At the beginning of each secondary level course, or at least in advance of the lectures, instructors should give out detailed outlines of their lecture notes, even if for a fee. In this way, students would better know what to expect from the lectures, what the thrust of the lecture is, and what to focus on. These lecture notes should include everything discussed in class including definitions, diagrams, etc. These lecture notes should be complete enough so that the student would not be required to write down any core elements of a lecture. Students would thus be better able to concentrate more on the material being discussed rather than spend a great deal of time and effort writing things down and, invariably, increasing the chances of needlessly missing out on some relevant points or thoughts.

Students spend too much time and effort trying to think about how to format the notes and trying to guess and imitate the professor’s outline or format of main points, supporting points, examples, definitions, etc. The student’s job is to understand and synthesize the information, not to transcribe lectures into written form.