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AI Tools for Students

Take Notes & Organize Ideas

Taking notes is an essential skill for both the classroom and the workplace. There are many different ways to take notes, and it's helpful to try out different methods to find out which method works best for you.

AI-powered tools can listen, transcribe, and summarize group meetings or classes in a way that empowers you to be a more active participant while also capturing accurate notes automatically.

In this section, we'll spotlight one tool you can start using right now, and share a few options you could use to take your note taking to the next level.

Related content:

  • Taking Notes module on the Academic Skills Hub.

    Learn techniques to take better notes from lectures and readings to help you prepare for assignments, tests, and exams.

Otter.ai

Otter.ai is an AI-powered note taker and real-time AI transcription app you can use in classes (with approval from your professor), during group project meetings, or to talk through ideas on your own to find common themes you can explore in your assignments.

Otter.ai produces transcripts from real-time audio or recordings and creates automated summaries that include keywords to guide your studying and action items to let you know which tasks you need to do next.

This tool embeds AI in a couple key spots:

  • AI meeting assistant

    Otter.ai can join your online meeting as a guest to take meeting notes, summarize your discussions, and provide action items to complete.

  • Otter AI chat

    Use this chat bot to ask questions that pull answers directly from your notes. Can't remember which class your professor mentioned a certain concept? Ask the AI chat bot, and you can find the exact transcripts where those ideas were mentioned.

Note: Free Otter accounts allow for 300 monthly transcription minutes, 30 minutes per conversation, and transcribe 3 videos or audio recording total per user.

Check out the links below to learn more about using Otter.ai for your own note taking tasks:

Other AI-Powered Tools to Try

Curious to test out other note-taking apps?

Check out the options below—be aware that many AI-powered tools are only available as paid subscriptions.