I'm confused - how exactly am I supposed to make notes? I have lectures, lecturers adding more points, tutorials, readings from both the textbook and course reader. How do I make effective notes? And are notes only for exams or for assessments as well?
Depends on the course/degree but essentially (from my own personal experience):
- The lecture slides are the skeleton of your notes. The lecturer will expand on these slides during the course of the lecture.
- In those courses/subjects without lecture slides, you'll probably make notes based on your readings (for example, this applies to Law).
- Textbook readings tend to be supplementary material. So you can expand on your 'skeleton' lecture slides using the textbook (tends to be time consuming because for most courses, if not all, the textbook tends to have excess information that won't be tested)
- If there are ''tutorial readings'' (that are in addition to tutorial questions), I guess you might want to incorporate important points from such readings into your notes.
Effective notes basically comes down to your style of learning and your personal style of note-making.
You can use notes for whatever I guess (assignments, quizzes, mid-sem and final exams).