Why You Should Take Digital Notes as an Engineering Student

[@sarubet8725]

I tried to use digital notes for a semestre and decided that paper was the way to go. Then, I took mechanical engineering classes. And man, those equations mean nothing without demonstrations with the shapes that are too time consuming to draw. I am switching to digital permanently next year.

[@DeepakKrishna11]

Excellent content. What I feel is that we must not completely neglect handwritten notes, I find it more easier to grasp and low stress to the eye while using hand notes. Also muscle memory can help us too.

[@BEngHielscher]

I totally agree, hand writing notes can have many benefits and should be utilised for learning new content. I also think muscle memory is an extremely important tool and plays a massive part in remember procedures. Thanks for sharing your thoughts Deepak! :)

[@ahsaninam2130]

I have been taking handwritten notes, you've convinced me to switch. I will start writing digital notes from next year (mainly coz im already half way through this semester).

[@BEngHielscher]

It really does change the game! Good luck for the rest of the semester :)

[@julienbougues6206]

Hey, I'm french and I am in first year in engineering school. I couldn't find any videos about surface pro for engineering studies, so I just want to thanks you. I'm going toi receive my surface in a few days ! So continue your videos, you even help people from other countries ! (Sorry if I made mistakes)

[@BEngHielscher]

Hi Julien, thanks for letting me know you like the videos, I am glad that I can help. Good luck with your first year engineering studies, you can do it! :)

[@georgee3401]

Excellent video. I’m retired from teaching university biology, and regret that my students from past decades didn’t have the clear advantages that digital note taking offer. Hmm… I regret that I didn’t have this when I was a student in the 1960s!

[@BEngHielscher]

Thanks George! I also wish that the technology was available earlier so that I could have started taking digital notes sooner. I now see school students as young as grade 3 having all their work that is being done in school completed on an iPad….. how awesome would it have been to look back on those days :)

[@daydreamdreams]

Really love this channel💝🫶🏻 so much info, glad i found your channel i guess it's been 9 or 10 months since I've subscribed. Really recommended channel for Civil engineering students/any students💘✨

[@BEngHielscher]

Thank you! I’m glad you are liking it :)

[@bertmclin]

Wow, you’re a G for this video man! Awesome and informative content 🙌🏻✨ Gonna start my degree in ME, wish me luck! :)

[@chamallow989]

I wanted to switch to digital notes and kept performing poorly. Then, last semester, I decided to switch back to paper, and while it didn't work for all of my subjects, I did end up getting a 20.75/20 on one of my finals. I had a small A5 notebook where I kept all or the corrections for the exercises in details, and to not make it messy, I would prepare the exercises on separate pieces of paper that I kept in a binder. I think it's also the best way to do it if you have a subject with long exercises that require you to go back and forth because you can decide to only use one side of the paper and just get a new sheet in order to have everything in front of you. Makes it a thousand times less frustrating.

[@anonymoususer4356]

Keep up the good work man.

[@BEngHielscher]

Thanks again for another kind comment! :)

[@BintuRashidan]

Agree… I used digital note taking for my diploma. It was beneficial , really. When Covid, we had online semester, we even submitted our homework through OneNote and our lecturer corrected our answer there. I used iPad Air gen4 btw. At beginning I don’t want it, but my mom insisted. I guess mom instinct are pretty accurate sometimes. Turn out, study n learning with iPad really useful. Not only I used digital note taking, I used iPad for memorising.. Goodnotes 5, OneNote n Files are the apps that I used frequently. I’m not a clever student, but thank god I managed to get CGPA 3.5 whole 4 semesters( Ill be in last sem within couple of weeks n still waiting 5th semester result). I’m very low confidence person actually, as I used to fail my past diploma 😢. It traumatize me. Im electronic Communication’s student.

[@BEngHielscher]

Thanks for sharing this :)

[@lilaclover1018]

See, I have tried multiple times, but I can never stick with digital notes. I end up doing slightly worse in my course than when I do handwritten notes, so I always end up switching back halfway through the semester. So, now I scan my notes at the end of the semester and upload them to onenote.

[@BEngHielscher]

When you were taking digital notes were you still handwriting them or were you typing them? Also I like the idea of scanning your notebook at the end of the semester and uploading to OneNote, keeps them safe and accessible :)

[@lilaclover1018]

@BEng Hielscher I was using my tablet and handwriting them with onenote, while I have gotten more used to it when doing practice problems and such, I can never seem to stick with them when using it for notes.

