Note-Taking Methods Compared: Cornell, Outlines, Maps and Sketchnotes

Notes do two different jobs. While you write them, they make you pay attention and decide what matters. Later, they are the material you study from. Researchers call these the encoding and storage functions of note-taking, and it helps to keep both in mind when you choose a method: a format that is pleasant to write but useless to review only does half the job.

The research on note-taking as a whole is reassuring but not dramatic. A 2005 meta-analysis by Kobayashi pooled 57 comparisons between taking notes and not taking them, and found a positive but modest benefit from the act of writing them. A follow-up meta-analysis of 33 studies found that taking notes and reviewing them had a substantial effect. Extra help with the process improved results modestly, and the most effective kind was giving students a framework or the instructor’s notes to work from. In other words, the method matters, but what you do with the notes afterwards matters more.

Here is how the main methods work, what each is good at, and where each falls short.

The Cornell method

The Cornell system was developed by Walter Pauk, an education professor at Cornell University, and described in his book How to Study in College, first published in 1962 and revised through many editions since.

The page is split into three areas:

• a wide column on the right, for notes taken during the lecture or while reading;
• a narrow cue column on the left, left empty at first;
• a strip at the bottom for a short summary.

During class, you take notes in the right column as you normally would: short sentences, abbreviations, examples. The important part happens afterwards, ideally the same day. You reread the notes and write questions or keywords in the cue column, next to the material they point to. Then you write two or three sentences at the bottom summarizing the page in your own words.

To review, cover the right column and use the cues to test yourself. That turns your notes into retrieval practice, one of the best-supported study techniques there is. The cue questions also convert almost directly into flashcards if you use Anki.

Best for: lectures and textbook chapters with a clear structure, and any course whose exams test recall.
Weak spot: it only works if you do the after-class step. Without the cues and the summary, it is just ordinary notes with a wide margin.

Outlines

Outlining is the most familiar method: main topics on the left, subtopics indented beneath them, details further in. For example:

• Memory and sleep
  • Consolidation during sleep
    • Which kinds of memory benefit
  • Practical consequences for exam week

Outlines are fast, easy to type and make the structure of a topic visible at a glance. They suit well-organized lectures and reading where the headings already give you the skeleton.

Best for: organized lectures, textbook reading, typing notes on a laptop.
Weak spot: they struggle when a lecture jumps around, and they hide relationships between ideas that sit in different branches. They also make it easy to copy the structure without thinking about the content.

Mind maps and concept maps

Mapping puts ideas on the page as a network instead of a list. Two styles often get mixed up, but they are different:

• Mind maps start with one central topic in the middle and branch outwards, often with color and small images. Tony Buzan popularized them in the 1970s, notably in his book Use Your Head (1974).
• Concept maps were developed in 1972 in Joseph Novak’s research program at Cornell. Ideas sit in boxes connected by lines labeled with linking words, so each connection reads as a statement: photosynthesis → produces → oxygen. The labels force you to say how two ideas are related, not just that they are.

Concept maps have the stronger research base. A 2006 meta-analysis by John Nesbit and Olusola Adesope covered 55 studies with 5,818 students, from grade 4 to university, and found that using concept maps was associated with better retention of knowledge. The size of the benefit varied from small to large depending on how the maps were used and what they were compared against.

In practice, maps are slow to draw while someone is talking. They work best after class, built from your regular notes, as a way to see how a whole unit fits together.

Best for: subjects full of relationships (biology, history, themes in literature), planning essays, revising a unit before an exam.
Weak spot: slow to make live, and for fast or strictly sequential material, like a long derivation, a list is clearer.

Sketchnotes

Sketchnoting mixes handwriting with simple drawings: boxes, arrows, icons, quick figures. Mike Rohde’s The Sketchnote Handbook (2012) did a lot to popularize the style, and it is common at talks and conferences.

There is a real memory effect behind it. In seven experiments published in 2016, Jeffrey Wammes, Melissa Meade and Myra Fernandes found that people remembered words better when they drew them than when they wrote them out, and the advantage held up under stricter conditions, such as less time per word and longer lists. Those experiments used word lists, not lectures, so they don’t prove that sketchnotes beat other methods for a whole course. They do suggest that turning an idea into a picture is a useful form of processing in itself.

