<p>This paper presents a purpose-built web-based application designed to guide students through a note-taking process in an initial teacher education (ITE) classroom in higher education. We wanted to understand how a digital application can support the note-taking process. An off-the-shelf digital tool does not align with the staged process in which the ITE students would engage with the concepts of guided reading and writing throughout their seminar. A purpose-built application supplements the ITE seminar structure and achieves the goal of supporting students to prepare conceptual definitions in a manner that aimed to minimise cognitive load on the user. The application called ‘Reflect and Refract’ was used across 11 two-hour seminar sessions with four educators and 189 students to facilitate note-taking as the ITE students prepared their definitions. A mixed methods approach was employed to evaluate the use of Reflect and Refract, with data recorded through the application along with interviews with higher education students post seminar. The results show how a purpose-built application can support ITE students’ note-taking behaviours, reduce cognitive load and help with the redundancy effect by supporting focused action, with the staged approach supporting helping students make purposeful decisions around note-taking to support their concept development. Other studies prepared by the authors focus on the learning outcomes as a result of the seminar activity, with this paper putting a focus on how bespoke digital technologies can be designed to support all stages ITE seminar activity. The opportunities afforded by the online digital environment to progressively review and refine during the staged note-taking process represents a strategic contribution of digital technology for use in the higher education classroom.</p>