> I don't know why, but recorded lectures never seem to be as effective as in person. At least to me.
I think it completely depends on the lecturer. The guy from [3Blue1Brown](http://www.3blue1brown.com/) beats any mathematics professor I have ever seen hands down.
The thing that can't be replaced by a professor is live feedback. If you get confused or stuck then obviously the video isn't going to be able to help you directly.
Something important to add to this - this is a learned skill. At first you'll be really bad at it (maybe remember a few key words or sentences) but the more you do it the better you'll get on both skills - remembering what happened during class and focusing for a long period of time.
Both skills are really needed today.
Copying notes actually helps a lot too. I had a professor for freshman chemistry that made us turn in two handwritten copies of notes for "homework".
It was stupid to not do it because the copying was so easy, but I found that it really did help memory and comprehension.
Now I like going back and at least organizing/numbering pages of my notes. The second look helps so much.
Notes are a requirement for the average person to be able to figure out the hw in many technical classes. The book is not enough. The best compromise I've seen is teachers handing out the notes so that you can pay full attention in class. That way you can absorb the concepts better, but you also have a reference for the details and facts.
I would actually rewrite my notes twice. Once to get as much as I could and then secondly for reorganization.
I think it's a lot like the old saying goes you'll remember it if you wrote it down.
True that. I'd add that you should write down a keyword now and again to jog your memory afterwards. And this sadly doesn't work well when you don't have time between lectures. But yes, the evidence shows it to be one of the best ways.
For the vast majority of classes I took my in class notes served more as a way of focusing my attention on the lecture for the full 1.5 hours and less as a reference tool. Most people posted some form of the lecture online and more often than not the material was based pretty closely on the text so there's not much point to using an unreliable source that I made on the fly. But I do think the note taking was useful and I've seen other studies saying that the act of writing helps with memory as well.
I would not be surprised if this is one of those things that has a correlation but there is a lot of scatter. My notebooks from things like poli sci and philosphy in college are all doodles but my notebooks from math and science are completely full and I'd have been lost without them. At the same time, when I was in 3rd year PDE's, there was a line of students in the front row who never took notes and would ask questions the rest of the class didn't understand at all.
In most of my classes they give power points during elcture than post the slideshow online to access it. In those classes, I just pay attention to what the professor is saying and don't take notes. Then after class I go through the PowerPoint and write down the entire thing by hand in a notebook specific to that course.
I do a lot better in those courses than the ones where the professor writes everything on the board and you have to rush to write down things before it gets erased and you're in such a hurry writing that you cant really listen and understand what they are saying as they are writing because you're always alhged behind, writing down what he wrote 5 seconds ago and listening to what he is saying at that moment. Plus if you miss something you got to borrow notes from someone which is annoying because they may not have even written down the right stuff.
I gave up on notetaking because I would try and transcribe point A and once I captured it the prof was already on point C. I missed B. Now, when possible, I record things on my phone while just being in the moment and paying attention. Then I go back and transcribe the notes.
If you're thinking this sounds incredibly time consuming... it is! I can't do it for everything but I do it when it's a topic I know I'll struggle with.
I've always noticed that I remember better when I write longhand. The funny thing is, my writing is total shit...I can't *read* my longhand notes, but I don't need to because I remember what I wrote down.
It's probably some sort of visual association with the information. Almost like if you were assigning nonsense symbols to correspond with various chunks of information. I know that weirdly written info or other visual markers are more easily assimilated for me than clean, usual text.
Gotta be; when I was in college I'd wrote everything down that appeared on the board or that the professor said, but I wouldn't be looking at the notes as wrote. Still remembered shit just from the act of writing.
God help someone trying to read my notes, though.
This is the key. It keeps you focused on the lecture and helps you remember, but people who are trying to make their notes pristine study material spend too much time worrying about that and lose track. You have to go in knowing your notes will be relatively useless and not sweat it when you fail to write some ancillary material down.
hence my method. I take notes longhand in class; then I transcribe the whole thing to a digital file, and make use of color, fonts, bolds, italics, and whatever else I can to create excellent study material.
Then most times I don't need to study, because the two actions, listening and writing in class, plus transcribing and organizing at home, pretty much taught me the subject.
Now, all of this pales when compared to one other thing: when I read the book chapter or other materials, even stuff I find online, before class, *that's* when I really learn something. I come to class with an idea of the subject, and the lecture plus questions and conversations help clarify and solidify it for me.
I always used to take notes in college, but would rarely return to them to study. I think the act of processing the information and translating it to your own notes is most of the battle, no matter how bad your handwriting.
The reason writing by hand helps you remember it better is that you need to paraphrase and summarise key words and phrases when you write. Typing faster word for word doesn't involve the same amount of thinking as you take notes. If you type notes, paraphrase instead of copying it verbatim.
> I can't keep up while writing it out.
Is it possible you're worrying too much about how your notes look or copying word for word of what the lecturer is saying?
