The value of note taking is well understood, but there is much less focus on understanding the cognitive processes that are necessary to support effective note taking.
For many students, no matter how hard they try to make comprehensive and useful notes in their lectures, what they end up with are incomplete sentences and disorganized ideas… in short, nothing that will help their understanding or learning in any way.
Many students report that they simply cannot ‘keep up with the professor’; they cannot listen, process the information, and write the pertinent points quickly enough. Individual differences are huge predictors of note taking ability, and students who continuously struggle may well be experiencing deficits in either working memory or processing speed (or both).
In order to take notes, we have to keep information in our minds (i.e. remember it) for long enough to process it and write it down.
This takes place in our working memory.