You don’t need to draw well. A stick figure, a box with an arrow or a tiny chart is enough, and practicing ten basic icons goes a long way.

Best for: talks, conceptual material, visual thinkers, and notes you will actually want to look at again.
Weak spot: courses heavy on formulas or detail, and situations where speed matters more than anything.

Paper or laptop?

In 2014, Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer published a widely shared study titled “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard.” Across three experiments, students who typed notes on laptops did worse on conceptual questions than students who wrote by hand. The laptop notes contained more text copied word for word from the lecture, and the authors argued that this verbatim transcription was the problem: typing made it possible to record without processing.

Later replications softened that conclusion considerably:

• Morehead, Dunlosky and Rawson (2019) repeated the study and added groups that used e-writers or took no notes at all. Some trends favored handwriting, but performance did not consistently differ between the groups, and the differences shrank further after students studied their notes. Combining the direct replications gave a small, non-significant advantage for longhand. Their conclusion was that declaring a winner would be premature.
• Urry and colleagues (2021) ran a direct replication of the original first experiment with 142 participants. As before, laptop users wrote more words and more verbatim text, but there was no reliable difference between the groups on the quiz. A small meta-analysis of eight similar studies pointed the same way. In both the original data and the replication, writing more words was linked to better scores.

So the honest summary is that the device matters less than what you do with it. Mindless transcription seems to be the real problem, and laptops make it easier. Some practical rules:

• On a laptop: paraphrase instead of transcribing, close everything except your notes, and silence notifications. The other apps are often a bigger risk than the keyboard.
• On paper: leave space for Cornell cues or later additions, and photograph the pages afterwards so you have a backup.
• For formulas and diagrams: paper, or a tablet with a stylus, is usually faster than typing.

Which method should you use?

Many students end up with a mix: an outline or Cornell notes during class, a concept map at the end of each unit, and flashcards for the facts that need to stick.

The part that matters most: after class

Whatever method you choose, the review step does most of the work. A simple routine:

1. Within a day, reread the notes, fix anything unclear, and fill gaps while you still remember the lecture.
2. Write questions, not just highlights. Questions turn notes into something you can test yourself on.
3. Summarize each session in two or three sentences, in your own words.
4. Test yourself from those questions a few days later and again before the exam. Our Anki guide explains how to schedule that without it taking over your evenings.

Good notes aren’t the ones that look best. They are the ones that made you think while you wrote them and that you can actually learn from later. A calm study space and a timer for your review sessions help with the second part.

Sources

• Pauk, W., & Owens, R. J. Q. (2010). How to Study in College (10th ed.). Wadsworth. First edition by W. Pauk, 1962. See also Cornell University’s Learning Strategies Center.
• Kiewra, K. A. (1989). A review of note-taking: The encoding-storage paradigm and beyond. Educational Psychology Review, 1(2), 147–172.
• Kobayashi, K. (2005). What limits the encoding effect of note-taking? A meta-analytic examination. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 30(2), 242–262.
• Kobayashi, K. (2006). Combined effects of note-taking/-reviewing on learning and the enhancement through interventions: A meta-analytic review. Educational Psychology, 26(3), 459–477.
• Novak, J. D., & Cañas, A. J. (2008). The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct and use them. Technical Report IHMC CmapTools 2006-01 Rev 2008-01, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.
• Nesbit, J. C., & Adesope, O. O. (2006). Learning with concept and knowledge maps: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 76(3), 413–448.
• Buzan, T. (1974). Use Your Head. BBC.
• Rohde, M. (2012). The Sketchnote Handbook. Peachpit Press.
• Wammes, J. D., Meade, M. E., & Fernandes, M. A. (2016). The drawing effect: Evidence for reliable and robust memory benefits in free recall. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69(9), 1752–1776.
• Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159–1168.
• Morehead, K., Dunlosky, J., & Rawson, K. A. (2019). How much mightier is the pen than the keyboard for note-taking? A replication and extension of Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014). Educational Psychology Review, 31(3), 753–780.
• Urry, H. L., et al. (2021). Don’t ditch the laptop just yet: A direct replication of Mueller and Oppenheimer’s (2014) Study 1 plus mini meta-analyses across similar studies. Psychological Science, 32(3), 326–339.
• Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58.