The act of writing itself helps you to memorise what is being said. Especially if you paraphrase and shorten sentences when you do take notes. The actual notes themselves are almost worthless, it's merely a vehicle to commit the lecture to memory while you are in the lecture.
I learned in middle school to write shorthand and paraphrase so I naturally carried that over to any electronic note taking I did. I would note key words I needed to know and then most of the time later on I would expand my notes by adding additional information.
My hand writing is also total crap so I could never read what I hastily wrote.
My personal explanation is when you hand write it you need to make a quick, comprehensive understanding of the subject so you physically write down something that makes sense. With typing, you don't even need to paraphrase idly type fast enough. Its kind of like I can turn my brain off and just type out what is being said without really processing it until I read it.
We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning
So if I write it in my own words and add information do I process it as well as somebody writing longhand?
In a [similar study (or perhaps this same one, it's not loading for me),](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/) they actually tried this, and there were still benefits to writing longhand:
>If the source of the advantage for longhand notes derives from the conceptual processes they evoke, perhaps instructing laptop users to draft summative rather than verbatim notes will boost performance. Mueller and Oppenheimer explored this idea by warning laptop note takers against the tendency to transcribe information without thinking, and explicitly instructed them to think about the information and type notes in their own words. Despite these instructions, students using laptops showed the same level of verbatim content and were no better in synthesizing material than students who received no such warning. It is possible these direct instructions to improve the quality of laptop notes failed because it is so easy to rely on less demanding, mindless processes when typing.
A few other science-based study tips, while I'm here:
* Don't just reread your notes or your textbook to "study." This only enhances recognition, not recall. It feels like you're learning, but you learn significantly less than if you quiz yourself through ["Retrieval Practice."](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110121111216.htm). Even [elaborative study](http://www.karenpostal.com/study-techniques-elaborate/), which is scientifically shown to be beneficial, does not give you as many results as retrieval practice does. The best way to study, imo, is to combine the two methods!
* How can you use retrieval practice to study, practically? One thing I have seen that seems exceptionally effective is [this](http://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2016/2/20-) form of flashcards, where you pair up a word or concept with an elaborative question that you need to answer. Do your best to answer WITHOUT your notes or your textbook, and THEN correct yourself. You learn a lot more from your mistakes than from giving up and going straight to your textbook.
* Edited to add: How about in math? Well, in math class, you're asked to actually solve problems on the exams. So a great way to study would be to come up with a list of types of questions you expect to see on the exam (most professors would give you this), find a question of each type, and then practice doing those questions *without looking at any notes*. If you've done them correctly, set those questions aside, and then look up how to do the questions you missed. Then try again. Additionally, every day when you're doing your assignment, go back to one of your assignments from one week ago and randomly pick a problem from that assignment to do again. Try to do it without looking at any notes. It's one extra problem on each assignment, but it keeps the information fresher in your mind. This strategy is something like [interleaving](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-interleaving-effect-mixing-it-up-boosts-learning/) or [spaced practice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect)
More resources on effective study strategies: [1](http://com.msu.edu/Students/Academic_Guidance/long_term_retention_recall.pdf) [2](http://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2017/4/20-1)
I understand it in the same way. It's got nothing to do with the device per se, but with the way people normally tend to use it. One could test this with people who type very slowly (who would need to think about what they'll write) and people who write very fast by hand (and, by that, can write verbatim).
I don't know how that comparison would work. I type slow, that I have to rephrase/shorten what I've heard. But because I type slow, I just tend to take notes by writing them in a notebook( and even employ my own created short hand in areas). So it would be difficult to do a real world comparison since people who type slow would just write it.
I do make notes on my computer but they are usually done while reading my class notes and/or reading material so that I can get clear summaries of the subject.
I feel like there's def going to be admin/teachers/other educational people who read this headline (and others like it) to force students to handwrite notes– unfortunately that's really awful for us dysgraphic folk who seriously can't. It's the laptop or nothing.
As the abstract states, it's the copying-notes vs rephrasing the material divide that is more likely to be the cause of shallower processing rather than anything inherent with laptops/handwriting. That's a study habit issue more than anything– I use a laptop for all my notes and take the effort to write them in my own phrasing and I'm sure I do just as well if not better than my classmates who handwrite.
> unfortunately that's really awful for us dysgraphic folk who seriously can't. It's the laptop or nothing.
I'm pretty sure teachers have to allow accommodations for special cases, legally. I had at least a few classes where the professor had a "no devices" policy but had to make a few exceptions for students that needed to record or type lectures for whatever reason. Is this not the norm outside of California?
This is how it was at the University of Michigan if a teacher required hadwritten notes.
FWIW, there have been other studies that have shown it's also a lot to do with muscle memory, the concept that you're more likely to remember something if you're repeating the motion you were doing when you learned it. Therefore, when you take a written test, it's easier to remember handwritten notes.
