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Organization at college


Mom22ns
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Can you share with me how your college students organize paper such as notes and handouts? Our homeschool was virtually paperless. Notes were taken on laptops/iPads. There were no handouts. Anything I communicated, I communicated electronically. He will continue to take notes on his iPad and has accommodations that guarantee that will be allowed. He took Japanese classes at the local State U and did paper notes then and will probably use paper for math as well, but has very little experience handling paper. 

 

We need to figure out what kind of binders, files, or whatever to buy. I'd like to hear lots of options so that I can then take him to an office store and discuss and let him pick.

 

I'd love hearing favorite iPhone or iPad aps that people use to organize and schedule too. He uses iCal, but we are open to other tools. He is not open to paper organization systems. We've been paperless too long for paper to be anything but a nuisance no matter how much you love it :). 

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Can you share with me how your college students organize paper such as notes and handouts? Our homeschool was virtually paperless. Notes were taken on laptops/iPads. There were no handouts. Anything I communicated, I communicated electronically. He will continue to take notes on his iPad and has accommodations that guarantee that will be allowed. He took Japanese classes at the local State U and did paper notes then and will probably use paper for math as well, but has very little experience handling paper. 

 

We need to figure out what kind of binders, files, or whatever to buy. I'd like to hear lots of options so that I can then take him to an office store and discuss and let him pick.

 

I'd love hearing favorite iPhone or iPad aps that people use to organize and schedule too. He uses iCal, but we are open to other tools. He is not open to paper organization systems. We've been paperless too long for paper to be anything but a nuisance no matter how much you love it :). 

 

My students almost all take notes by hand. Physics has lots of equations and sketches, so typing on a laptop does not work well. A few students (less than 1%) take notes with a stylus on a tablet computer. Homework is to be turned in on paper, not electronically.

 

Some students use sectioned notebooks. One section for lecture notes, another section for homework. They keep handouts in the pockets of the notebook. Others use binders with tabs for the different types of work.

 

What exactly works best depends on the class. If the instructor makes lecture notes available to be printed before the lecture and in which to fill in extra notes, or if there are lots of handouts in class, binders work much better than notebooks.

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My students almost all take notes by hand. Physics has lots of equations and sketches, so typing on a laptop does not work well. A few students (less than 1%) take notes with a stylus on a tablet computer. Homework is to be turned in on paper, not electronically.

 

Fortunately for him, he is an English/Writing major and will never need college physics :).  He does have accommodations that allow anything that needs to be written to be typed, he has dysgraphia.

 

Some students use sectioned notebooks. One section for lecture notes, another section for homework. They keep handouts in the pockets of the notebook. Others use binders with tabs for the different types of work.

 

What exactly works best depends on the class. If the instructor makes lecture notes available to be printed before the lecture and in which to fill in extra notes, or if there are lots of handouts in class, binders work much better than notebooks.

 

His accommodations also require teacher to provide lecture notes if they have them, so taking notes on their outlines/notes is a very real possibility, although odds are he will still mostly use his iPad using Notability and both a keyboard and stylus.

 

No matter his note taking method, he still need something with pockets or to 3 hole punch everything - something to deal with paper.

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I have a ScanSnap and just love it. You might just assume that paper will be lost quickly and train him to scan everything ASAP and organize things the way he's been used to organizing his electronic notes. If he plans to scan text and edit it later, look for a scanner bundled with ABBYY OCR software.

 

There are also iPad and iPhone scanner apps. Two to try are:

 

Scanner Pro by Readdle .. Good all around scanner, backs up to Dropbox, Evernote, lots of others

Microsoft Lens - scans to Word or OneNote, if he has an office subscription

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I have a ScanSnap and just love it. You might just assume that paper will be lost quickly and train him to scan everything ASAP and organize things the way he's been used to organizing his electronic notes. 

 

I hadn't thought of that. Thank you for the idea!

