Note: This is the second part of a five-part series exploring how artificial intelligence tools might be effectively integrated into the AVID Focused Note-Taking Process.
As with Step 1: Taking Notes, artificial intelligence can also be effectively integrated into Step 2 of the focused note-taking process, which involves processing the notes that have been taken.
Processing Notes
In the processing stage, students are thinking about their notes, reviewing them, and evaluating the relative importance of the information and ideas that they’ve captured. To do this, they engage with the notes by underlining, highlighting, circling, chunking, questioning, adding, and deleting information.
They do this in order to identify, select, sort, organize, and classify the main ideas and details. This step is critical in forming meaning and organizing the notes, both mentally and on paper.
Key Considerations
As students complete this step, it’s critical that they are the ones doing the difficult thinking since that cognitive struggle is where the learning happens. Because of this, we want to structure the use of AI in a way that enhances, rather than replaces, students’ critical thinking.
AI should be used as a thinking prompter. Students should do the initial hard work and then AI can be leaned upon to push them, helping them refine, question, and extend that initial thinking.
To make sure that students are in control of their learning, they should critically engage with their notes before using AI. In other words, students must annotate and process their notes before turning to AI. Additionally, every AI interaction should require a student follow-up involving some sort of response or decision by the student.
This protocol can be summed up and integrated with this simple three-step process:
- Students think.
- Students prompt the AI.
- Students make a decision about the AI output.
Integrating AI
Consider having students integrate these eight AI-infused strategies when processing their notes.
1. “Show AI Your Thinking First” Protocol
Students must first annotate their notes manually. This includes classic note-taking strategies such as highlighting key ideas and vocabulary, chunking related materials together, and writing notes and questions in the margins.
Annotating notes digitally will make the AI processing most effective. However, if students prefer taking notes on paper, they can take a picture of their finished notes and then upload the image into a chatbot. With this approach, it’s important to realize that some AI tools do not read and interpret text well. Chatbots that tend to work best include OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot.
Even when using the more compatible tools, AI analysis of an image can sometimes break down. For instance, if the handwriting is messy, the AI may interpret it incorrectly. Similarly, visual clues like circles, arrows, and color-coding can be misinterpreted or even ignored by the AI. Nonetheless, taking notes on paper and uploading an image of those notes is an option.
With digital notes, the original file can be uploaded directly into the prompting process for AI analysis.
Once students have annotated their notes, they can enter a prompt, such as: “Here are my annotated notes. What patterns or connections might I be missing?”
This process requires students to do the cognitive heavy lifting before getting feedback on their notes.
With the AI feedback in front of them, they should then review the insights and suggestions before ultimately deciding if they agree or disagree with them. They can then use that process and the related insights to revise their notes.
2. AI as a Question Generator, Not an Answer Source
Students begin by pasting in their annotated notes. They then enter a prompt like, “Generate five higher-level questions I should be asking about these notes.” Finally, students answer the questions posed to them, updating their notes as they go.
With this approach, the AI is helping to generate curiosity while prompting students to do the reasoning.
3. “Agree, Disagree, Revise” Routine
This strategy can be integrated into nearly all AI strategies.
Students ask the AI to identify main ideas from their notes using a prompt like, “What are the three to five main ideas of these notes?”
In response, students must review the AI output and agree or disagree before potentially revising or replacing their notes based on that reflection. To deepen thinking, students could be required to justify each decision that they make.
4. Chunking Check With Accountability
Once again, students do the hard work first by chunking their notes independently. They then ask the AI, “How would you chunk these notes?” Students compare the results and explain the differences.
This can help them think deeply about organization and classification of information. Students might like their approach better, or they might learn new strategies by studying the AI suggestions.
5. Priority Ranking With Justification
For this strategy, the students suggest their priority ranking for a concept related to the notes. It might even be to rank the most important concepts from the note-taking session as a whole. After providing their own ranking, they would ask the AI to complete a similar analysis.
The prompt might be: “Here are my top five concepts from this lesson ranked in order from most important to least important. Rank the ideas in my notes as you see them from most to least important.”
In response, the students must consider the AI suggestion and decide if they want to change their ranking. To make sure that they are critically thinking about any changes, students can be asked to provide their reasoning.
They can pair up with a classmate to share their process and results as well. This would add additional verbal processing and collaboration components.
6. Confusion Detector
For this option, students upload their notes and then input the following prompt: “Based on these notes, what might be confusing or unclear?” Students review the AI’s feedback and decide whether or not they agree with it.
Using this feedback, they can identify gaps in their note-taking and processing. This becomes a bit like getting feedback from their teacher or a peer regarding the quality and accuracy of their notes.
7. Add/Delete Challenge
Students upload their notes and ask, “What information here seems unnecessary or missing?” Students review the feedback and then decide what to add or delete based on the feedback.
In this step, AI is again suggesting, but students are the ones making the final decision.
8. Second Draft Partner
With this approach, students both annotate and revise their notes first. This ensures that they are thinking about them deeply enough to rearrange the captured ideas into more meaningful chunks.
Once they have completed this first revision, they upload the notes to AI and ask, “How could I improve the clarity and organization of these notes?” The AI is not seeing the raw, unprocessed notes, just the revised version.
In response, students review the suggestions and once again make final decisions about any revisions that they agree with. Not only can this help students improve their organizational skills, but it also requires them to think critically about their notes an additional time.
For all these strategies, AI is used as a thought partner. It prompts thinking opportunities for students and does not replace critical thinking.
It’s a little bit like an “AI sandwich” in that students think both first and last, and AI provides some valuable feedback in the middle. The pattern is always student, then AI, then student again. This sequence ensures that, although AI is helping to elevate the thinking, the process is guided by human thinking from start to finish.
AVID Connections
This resource connects with the following components of the AVID College and Career Readiness Framework:
- Instruction
- Rigorous Academic Preparedness
- Opportunity Knowledge
- Student Agency
- Insist on Rigor
Extend Your Learning
- The Five Phases of the Focused Note-Taking Process (AVID)
- ChatGPT (OpenAI)
- Gemini (Google)
- Copilot (Microsoft)
- NotebookLM (Google)