Peer Notetaker Instructions

Thank you so much for volunteering as a peer note taker! Your service is invaluable to students who need this kind of note taking support. Take a look at the information below to learn more about your next steps.

Peer Note Taker Step-By-Step Heading link

Notes are shared anonymously via a Box folder. The DRC will send you an invitation to join the folder, but in order to access it, you will need to make sure you have activated your UIC Box account (you should only have to do this once).

Activate Box: to quickly activate your Box account follow this Box Activation Link. Select “University of Illinois Chicago” if prompted, and toggle the switch to “on.” After this you should be able to log in with your UIC username and password at box.uic.edu.

In order to access, you will also need to make sure you have Duo Factor Authentication set up. Here is more information on Duo and how to set it up.

If you are having trouble, the DRC student’s DSS may be able to help, or you can contact the friendly folks at UIC’s Tech Solutions by calling 312-413-0003 and then press 9 to talk to a consultant. If you explain the situation they should be able to walk you through it.

Note takers are responsible for taking a full set of notes for lectures and discussions. Sometimes notes may also be necessary for labs — a good guideline is to take notes on anything that you as a student would want to be able to review and study later.

Since you are sharing the notes, we recommend using the Outlining Method. Here is a description of the Outlining Method with examples.

Outlining may not always work for science and math based courses — generally the most important thing is to jot down all key ideas and examples that illustrate these ideas. Here are some Good Strategies for Lecture Notes to consider and implement, but remember not to use any non-standard abbreviations or shorthand that would be difficult for another person to interpret.

How to upload notes

If your notes are in digital format, you can upload them directly to the Box folder. If you take hand written notes, you can scan or use your phone camera and a scanning app to digitize them and then upload to Box.

Please make sure that the file you upload is titled with the name of the class and the date of the class for easy access and organization — you can edit the title after uploading.

We ask that notes are uploaded within 24 hours of class whenever possible, or by the end of the week for asynchronous courses.

At the end of the semester, you can swing by the DRC’s office at 1200 W. Harrison Street, Suite 1070 to pick up your UIC Bookstore gift card at the front desk! Thank you again for your work!