Note taking at Uni

purplerose

If he has a problem with note taking, he should have a word with the lecturer and ask if the recording device can be placed near the lecturer. At my uni there were a few students who done this either because they had a learning disability/hearing issue/or English was their 2nd language. So long as it didn't interfere with the lecture then it was no problem.

Most lecturers provide notes anyway, if he has the lecturer notes and goes away to do the reading for the module then he'll should be fine.

spud17

In MY day we used to take a hammer and chisel, and a stone tablet, into lectures, for note taking. :rotfl:

Annisele

I think your nephew misunderstands the purpose of taking notes

What is his course? If it's, say, maths, even the best voice recorder in the world is going to struggle with "and you can see that this plane meets that plane at that line there".

Owain_Moneysaver

Less than £12, free delivery, and a skill he can use for the rest of his life.

Liquorice_Twirls

Quite a lot of our classes were recorded by the lecturers (with the voice recorder very near to the person speaking) and placed on the Uni intranet for students to listen to again if they wanted, so this might already be going to happen anyway. I work as a counsellor and during my training used a digital voice recorder all the time. They are pretty good in a quiet room with just one or two people talking, but I would agree with some other posters that in more noisy conditions and the recorder further away from the person talking, you would probably miss a lot of the dialogue. You can buy a proper microphone to plug into your voice recorder, but that may be a bit off putting for the person talking.

I'm not an expert on the voice recognition software, but when I looked into it I thought that the software had to get used to an individual "voice" and this may prove more difficult if you have several different lecturers.

Alcmene

You would need to ensure that you use the permission of the lecturer.

I think that the act of writing things down actually helps the student to understand the notes they are taking. Your nephew doesn't sound like he is actually keen on learning anything.

DCFC79

Id provide a pad of A4 paper and a decent pen

luv_or_h8_me

I have an olmpus recorder and also dragon naturally speaking.

I was given the software by my university to help me produce essays quicker, but actually its more of a pain in my backside than anything else. You can train it to do all sorts of things such as CAPS, underline, grammer, spell check and generally type. But as soon as you have a sore throat you have no chance!!

I would recommend getting a recorder though! My recorder I have found pick's up everyone else talking and not the lecture if I do not sit near the front!!

Hope this advice helps!!

tuck3621

I would agree with the other people posting here - voice recognition works well with a close microphone and structured speech, but you have no chance of getting anything comprehensible in a lecture environment.

Something that hasn't been suggested yet is a piece of software called Audio Notetaker. It solves the problem of having lots of audio that's pretty laborious to listen back to and organise. It's also been built with students in mind and allows you to import powerpoint presentations to go along with the audio and any textual notes you add. They do a free trial and even a 1 year license.

You can buy a Samson Go USB Mic for £30 or so that gives you amazing quality if it's practical to take a laptop into the lecture. Otherwise the Olympus VN5500PC is cheap and gets the job done.

Hope that helps!