Tips for running note service

[X.O.]

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Hey Guys,

Im helping to run note/scribe service for my year and I was wondering if you guys have any good tips, suggestions, for running a good service. The 2nd years above us kind of told us to do it ourselves so we're starting from near scratch.

 

[SkylineMD]

Charge a flat fee of 100 dollars per semester and don't have an option of printed notes. Most of the time, the people who do the printing/copying are utterly useless. You'll just get nothing more than disgruntled students who are waiting for their hard copies, and rightfully so since they paid extra for it. If you keep everything online, you don't have to pay for the printing if your school charges you for it. If there is already a school server for notes, utilize that otherwise get urself a dedicated server for the notes that everyone can access. You can also decide to either give people free access to the online notes if they volunteer for at least 5 lectures (or however many you want) or some type of reward system for scribing. Some schools just pay their scribes which isn't bad either (probably more motivation for people to get their scribing done).

 

[Gimlet]

We have a notes co-op at MCW. Everyone pays in $50 and is assigned 3-5 lectures to take notes for. There are about 20 distributors who take turns picking up the copies of the notes from Kinko's and putting them in our mailboxes. It's a pretty self sufficient system. Personally, I think we could easily go with a paperless system where the notes are just e-mailed out to everyone in the co-op. That would really reduce the membership fee for the co-op, since almost all of the fees are put towards copying costs.

 

[akpete]

We have a notes co-op at MCW. Everyone pays in $50 and is assigned 3-5 lectures to take notes for. There are about 20 distributors who take turns picking up the copies of the notes from Kinko's and putting them in our mailboxes. It's a pretty self sufficient system. Personally, I think we could easily go with a paperless system where the notes are just e-mailed out to everyone in the co-op. That would really reduce the membership fee for the co-op, since almost all of the fees are put towards copying costs.

Actually, they are talking about trying to get the co-op on ANGEL (our school website for classes, organizations, etc.) soon, maybe next semester.

We also have fines so hopefully people don't back out on writing, etc.

I love it, cuz I take pretty bad notes (I'm a distributor thank goodness).

 

[njbmd]

Hi there,
We had regular scribes who were paid from the money. They were limited to one hour of lecture per day (we had enough people to do this) and were given 24h to have the lecture notes typed in Microsoft Word format. For each hour of lecture, the person was paid $40.

At the end of the year, any money left over was given to the person that the class voted the best and most reliable note-taker. This person could make a substantial amount of money and still receive the bonus. Things that counted towards the bonus was the notes being in on time. In case of illness, there was always a back-up.

The person received a recorded copy of the lecture and had to attend the lecture. Notes were in a summary form or detailed outline form as opposed to verbatim transcription.

We charged $50 per semester and covered all courses except Pathology which, had its own extremely complete syllabus and needed no scribing. I am still finding to this day, that my physiology notes are in use in some form. I was one of those folks who could type 80 wpm and typed faster than most people are able to write.

Good luck!
njbmd 🙂