Biochemical Education 27 (1999) 211 } 213

Taking notes in seminars * a new improved method

J.H. Walker*
School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT,UK

Abstract
A novel method is presented for taking seminar and lecture notes. The method encourages concentration on the talk being given and
also helps train students to see how to give good presentations. ( 1999 IUBMB. Published by Elsevier science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
We make our 3rd-year undergraduates and our PhD
students attend seminars so that they can get an insight
into how research is done and how our subject advances.
However, if you quiz the students after the seminar you
discover that half of them took nothing in!
I was once the same until I became seminar programme organiser for the school. The organiser is always
potentially expected to ask a question especially if no
other questions are forthcoming from the audience and
must therefore be ready. So what are the skills needed to
get something out of every seminar?

notes for an excellent seminar given by Graham Warren

is shown in Fig. 1. The only disadvantage of the method
that I can think of is for people with giant writing: for the
method to work you need to be willing and able to write
small.
This is the idea. You have a clip-board and an sheet of
white paper. Beneath this you have a page ruled with
three black vertical lines equidistant across the page.
Before you go to the seminar you write the name of the
speaker, the title of the talk, where the speaker comes
from, and the date. You draw a box around this. When
you get into the seminar and the speaker is introduced
there may be other details you want to jot down such as
where they used to work.

2. Note taking
3. How to do it
Concentration and understanding, and a mechanism
to deal with badly organised seminars are required.
Many people just sit there. Some scribble incessantly,
"lling pages with notes. In contrast, some quickly conclude that there is no reason why they should bother to
continue listening and go o! into day dreams or think
about planning their experiments (one hopes!).
When I was seminar programme organiser, I came up
with a method that helped me and that has, I think, has
many advantages. Indeed I recommended it to our 3rdyear undergraduates and many of them adopted and
praised what might be called the successful single-page
note taking approach. An example of a complete set of

* Tel.: 01532 333119; fax: 01532 333167.

E-mail address: j.h.walker@leeds.ac.uk (J.H. Walker)

The speaker starts speaking. (A bad speaker goes too

fast and this will show in the notes anyone takes!) Whenever the speaker changes slides you start a new box
on your page providing the subject matter deserves it.
Some information may be of very limited use. (Speaker
slide 1 may well be the title of the talk and you already
have that at the top of your page.) The second slide may
be a cartoon of the phenomenon being studied. Sketch
down the whole thing if you can, or at least the key parts
of it, as a aid to remembering the rest later.
Each time the speaker goes from one slide to the next,
you draw a box around the last set of information. You
are trying to trap in that box the essential message or
information presented on that particular slide. The box
size will vary according to how much you take down
from any slide. If the slide does not say much you do not

0307-4412/99/$20.00 ( 1999 IUBMB. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 3 0 7 - 4 4 1 2 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 2 7 9 - 9

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J.H. Walker / Biochemical Education 27 (1999) 211}213

Fig. 1. A page of lecture notes taken in the way described.

J.H. Walker / Biochemical Education 27 (1999) 211}213

bother putting anything down or maybe just write a comment. You always draw the box when you have "nished
recording what you want from a slide.

4. Keeping up
Now, herein lies the great bene"t of this method. You
keep up with the speaker slide by slide. This means that
even if the speaker presents his story in a confusing order
* perhaps because he wants you to be puzzling over
a scienti"c problem until a grand resolution appears
from his clever experiments * even then you will end up
with a story that is clear the next time you look at your
sheet of notes. You may start to get lost * but you keep
drawing boxes and getting down the gist of the slides.
Then, usually a few slides ahead, the purpose of the past
few slides starts to become clear and you can brie#y go
back and jot down a word or two to help your understanding.
It has to be said that sometimes a talk is so good and
informative that you have to start to use the reverse side
of the sheet * but this is not often the case * and usually
a 45 min talk easily "ts onto one sheet of paper with
space at the bottom right-hand corner of the page for
your questions or for you to note the questions that
others ask of the speaker at the end of the talk. As for
questions, you keep in mind all the time the idea that you
will ask a question in order to encourage you to be on the
look out for things you do not understand or possible
defects in the speaker's logic.

213

lecture to undergraduates can be excellent in helping to

bring you up to date. These notes I "le with the appropriate set of student lectures to help me when I am rewriting
my lectures. Undergraduates are advised to do likewise.
Post-grads can "le them along with their plans for the
introductory chapter of their thesis.

6. Another advantage
There is an additional advantage to this method. You
end up with a one-page summary of a seminar. You
know if it was good or not. This method will not deal
with the very worst seminars * nothing will, and in this
case you may "nd yourself drawing an un#attering cartoon of the speaker and writing in big bold letters BORING * but herein lies the advantage. You know if it was
good or bad, and you know how the speaker presented
everything, because you have a complete list of the slides
and their contents. Obviously, now you can model your
own talks on the best of what you have seen. Indeed, this
makes every seminar a worthwhile experience in showing
you how information should (or should not) be presented. As Cicero says in his On the Orator: &&Socrates used to
say that every man who is called upon to speak about
a subject he understands is capable of achieving eloquence. That sounds plausible enough, but it happens
not to be true. It would be nearer the truth to say, "rst,
that no one can be eloquent on a matter he knows
nothing about, and, secondly, that even if he does know
the subject to perfection, he can still only speak eloquently about it if he knows how to dress his remarks in an
attractive style''.

5. Afterwards
7. Conclusion
What do you do with all those sheets of paper after the
seminar? (I am often asked by those who cannot understand why I bother.) The answer is that most get "led in
a loose-leaf folder chronologically. However, if the lecture is especially interesting or relevant it may get coloured-in with coloured pencils or #uorescent markers
* this is fun to do and makes going through the notes
a second time an enjoyable experience. More than this
though, it brings your attention back to the talk and as
you concentrate, you spot the answers to those things
that were not quite clear in your mind when you "rst
heard them. Really good talks in the areas in which you

In conclusion, I recommend the single-page note-taking method because it works. Some folk (a very few) have
amazing minds that can remain concentrated for the
whole of a 45 min talk and can remember all the details
months later * but this is certainly not true for me nor
for the bulk of students new to the art of concentrating in
seminars. We all attend seminars so it is easy enough to
give this method a go. For teaching sta! set in their ways
it may be too late or unnecessary, but for those bright
young minds in our charge maybe this could help them
to be even better.