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My dd found that a small light-weight (cardboard) file box with hanging folders was a much easier way to organize hard-copy handouts, returned essays with prof comments etc.  Attempts to file things in a 3 ring binder have always ended up with a large backlog of unorganized papers spread all over her desk waiting to be hole-punched and filed (never happened) whereas she finds it easy to empty the loose papers directly from her backpack into the class file in the file box sitting on her desk.

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My dd found that a small light-weight (cardboard) file box with hanging folders was a much easier way to organize hard-copy handouts, returned essays with prof comments etc.  Attempts to file things in a 3 ring binder have always ended up with a large backlog of unorganized papers spread all over her desk waiting to be hole-punched and filed (never happened) whereas she finds it easy to empty the loose papers directly from her backpack into the class file in the file box sitting on her desk.

 

This makes a lot of sense to me. Then a folder would be for transportation or maybe the current unit's papers instead of getting clogged with everything forever.

 

More ideas? 

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My husband (professor) and math major son use these plastic folders with a middle thingie that you can put papers into.... Like a report cover, kwim? One for each class. Pad of paper for taking notes which then get put into the appropriate folder. No filing or arranging in the pockets tho, they just stuff, and generally they don't ever put papers into that middle section. But that middle section seems ideal for the syllabus and important things. Just not everything.

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My husband (professor) and math major son use these plastic folders with a middle thingie that you can put papers into.... Like a report cover, kwim? One for each class. Pad of paper for taking notes which then get put into the appropriate folder. No filing or arranging in the pockets tho, they just stuff, and generally they don't ever put papers into that middle section. But that middle section seems ideal for the syllabus and important things. Just not everything.

 

That is what I always used. Ds used that method when he only had one class (DE), but I'm concerned he'll get things confused with multiple folders. He is organizationally challenged (serious EF issues) and needs a no fail system. I know there is no such thing, but I still want to help him find something he can make work.

 

Who else? 

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That is what I always used. Ds used that method when he only had one class (DE), but I'm concerned he'll get things confused with multiple folders. He is organizationally challenged (serious EF issues) and needs a no fail system. I know there is no such thing, but I still want to help him find something he can make work.

 

Who else?

If he uses folders, suggest he assign each class a different color.

 

Consider color coding the hanging file system a pp described earlier. You can buy hanging files in multiple colors. All the handouts for class A go in the red hanging file a class B in the yellow etc. you can get notebooks or folders for each class that are the same colors as the associated hanging file.

 

Whatever you do, involve him in setting up the system. A good system only works if he student feels comfortable using it and does use it.

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Whatever you do, involve him in setting up the system. A good system only works if he student feels comfortable using it and does use it.

 

This is exactly the plan - taking him to pick things out and create the system. I just want to have ideas to present.

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Son's CC uses an online portal for kids to log in to check on assignments, notes, syllabus etc. Not every instructor parks an online copy of the syllabus on the class site but it was helpful for son to explore the site and realize that he COULD access syllabi that way.

 

I usually scan a copy of the syllabus and save it to my google drive and share it with him. I start a folder for every class and this way we can scan and park electronic copies of assignments there. He will start taking responsibility for this soon, still transitioning him to it.

 

The first semester, when he was getting used to CC for the first time, we devised a system where he could save handouts in a see-through pocket file (now he uses a binder) and he stapled every class's syllabus to the corresponding notebook. The second semester, he received a multi-page syllabus...and stapling didn't work each time he needed to read the syllabus. :p But he has started using notebooks with pockets for the syllabus now.

 

He sits right next to a bookshelf when he works. I've cleared one shelf for him to keep his textbooks, files and notebooks. Handouts can go into IKEA magazine boxes when he's done with them for the week/weeks needed. We have binders for every subject arranged neatly on the bottom shelf of our bookshelf for him to save previous semester's work. After every two semesters, during holidays, we clean them all out and store in clear tote boxes in the garage. I thought to print each semester's schedule (printed from online portal) and tack both on top of each box so we know which year's work and which subjects are inside the totes.

 

Still a work in progress...trying to find a system that works well (and tweaking as we go) usually takes more than a semester (for us at least).

 

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