I’ve read hundreds of research papers over the last few years.

One of the most useful practices I developed was creating timeless research notes. They took various forms, but the style I keep going back to is a 5 Minute Paper Summary (5MPS). It’s a cross between visual and written notes and, as the name implies, it’s a quick and concise summary of a paper’s key elements:

Research Question - what they set out to find

Background - underlying theory

Methods & Results - what they did and found

Key Takeaways - how it can be applied in a classroom

Here’s one of my 5MPSs for an active learning paper.