How are your notes distributed?

[borofish]

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Hey guys,

I'm a second year at the CVM at the University of Minnesota, and I'm working on consolidating how our notes are handed out. Currently, it's a bit of a free for all here, with the method of distribution completely at the discretion of the professor (whether it be online, in paper, maybe through official channels, etc). So, I'm curious how other schools handle this... does your school have a centralized method for getting notes to students? Is it entirely online or paper based? Do you like the way your school distributes notes?

Thanks for the help!

 

[dyachei]

Hey guys,

I'm a second year at the CVM at the University of Minnesota, and I'm working on consolidating how our notes are handed out. Currently, it's a bit of a free for all here, with the method of distribution completely at the discretion of the professor (whether it be online, in paper, maybe through official channels, etc). So, I'm curious how other schools handle this... does your school have a centralized method for getting notes to students? Is it entirely online or paper based? Do you like the way your school distributes notes?

Thanks for the help!

At UTK, we have a vetnet online where all the powerpoints are kept (you can print them if you want. We are also forced to buy paper notes from the teachers that supply them through the vet book store (run by a few students). In addition, you can buy a cd that contains the notes from vetnet so that you don't need to be connected to the internet.

I don't like being forced to buy notes (approx. $50/semester) because I have a tablet and would prefer to annotate on that. Other than that, its pretty efficient.

 

[spikey]

at Penn, we (oh man, sorry i had to) get most of our notes, whether they be powerpoint handouts or paragraph form notes (more of the former) in our mailboxes a few days before the lecture.

some of our classes give us packets of most of the notes all organized, or we get them, like i said, in our boxes. if we don't get them either of those ways, they will have 'em for us at the lecture to pick up. and they always post the powerpoint that they use on a site for us where all the classes are listed. so its essentially all in one place.

dyachei: you have to pay for them? wow 😱

 

[soxbox]

CSU is pretty similiar... each semester you are pretty much forced to spend a smidge more than $100 on notes... and the notes vary by professor (ie: some are just power point slides, some are typed out mini-text books, etc)... We do get a CD each semester that includes all the notes as well... And it is not all that uncommon for a lecture to have not been printed, in which they just pass out the lectures in the beginning of class...

I have to say that as much as it irks me to pay for the notes, overall they are pretty complete and for most classes all you need are just the notes (so you can save some $$ and forgo the textbook).

 

[dyachei]

at Penn, we (oh man, sorry i had to) get most of our notes, whether they be powerpoint handouts or paragraph form notes (more of the former) in our mailboxes a few days before the lecture.

some of our classes give us packets of most of the notes all organized, or we get them, like i said, in our boxes. if we don't get them either of those ways, they will have 'em for us at the lecture to pick up. and they always post the powerpoint that they use on a site for us where all the classes are listed. so its essentially all in one place.

dyachei: you have to pay for them? wow 😱

Yup,we pay for the paper copies of our notes. The ones online are of course free. It doesn't help that our physiology professor pretty much wrote his own textbook and sells it to us as our "notes". The worst part is that you are automatically charged for it each semester. When we order our books, its not included because they aren't sure what they will have to print off, but come the beginning of the semester, we get a brown paper bag full of notes that you may or may not want.

 

[Edson Farm]

Kansas State just went "paperless" this year. We pay $300 a semester for a Tablet PC (that we get to keep upon graduation) which has all our notes preloaded on it. Each semester we get a DVD with new notes and any updates are made available via the internet. It is somewhat expensive, but I think previous classes paid around $200 a semester for their paper notes anyway.

On the plus side we don't need to carry around stacks of notebooks. However, since this is the first year with these tablets there's been a fair share of issues. Most of these are getting worked out, but we've been the "guinea pigs". Many people opt to print their notes out anyway since it's hard to read off a computer screen for hours at a time when studying.

 

[Angelo84]

We get a syllabus for most of our classes that acts as our textbook. A few classes forgo the syllabus and have us buy a textbook. Most of our class notes are powerpoints that are available online.

 

[Habibti]

We're big on free for all at UW-Madison, as well.

