Many college students are bad at taking notes, because they are slow writer or can’t divide their attention effectively. During note-taking, these students could miss out on a large part of what’s said by the lecturer. There are different ways for students to make sure that they can take note, without missing out on anything. The best tool for these students is voice recorder. They can use smartphones or tablets to record what’s said by the lecturers and the professors. There are numerous apps in Google Play Store and Apple Store for recording audio. When the recorded lecture isn’t clear or has low volume, some apps can enhance the audio recording so it can become more audible. It’s isn’t necessary to have crystal clear recording, but audible recording should be enough to allow students to understand things that lecturers say. Because modern mobile devices are equipped with large capacity storage, it should be possible to record the whole lecture session. Students could simply watch the lecture and make a few light notes.
Audio recorders could also be used during group discussions. There are information that we could gain from group discussions and it can be quite interesting to see how people have different views on certain things. It is useful to record audios during group discussions between four students who have different arguments about specific subject in college. It may take hours before everyone could come up with a consensus. Every little piece of information that we get from grioup discussion can be used when we write papers and other assignments. Recorded audio should give us accurate information about things that have been discussed. This kind of information gathering is useful in many situations at college. Debate sessions could also provide us with a wealth of information that is useful for our papers and exams. Students also have presentations on specific subjects and other than taking recorded audios, we may also take pictures of their presentation slides.
Recorded audio is also a good way to practice giving information. Smartphone camera could be more useful, but recorded audio is more practical in specific situations. We could record ourselves giving presentation and then listen to the playback. There are many things that we can learn from our own recorded audios. As an example, it can be quite surprising how often we say “ummmm”. It should also be quite easy to detect any kind idiosyncrasies in our speech patterns. By knowing our situation, we should already win half the battle. In this case, we should be able to easily correct our mistakes and we will be able to give much better presentation. Students have specialized situations where recorded audio can be more or less useful. Even so, accurate recorded audio in specific events should be able to improve our academic performance greatly. If the situation permits, it’s even better to use the camera to make videos of lectures, group debates and any discussion in the college.