Facts About Nate Taking: Instructor Information Guide
Note Taking Facts:
- Note taking consists of several skills, including listening comprehension, discriminating between relevant and irrelevant information, processing and personalizing information, organizing and recording notes, and doing so in a legible and fluent fashion.
- Some students with learning disabilities may have difficulties with hand writing, spelling, listening comprehension, and identifying information instructors think is important to remember.
- Some students with learning disabilities do not write as fast or use abbreviations as often as the general population of students.
- Some students with learning disabilities have difficulty processing all information during a given lecture. A student with an auditory processing disability may hear a portion of the lecture and write notes pertaining to what is heard, but while concentrating on the note taking, miss a significant new segment of the lecture.
- Some students with visual impairments may have difficulty seeing written information on the board or on overheads.
- Some students with a hearing impairment have substantial limitations in hearing oral lecture information.
(First three facts were taken from “ Note-Taking Skills of University Students With and Without Learning Disabilities,” Hughes and Suritsky, Journal of Learning Disabilities Volume 27, Number 1, January 1994, p. 20-24)
How Can You Help?
- Assist the office in locating a volunteer in your class to provide supplemental class notes to student with disabilities. Please do so without calling attention to the student with disability, as disability information is confidential. You may inform students that you are looking for who can provide a supplemental copy of their notes to a student enrolled with the Office of Accessibility. This is a voluntary semester long commitment and a $25 gift certificate to Barnes&Nobles Bookstore will be given to the volunteer as a token of appreciation from the Office of Accessibility. You may ask students if they feel they have clear and comprehensive notes and would like to be a volunteer to please see you after class and provide them with this certificate. The certificate can be redeemed in the Office of Accessibility, 1201 Health & Human Services Building, (419) 530-4981.
- Provide outlines or copies of your notes to students with disabilities.
- Inform the student of notes that you have put on the Internet or that are on reserve at Carlson Library.
- Allow students to audio tape your lecture.
Who May Need Note Taking Assistance?
Students who have:
- Auditory processing disorder
- Dyslexia
- Difficulty with written expression
- Distractibility due to ADD
- Visual impairments
- Mobility impairments
- Hearing impairments
