I’m having trouble taking notes for Calculus 3, and I was wondering if anyone who took this subject/class would be willing to share their workflow as a way for me to get some inspiration.
Hey ODKhub!
I happen to be in Calculus 3 right now, so I do have some experience. My workflow seems to work pretty well, but I know that it could use improvement, so if anyone has comments please share!
Structure of My Class
- Monday, Wednesday Friday class with Thursday recitation
- Reading quizzes before each class
- Homework assignment every week
- Exams/Tests every 4-5 weeks
Workflow
- Read and take notes from textbook before class (then take reading quiz)
- Go to class and take notes again on the same topic that I read about
- Input notes into RemNote
a. I’ve been using a drawing tablet to take notes using OneNote on my PC. I only take notes this way when reading the textbook. In class, I take notes using a paper notebook and pencil.
b. By “input notes”, I mean exporting my OneNote page as a .pdf, uploading it to RemNote, and copying over the main topics and ideas. Also, while doing this, I look over my notes that I took in my paper notebook and transfer any new ideas that I learned in class but not in the textbook. - Study math RemNote cards in queue every day (using spaced repetition).
At first, I wasn’t great at keeping up this workflow, because I didn’t exactly know how to make effective cards. In all honesty, it has taken some trial and error to find out how to make effective cards and I’m still learning along the way.
Here are some tips for making cards:
- Use clozes for concepts and ideas that can’t easily be summed up with a single word or two
- Use concept cards for “vocab words” like Vector or Critical Point
- Because Calculus 3 can be very visual, don’t be afraid to include pictures of 3D graphs, contour diagrams, vector fields, etc.
- Don’t be afraid of using LaTeX to help test yourself on small equations and expressions that you use a lot, such as the relations between cylindrical coordinate systems and Cartesian coordinate systems.
So far, I haven’t found a great way to practice math within RemNote other than just learning and memorizing concepts and ideas. Still, RemNote has helped me to learn the concepts better which in turn helps me to understand my homework assignments more. Because there is a lot of problem solving in math, you will always have to practice solving real problems in addition to learning the concepts.
Also, I haven’t read this post or links attached to it in depth, but they might help. #remnote:workflow-sharing
As someone who has taught Calc 3 several times, I think for this level of material it’s probably best to only use spaced repetition for definitions, statements of important theorems (say using cloze) and maybe a few representative example problems, which could be tested one step at a time in list format. It’s more important to get practice working a variety of problems than trying to do a lot of memorization.
It’s more important to get practice working a variety of problems than trying to do a lot of memorization.
I’m starting to notice that too. I wish I could mark more than one solution in this post because you definitely make great points. Thank you for responding!
Hey ODKhub! I graduated with a Math degree 2 years ago (I didn’t have RemNote back then) so take this with a grain of salt. I recently made a video exploring how I would have studied if I’m still taking calculus. Note types mentioned:
- Definition and Notation
- Properties and Formulas
- Common Derivatives/Integrals
- Graphs
- Theorems
- Proofs
- Practice Problems
Feel free to check out the video here 