[@BEngHielscher]

Oh ok. Fair enough :)

[@buddyryeSE]

How do you feel about OneNote vs GoodNotes on the iPad? I'm 46 years old with 25 years of structural engineering experience, but I'm trying to modernize my hand-written calculations. Thanks and great content!

[@BEngHielscher]

I use an app called Notability to do my calculations on an iPad. I find this app to be perfect for work related stuff. Notability and GoodNotes are very similar and I’ve used both but at the end of the day I choose Notability. You can download both Notability and GoodNotes for free and try them out. Hope this helps :)

[@Zhinoi]

I tried digital but it was too distracting for me. I guess because I already draw doing it on paper was faster for me

[@Zhinoi]

As a fix I take pictures, put it in a pdf, then add text so I can search for topics

[@mahirkarim6884]

Hi, I like to know your opinion on remnote and the active recall method, can you please make a video on that.

[@BEngHielscher]

Hi Mahir, thanks for the suggestion! I will be making more study technique and note taking app reviews soon, stayed tuned :)

[@mohanadanan2109]

Excellent video, thank you so much!

[@BEngHielscher]

My pleasure, thanks for letting me know!

[@kn7899]

Hey, what do you think about writing tablets like Wacom

[@BEngHielscher]

I personally would prefer using a tablet that’s more like a computer rather than a book. I think for students your money would be better spent on something like an iPad or Surface Pro because they are more versatile devices

[@doomhammer6724]

Great video. I've been using the samsung tab s7 since I started learning as an engineering student, however, I can never use it to take handwritten notes during class. The reason is that te tablet reflects the light coming from the tightly placed ceiling lights into my eyes. I also can't sit next to windows for the same reason. Could you give me some advice how to deal with this issue?

[@BEngHielscher]

Hey thanks! Ah yes I’ve had this issue before. One solution that I’ve seen people do is to put a matte screen protector on their device. Give this a go :)

[@doomhammer6724]

Thanks for the advice! I actually tested this with my matte laptop screen. The advantages I see is that the reflection is now blury so my eyes don't want to focus on the reflected ceilling light all the time. (The reflection also appears to be a bit less bright, but barely noticeable.) The disadvantage is that it's still a bright spot that's now covering a larger area of the screen becouse of the bluring effect. This means a smaller portion of the screen can be seen well. Increasing the brightness solved this, and now I can read the text directly in front of the reflection too, however it doesn't feel the best for my eyes. I also experimented with different background colours. With a black background, the reflection is noticable even with max brightness. With a white one the reflection fades away much more even at half brightness. At full, it almost disappears. Of course this decreases battery life though. In conclusion, I think, based on my tests, a matte screen cover, a white background and a bit more brightness might make this problem easier to live with, but I'm not sure if it's good for vision. What about your case, did you manage to solve this reflection issue or avoid it somehow?

[@BEngHielscher]

Wow! Thanks for sharing this. You really have done some work on this! What I use to do to try and minimise the reflection is to adjust the angle my Microsoft surface pro was on so the light wasn’t in my eyes. Because the surface pro has a kickstand on the back you can get any angle you want which is helpful but at times this meant that it was not very ergonomic for my hand when writing.

[@doomhammer6724]

@@BEngHielscher Happy to share my experience! :) I guess i'll just try to avoid it when it is possible. Getting used to it might be possible but might have an eye damaging effect. Im not an expert in this.

[@noodle7788]

paper

[@nascentnaga]

do you use concepts app?

[@BEngHielscher]

I have played around with it a little bit but I want to spend some more time figuring it out because it seems like it could be a really useful app :)

[@nascentnaga]

@@BEngHielscher I use it for anything diagram related. The usage of layers, vector lines, and all the import addons is great. You can even export anything to DXF and CAD files. Its worth the price imo. That youtube channel Dazz uses it. a lot for examples. I personally use it to draw out ideas and free body diagrams and annotate over PDFs.

[@BEngHielscher]

Oh cool! Yeah it definitely seems to be one of the superior technical drawings apps. I’ve heard a few people rave about it. Those features you are mentioning are some of the reasons I decided to try it out. I plan to spend some more time working out how to use all the features soon