Class Notes and Homework

Once you have reviewed your notes, you can use them to complete homework assignments. Follow these steps:

  1. Do a warm-up for your homework. Before doing the assignment, look through your notes again. Use a separate sheet of paper to rework examples, problems, or exercises. If there is related assigned material in the textbook, review it. Go back to the examples. Try to respond to the questions or complete the problems without looking at the answers or solutions. Keep in mind that it can help to go back through your course notes, reorganize them, highlight the important items, and create new notes that let you connect with the material.
  2. Do any assigned problems, and answer any assigned questions. When you start doing your homework, read each question or problem and ask: What am I supposed to find or find out? What is most important? What is not that important? Read each problem several times, and state it in your own words. Solve the problem without referring to your notes or the text, as though you were taking a test. In this way, you will test your knowledge and know whether you are prepared for exams.
  3. Don’t give up too soon. Start your homework with the hardest subject first while you are most energetic. When you face a problem or question that you cannot easily solve or answer, move on only after you have tried long enough. After you have completed the whole assignment, come back to any problems or questions that you could not solve or answer. Try once more, and then take a break. You might need to think about a particularly difficult problem for several hours or even days. Inspiration might come when you are waiting at a stoplight or just before you fall asleep.
  4. Complete your work. When you finish an assignment, talk to yourself about what you learned from it. Think about how the problems and questions were different from one another, which strategies were successful, and what form the answers took. Be sure to review any material you have not mastered. Ask for help from the instructor, a classmate, a study group, the campus learning center, or a tutor to learn how to answer questions that stumped you.

Stay Motivated

Use What You Have Learned

Now that you’ve read these suggestions about taking notes and studying for class, which ideas are you motivated to implement in your own note taking? Come to class ready to explain which ideas appeal to you most and why.