Inclusion of the speaker's illustrations and examples may help clarify concepts when notes are reviewed. Marginal notes facilitate speedy location of specific items. After the Lecture Go over your notes as soon as possible after the lecture. Clear up illegibilities in writing, check for errors, fill in further facts and examples while the lecture is still fresh in your mind. At this point you should clear up misunderstandings or fill in missing information by consulting the lecturer, TA, classsmates, the texts, or addtional readings.
Immediate review is essential to retention.
Unless you review within 24 hours after lecture or at least before the next lecture, retention will drop sharply and you will be relearning rather than reviewing . Merely recopying notes without thinking about or revising them does not necessarily aid retention. A more helpful practice is to manipulate the material by reorganizing it and putting it in your own words. For a well-organized lecture, an outline can suffice, but in the case of material where important ideas and relationships are scattered throughout, there is a technique called mapping which can be very useful in restructuring and putting together the relevant points. The use of this technique forces you to critically evaluate material in terms of main ideas, secondary points, and details, and to structure this content in an organized and coherent fashion.