Need ideas for organising uni notes

After a few weeks into term, lecture notes and assignments end up all over the place. Any tips that actually help keep stuff organised without spending ages sorting every day?

Reply 1

De Montfort University

Official Rep

Original post

by Keneth_Park

After a few weeks into term, lecture notes and assignments end up all over the place. Any tips that actually help keep stuff organised without spending ages sorting every day?

Hi there,

Yes, I have a few tips. I tend to use note-taking apps designed for that specific purpose. Choose Notion if you don't mind your files being stored on their servers (even though they claim everything is encrypted). Or choose Obsidian if you want to have your notes locally, but with Obsidian you will not have [at least by default] synchronisation between devices.

A few tips for organising notes in those apps. Firstly, come up with some categorisation/numeration strategy. For example, all uni notes will start with "UNI", or ideally some number. For each category of notes you can come up with custom number / logic, so you always have notes organised. Secondly, use embedded PDF feature, where you can embed PDF files with your lecture slides right into your notes. This way you will have everything in one place.

Let me know if you have any questions,
Ilya,
Cyber Security student at De Montfort University :smile:

Reply 2

Keneth_Park

Do third party file managers work. Do you have any experience?

Reply 3

ARUStudents

Official Rep

Original post

by Keneth_Park

After a few weeks into term, lecture notes and assignments end up all over the place. Any tips that actually help keep stuff organised without spending ages sorting every day?

Hey there,

Totally get that. For me, once the term gets busy, it’s easy for notes and assignments to scatter everywhere (mainly on my desktop). I found that the following help ease the organisation aspect though:

Try and keep everything in one digital “home”. Install and test apps like Notion, Google Drive, or OneNote. All of them allow you to store lecture notes, PDFs, and links!

Use naming rules (this hack has been taught in my course and it’s super helpful once you’ve set it up). For example, ‘ModuleName_Week1_Lecture’ or ‘Assignment2_Draft’. I found it saves a ton of searching later.

Try and sync notes across devices so you always have them with you. These can also be updated in real time, so if you need a super quick note, you can just type it on your phone.

If you prefer to use paper, try and allocate one binder per module.

The system doesn’t necessarily have to be perfect, just simple and consistent! I hope this helped, let me know if you have any more questions! Best of luck! :smile:

Sabina

Reply 4

De Montfort University

Official Rep

Original post

by Keneth_Park

Do third party file managers work. Do you have any experience?

Hi again,

What do you mean by third party file managers? Could you please give some examples you are considering?

Ilya,
Cyber Security student at De Montfort University

Reply 5

Keneth_Park

Original post

by De Montfort University

Hi again,
What do you mean by third party file managers? Could you please give some examples you are considering?
Ilya,
Cyber Security student at De Montfort University

File managers like google file manager and others like cx file explorer app. I got to know that these are for keeping files organized, so I asked, thinking you might have any experience. I'd wait for your response on this.

Reply 6

ARU Graduate

Official Rep

Original post

by Keneth_Park

After a few weeks into term, lecture notes and assignments end up all over the place. Any tips that actually help keep stuff organised without spending ages sorting every day?

Hey!

I totally get that, it doesn’t take long before everything ends up scattered across random notebooks, downloads, and folders! A bit of structure early on makes such a difference later when deadlines hit.

What really helped me was keeping things simple but consistent.

For handwritten notes - I used one notebook for all my lectures rather than juggling loads. At the top of each new page, I’d write the module name, lecture title, and date, that way, it was easy to flick back through and find what I needed. I also used those sticky page dividers with labels (like Anatomy or Week 3) so I could jump straight to the right section without flipping through everything.

For digital work - On my laptop, I had one main folder for Uni, then inside that, folders for each year. Within each year, I made term folders, and inside those, folders for each module or assignment. So it looked something like this:

Uni > Year 1 > Term 1 > Physiology > Assignment draft.

Every document had a clear title…something like “Reference list” or “reference list & notes” so I could find it easily later on.

I always had one document dedicated just to references & notes… under each reference, I’d type any relevant notes or key points. This made writing assignments so much easier because all my notes were already typed up and I could see exactly which sources I needed to cite without digging through everything again.

Once you’ve got a system that makes sense to you, it’s easy to keep up with…you only need to spend a couple of minutes after class saving or labelling things properly. It saves so much stress when revision or deadlines come around because everything’s exactly where you need it.

I hope this helps you create some structure! Good luck, Sophie 🙂

Reply 7

EssexStudentRep

Official Rep

Original post

by Keneth_Park

After a few weeks into term, lecture notes and assignments end up all over the place. Any tips that actually help keep stuff organised without spending ages sorting every day?

Hi @Keneth_Park 👋

Hope you are well. Digital versions are always useful, i usually do my notes via word and then create folders in my onedrive so everything is there ready for me and easy to access. There are also notetaking apps that could help you as well. If you prefer paper notes, using a binder is helpful since you can put everything in plastic wallets week by week and tuck it into the binder 🙂 Hope this helps!

Essex Student Rep- Lavanya 💜

Reply 8

hallamstudents

Official Rep

Original post

by Keneth_Park

After a few weeks into term, lecture notes and assignments end up all over the place. Any tips that actually help keep stuff organised without spending ages sorting every day?

Hi!

I second what lots of people have said here - using apps like notion are really good for organising notes and I find that I can keep all of mine quite organised in places like this. It's good as you can group certain things together and I find it really clear which things go together if that makes sense so you know exactly where to look for things and it is super organised.

I also like to just have my files saved to my computer and I have lots of folders saved with each module and then each specific lecture in the module. I think this is helpful too and I know if I just want something quickly I will look there first and I also like to just know things are in more than one place.

You can make folders on google drive too and I also like to do this as you don't lose your work if something was to happen to your computer so I always feel better having things on here too!

In terms of physical notes if you have any of these, keeping them in folders organised by module is a good idea and will help them to stay organised. If I ever have any paper notes or handouts etc, I always store them in files as I always lose random bits of paper or forget why I have them!

I hope some of this helps,

Lucy -SHU student ambassador 🙂

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