President of Harbin Institute of Technology, Zhou Yu, has written an article entitled “Make taking notes a required life lesson” to advocate that students regain the traditional habit after he found that many students today do not take notes in class. President Zhou also held a focus group to discuss and review students’ note-taking.

Zhou points out in the article that fewer and fewer students take notes in class with more diversified ways of learning under the development of the Internet and multimedia. It may seem easier with all the high-tech learning resources available, however without deep reflection and digestion, a lot of knowledge students learn in class soon fleets away.

According to a research, students who take notes in class remember 7 times as much as those who do not. Zhou also mentions many distinguished professors at HIT and famous scholars also have the habit of taking notes. In the museum of HIT, there is an exhibition of notes and homework from HIT students and teachers in the 1950s and 1960s, who later all became well-known scholars.

Sophomore Cao Yu was one of the students invited to the focus group. At the end of discussion, the notes of all the students who attended were handed in. Each one’s were reviewed and commented by President Zhou. After Cao got his notes back, the comment Zhou left on his was “you will have a lifelong benefit from the habit of taking notes.”

In the “most beautiful notes” contest held by HIT this year, three students’ notes were selected and reserved at the museum of HIT.