Some of our notes get distributed to our mailboxes before lecture.
Some study guides are strictly online and can be printed out, if you'd like.
Other classes (although rarely for first years) force you to buy notes. For second and third years, it's about $150(ish) each semester.

 

[almostglue]

At UGA, they went paperless a year ago. And by paperless, I mean the school doesn't print out anything for you, you have to print it all out yourself. We have an online site professors load their notes up onto and you can choose to print them out or not, but I can't live without having a printed copy to make notes on during class. And some professors have a 'notes' packet that's kind of like a mini-text book that was mentioned above.

Most professors are good about getting their notes up on time, but some of them just can't understand how important it is to have printed notes when they talk a million miles an hour and we can't keep up otherwise.

All in all I guess it works out pretty well, but I hate when they call it a 'paperless' system. It's paperless for them. It's not a paperless system.

 

[Nexx]

At Murdoch Univ we buy our course readers (notes) for most classes as well as labs. Total cost per semester is about $150 and they are printed and boundby the university. They're actually pretty nice and for the most part textbooks are optional as they keep a few for each class on reserve in the library. Powerpoints are available online.

 

[LVT2DVM]

Can the computer notes be annotated? Are they PDF, Word, Powerpoint or mixed? Can a student realistically make notes on laptop during class or is paper/pen still your best bet.

At UGA, they went paperless a year ago. And by paperless, I mean the school doesn't print out anything for you, you have to print it all out yourself. We have an online site professors load their notes up onto and you can choose to print them out or not, but I can't live without having a printed copy to make notes on during class. And some professors have a 'notes' packet that's kind of like a mini-text book that was mentioned above.

Most professors are good about getting their notes up on time, but some of them just can't understand how important it is to have printed notes when they talk a million miles an hour and we can't keep up otherwise.

All in all I guess it works out pretty well, but I hate when they call it a 'paperless' system. It's paperless for them. It's not a paperless system.

 

[borofish]

Can the computer notes be annotated? Are they PDF, Word, Powerpoint or mixed? Can a student realistically make notes on laptop during class or is paper/pen still your best bet.

Yes, a student can realistically take notes on a laptop (and I believe actually be much more efficient depending on your typing skills). PC folks at my school use Microsoft OneNote to annotate just about any kind of file. Mac users use Preview, or a free downloaded program called Skim for PDFs.

 

[almostglue]

There's plenty of people that use the 'notes' feature on the powerpoint slides on their pc. I just am not one of those. I like to make my notes directly on the picture or right next to the statement they're commenting on. But that's just me and how I learn best. There's only 1 or 2 people that have a tablet in my class, and I think that would be the only comparable thing for me to use. And I've tried tablets, but they're not quite as fast as I need them to be, yet and I just love paper and pencil.

And the notes are any form you can come up with pretty much. Some have word, some ppt, some pdf.

 

[laurafinn]

At Massey, it's a free for all. There is a central university Student Notes Distribution Center (SNDC), and we do get most of the big study guides from there. We do get various medium-sized study guides, lab guides, etc. in our mailboxes or in class. A lot of the stuff is online as well.

We have so many study guides at the beginning of the semester that one trip to SNDC never seems to yield one of each of the guides - multiple trips are usually necessary to get ones the workers missed, or ones that have just come in.

The great thing is that we don't have to pay for any of them. Yay!

 

[RazorDoc2010]

I'm pretty sure it's required for our teachers to make notes available online to the students. That way it's good for the kids with computers and those without can use their printing quota to print out the notes. Some teachers still print them out for us, but always having reliable notes online is nice.

 

[alonepear]

It's a free-for-all here in Mississippi as well.

Most teachers post powerpoints-converted-to-PDFs online, either in our message-board type folders in our email client, or using WebCT.

About half the class uses tablets, and some of them just write notes using those, and the rest of us print them on our own and scribble our own notes on them.

A few teachers just email us the notes, which can be a pain if you accidentally delete them before printing...

And best of all, one of our teachers still uses the overhead projector, which brings me back to my middle school days. But it's ok, because we love him 😍

 

[Electrophile]

And best of all, one of our teachers still uses the overhead projector, which brings me back to my middle school days. But it's ok, because we love him 😍

Two of our professors use 😱 slide projectors! Even more old school!

