Hi everyone! I hope you all had a fun Halloween weekend!
So this past week, I modified my Plug-In Notes for my SPA 102 class. Plug-In Notes is an effective way of studying and reviewing what the professor went over during class after class. I thought these notes would help me keep better organized.
This week, we distinguished the two past tenses, the preterite and imperfect. To make it easier for me to understand the differences between these two tenses, after class I wrote down the regular and irregular conjugations, verb expressions, and when to use them. Since I am a visual learner, I organized these notes in a chart-like form. This helps me in that when I need to differentiate the preterite and imperfect, I can easily flip and refer back to my notes.
Here is a chart of my Plug-In Notes:
I haven't used the Plug-In Notes strategy in my SPA 102 class because I didn't think it would have worked. However, I adapted to it and it actually did help me keep my notes organized and help me study for future quizzes and tests. I didn't need to write down questions in these notes because it is very hard to anticipate test questions when the test is mostly fill-in the blank.
This week I also decided to try 1 Plus 3 notes again in my PSY 205 class. I thought it would help me summarize the notes I took during lectures and anticipate test questions. Before class, I took notes as usual and then after class I created a chart with key terms, graphic organizers, and test questions that I thought might appear on tests. I used Microsoft OneNote to help me organize these notes. Last time I did not include a graphic organizer, but this time I thought it was vital for me to include some. I ended up making 3 organizers! Since I am a visual learner, the graphic organizers really helped me with remembering certain key words. These notes also helped me anticipate test questions.
Here are my 1 Plus 3 Notes I took for PSY 205:
All in all, both the Plug-In and 1 Plus 3 Notes really helped me keep my notes organized. Plug-In Notes helped me differentiate different terms while 1 Plus 3 Notes helped me anticipate test questions and remember key terms.
This past week, I have been using Plug-in Notes and 1 Plus 3 Notes as note-taking strategies in my PSY 205 class. I thought that by using these strategies, I'd be able to anticipate test questions and learn to better understand the topics covered in lectures within the previous class. I found to really like using Plug-in Notes in this class. 1 Plus 3 Notes was similar to Plug-in Notes, but it was not as effective in my view.
My psychology professor provides the class with outlines to each lecture and organizes them by topic. For each class, I copy and paste the outlines into the Microsoft Office OneNote program, which lets me organize my notes and audio record my professor's lecture. All I have to do during class is fill in the missing information into the outline notes.
When using Plug-in Notes, instead of plugging in organizers, I added a summary with test questions at the end of each given outlines. It was easier to do this since my professor already gave us a sum up of the lecture within the outlines. Utilizing these outlines will help me further study for upcoming exams.
Before taking notes, I got myself familiar with the Microsoft Office OneNote program. I formatted the notes my professor provided us with. During class, I would record the lecture and write down notes that were not already mentioned in the outlines. After class, I summarized key points during that lecture and anticipated test questions that could be on the next exam.
Here's a screenshot of the Plug-in Notes I took for PSY 205:
For 1 Plus 3 Notes, I looked over my notes after class and created a chart with key terms, a graphic organizer with definitions, and test questions with answers. This was very similar to my Plug-in notes, but it let me get familiar with certain terminology.
Here are screenshots of my 1 Plus 3 Notes: 
Plug-in Notes was very effective in that it made me more familiar with the lectures and gave me a better understanding of what could be on the next exam. I really liked using this technique and I will use it in the future for this class. This has been one of the most effective note-taking strategy for this class. 1 Plus 3 Notes was a little bit effective but not to the extent as my Plug-in Notes were.
