to note-taking methods like SOARS (Singled out information, information On the Board, Asked Questions from fellow classmates and professor alike, Repeated information, and Stressed information). Fortunately, it can still help a bit.
“Singled Out” information, in mathematics classes anyway, are essentially every word that comes from a teacher’s mouth. In mathematics, everything is important. Nonetheless, mathematics formulas are often at the core of any mathematical understanding.
Tracking information “On the Board” is, again, roughly everything that is introduced in a mathematics class. From the aforementioned formula to a super-difficult brain-twister, roughly everything that occurs in a mathematics lecture occurs “On the Board.” For this reason, singled out information remains a more effective way of keeping tabs on what is, relatively speaking, more note-worthy.
“Asked” questions, like with information on the board, vary from the mundane “shouldn’t that be a negative” to the doomed “what exactly are we doing when finding the integral of a function with respect to a rotation about a certain point.” It is up for the student herself to identify which questions (whether posed by fellow students or the professor herself) most align with her understanding of the material.
“Repeated” material, in my opinion, is little more than a hyponym of “Singled Out” material. Again, this is likely the best way to keep track of important information. When a math professor repeats a formula or a mnemonic for organizing arithmetic functions (like “PEMDAS”), its best to write down what she is repeating.
“Stressed” material, like repeated material, is, in my opinion, nothing more than a hyponym of “Singled Out” material.
Despite all this, however, I still struggle with knowing exactly what to take note of. Sometimes I wonder if it is best to simply watch the professor, not taking any written notes, and focus on an understanding of what the professor is doing that I might more readily recognize when I ought to ask a question than to simply jot down every step of a difficult and hope that I teach myself to learn the process later. On the other hand, what if my understanding of a problem is cursory, only to be replaced with confusion later. If so, what would I do if I had no notes?
My solution for this is to write down half of reviewed material and listen to the rest. For example, on a difficult integration problem, I might jot down the milestones of the problem (the specific anti-derivative or the final answer), leaving spaces in between each milestone so that I might reconstruct the entire problem on my own later, using my notes (such as the final answer of the problem in mind) to ensure that I have performed my integration properly. Writing down only the important turning points in a long and complex math problem not only serves as beacons for me to follow as I rework the problem myself later but also serves to give me time to listen to the professor and really process the material at hand.
Three of my favorite study methods are summarized below: color-coding, concept-mapping, and self-created self-tests, respectively.