 

[RazorDoc2010]

Two of our professors use 😱 slide projectors! Even more old school!

One even uses a slide projector and a fancy new-age projector at the same time! Talk about new-age meets old school!

 

[kate_g]

Well, I'll chime on in with the Davis system... We've got a central academic web site which includes a personalized calendar of classes and school events, and pages for each course where the instructors post announcements, grades, and course materials. They can actually also do computer-based tests and quizzes, which a couple of courses are doing now. The course materials usually include PDFs or .ppt files of the slides for each lecture (usually posted the day before, but sometimes not until just before class). For a lot of classes the profs also post study guides, sample questions, past tests, keys for current exams, etc. Many classes also have a "syllabus" which often includes background material in paragraph form. There's some inconsistency between courses in whether the syllabus is available on paper in the bookstore, online on the course web page, or both. I personally prefer the lecture syllabus electronically (all my notes are on the computer) but the lab syllabus on paper - I will *not* bring my computer to wet labs.

Borofish, if you're looking into centralizing course materials, I think the web program we use is called Sakai, so you could see if your administration wants to look into that - I assume it costs money. It works pretty well, though it tends to freeze up when the entire class is trying to download a large powerpoint file seconds before a lecture starts.

 

[Monkey85]

at Penn, we (oh man, sorry i had to) get most of our notes, whether they be powerpoint handouts or paragraph form notes (more of the former) in our mailboxes a few days before the lecture.

some of our classes give us packets of most of the notes all organized, or we get them, like i said, in our boxes. if we don't get them either of those ways, they will have 'em for us at the lecture to pick up. and they always post the powerpoint that they use on a site for us where all the classes are listed. so its essentially all in one place.

dyachei: you have to pay for them? wow 😱

To update the PennWe system: We just got back from spring break on Monday and started our immunology course. The course director told us we were the very first class to have a "Green" course. By this he meant they weren't going to print out lectures for us. They would be posted to our online school site so we could access them and print them ourselves. I don't think the professor understood how much we now rely on taking notes on printed powerpoints during the lecture because within seconds of saying this hands flew up in the lecture hall to complain about this new procedure.

This morning the class had to vote on how notes would be dealt with after several emails to the professor complaining probably. So we tried the no paper thing and it failed.

 

[happytowner]

I don't like being forced to buy notes (approx. $50/semester) because I have a tablet and would prefer to annotate on that. Other than that, its pretty efficient.[/quote]

Hey this might seem stupid ...but how does the tablet work? can you actually handwrite notes next to the powerpoint slides with a stylus or something? Can it convert handwritten text to type? I'm in the market for a new laptop and I can't figure out just how useful a tablet would be? Do you love it?

 

[dyachei]

Hey this might seem stupid ...but how does the tablet work? can you actually handwrite notes next to the powerpoint slides with a stylus or something? Can it convert handwritten text to type? I'm in the market for a new laptop and I can't figure out just how useful a tablet would be? Do you love it?

You have a variety of programs that will let you just annotate or take notes on "lined paper". In powerpoint, for instance, all you have to do is hit the pen button (not just in tablets) and you can write/draw on the slides. Then there's OneNote, too (I personally don't use this too much). With a tablet you write directly on the screen with a stylus rather than trying to use the mouse (which can be clumsy, especially on a laptop). If you have any other questions, just let me know.

 

[PiddlingFish]

To update the PennWe system: We just got back from spring break on Monday and started our immunology course. The course director told us we were the very first class to have a "Green" course. By this he meant they weren't going to print out lectures for us. They would be posted to our online school site so we could access them and print them ourselves. I don't think the professor understood how much we now rely on taking notes on printed powerpoints during the lecture because within seconds of saying this hands flew up in the lecture hall to complain about this new procedure.

This morning the class had to vote on how notes would be dealt with after several emails to the professor complaining probably. So we tried the no paper thing and it failed.

I'm all for going "green", but I'd rather not spend my money to print out the notes. Aren't we already paying for that in our tuition? I think they should have sent the roll sheet around and if people wanted paper notes, they could sign up for them and have them put in their mailbox. They'd save some paper from the people who don't need the paper. Seems like a win-win.