Welcome to ARC Peer Note Taking Program

Thank you for your interest in volunteering your services as a peer note-taker. We appreciate your willingness to share your notes with a student that may experience difficulties with this task.  This will be integral to their success and ability to access material covered in class.

Due to the importance of this role, it is asked that you commit to the following prior to registering:

·       Regular attendance and taking detailed and legible notes in each course in which you are assigned for the entire length of the course

·       Notifying ARC of any pre-planned absences and/or changes in registration for classes in which you are assigned. 

·       Uploading the notes within 24 hours of the class

Please click on course / notes to create a profile and sign up as a note taker.

TIPS:

The following suggestions will not only help you be a strong note-taker for ARC but may also increase the effectiveness of your personal note-taking skills and strategies:

·       Be on time for each class. Please record all lecture information into your notes.

·       Date your notes and number pages to help keep your notes in their proper sequence.

·       If you are taking notes by hand, write as legibly as possible.

·       When new terminology is presented in class, write the entire word out and double-check spelling. Do not abbreviate terms the first time they are used and when you do use abbreviations, make sure their meanings are understood by the student.

·       Highlight any schedule changes, all exam and assignment dates, book titles and authors, and other very important information so that it stands out.

 

Taking and submitting notes

 

Note quality

Notes can be typed or handwritten as long as they are legible and neat.

Effective Note-Taking Tips from The Learning Centre at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

 

Format

It is not mandatory for you to provide typed notes. It is recommended that handwritten notes are scanned as a MS Word or PDF file, at high quality, rather than JPG. Following are free scanning and OCR (optical character recognition) app examples:

     

    How Mobile Scanning Apps Work – Made Simple

    Scanning apps turn your phone’s camera into a mini document scanner. Here’s how they do it, and why they’re better than just snapping a photo.

     

    How Scanning Works

    • Lay your document flat with a solid-colored background.
    • Open the app and point your camera at the document.
    • The app helps line up the edges and keeps the image steady.
    • It automatically adjusts for shakiness and lighting.
    • After the scan (which takes just seconds), you get a preview and can edit the colors or crop.
    • You can add more pages or start a new scan.

     

    Why Not Just Take a Photo?

    • A regular photo often isn’t clear enough—text can be blurry or distorted.
    • Photos aren’t searchable. Scanning apps use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to turn images into editable, searchable text.

     

    What Makes a Great Scanning App?

    1. Edge Detection: Finds the edges of your paper automatically to crop it perfectly.
    2. Export Options: Saves scans directly to cloud services like Google Drive or Dropbox.
    3. OCR Features: Converts scanned text so you can search, copy, and edit it.
    4. Multi-Page Scanning: Lets you scan multiple pages and turn them into a single document, even correcting curved pages like those in books.