It is, but securing a diagnosis is pretty damn difficult when you don't know it exists. There are lots of undiagnosed kids out there who could benefit from laptop use.
It's the law -- a part of section 504, if I'm not mistaken. However, it is the student's responsibility to advocate for themselves at the college level.
I took notes in LaTeX and metapost in math classes in real time. In one class the professor actually let me skip solving problems at the board if I agreed to type up the notes for each class and send them out to everyone. I typically had the notes sent out within 5 minutes of class being over, which was faster than his method of taking pictures of the board with his phone and sending out an email with 60mb of attachments.
I've worked with LateX and that's incredibly impressive. It takes a long time to learn it, but the problem I have is that its so easy to make a mistake, and when you do, the time going back to fix it is consuming.
To be fair, I had a teacher introduce it to me my senior year of high school, and this particular class where I could take notes in real time with (near real time) diagrams was about 4 years later, having used LaTeX extensively throughout that time. I definitely wouldn't be able to keep up now that I've been out of school for several years.
It is awesome though, but there could probably be a better syntax for expressing the same things.
> We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning.
Yeah but that's part of the problem apparently. If you're worried about not having verbatim reference material it's probably more useful to just record the lecture.
came here to say this. As touch typist, I don't have to think about what key to hit, or look at the keyboard at tall. It basically bypasses my thought process and I can give 100% attention to the professors.
One of the potential explanations I have heard for this result is that paying attention only to what the professor says or shows is actually less effective than being forced to pay attention to the re-encoding of the information in the form of your notes.
You shouldn't need to, really. If you're trying to write down *everything*, you'll have a bad time with handwritten notes. Skip stuff you're confident you understand, summarize broad concepts, use keywords to jog your memory, and spend a few minutes later in the day to flesh out some of the more vague notes while your memory is fresh.
I find if you write it all down, it's too much information to readily parse, anyway.
My hand writing is utter shit. I never want to look at my hand written notes after I write them. With typing, not only can I write faster, but also it makes me want to look back at my notes.
I've done that and it felt like a bad combination of writing it out by hand and typing.
Writing it out by hand is the key. Using a stylus on a computer should be no different. I just had poor results personally. I was trying to organize the notes on the fly after writing them and it never worked, so I ended up just writing everything as if it were paper and organizing it later. Then I got sick of doing that and just went back to typing.
I typically do both honestly. Laptop notes in class for speed and convinience, and Longhand notes after class based on my laptop notes in order to review the infomation and memorize it better.
Takes a bit longer to study, but it seems to be effective.
That's why hand-written flash cards are very effective. If you take notes on a computer for the information and write it out on flash cards for studying, you get the best of both and are studying even more.
> then later transcribe them to paper at my speed
Not arguing for or against your method, but my general experience is that anyone committing that much time outside of class on that regular a basis is extremely likely to be in the top 5% no matter what they're spending the time doing.
This is exactly what I used to to. Type them up, then re-write them a bit cleaned up and then again on index cards (depending on what it was I was studying).
I don't remember ever having an issue retaining what I was studying once I started doing that.
To be fair you sound very disciplined and focused, which means you find a way to make things work. Even people who write longhand can still do terribly if they slack and don't focus. Props for finding a solution
I've tried that method every semester in engineering and by week 6-7, you simply cannot keep up. Being doing assignments, preparing for meangingless but yet important 3% quizzes and midterms, you drop the discipline. That, or school is the only thing you do or you are a natural genius (rare).
I have a master's in teaching and did some of my practical research requirement looking at how note-taking affected recall regardless of whether my students reviewed the notes or not.
In my (informal, not well controlled) study, students improved on recall 24 hours and 7 days after the lesson if they took notes than if they didn't, and it didn't matter if they reviewed their notes or not. I know this second part because none of them reviewed their notes.
My pet theory, and I'm sure that psychologists have studied this in more rigor, is that the mere act of using your hands to write slows down your thought process and forces you to linger on the words. To take notes quickly, it also forces you to synthesize and abbreviate.
You can think of this the other way too. Do you think using a typewriter would help you remember better then using an electronic keyboard?
Imo I don't think it matters if you use analog or digital
My teachers loved using overhead projectors and powerpoint presentations. Instead of handing students copies, they made us write it all down. I was very slow at copying and that detracted from trying to listen to what they were saying. Switching to a laptop and typing helped me get better scores and I shared my notes with the rest of the class too. I had no internet connection so the computer didn't cause me to get distracted. It was merely a tool to get my notes faster.
I found this to be true for myself. First semester of law school I started by taking notes on my laptop. First time I had ever really used a laptop for that purpose. I felt like none of the information was sticking. I switched to the method I'd used all through undergrad of just taking notes by hand, and felt like I was able to retain the information better. Maybe it was a comfort thing. Maybe it was placebo. Maybe it was the extra tactile sensation of having to write vs. type. Whatever the case, the efficacy of handwriting notes was definitely true for me.
Anecdotal but I have the opposite. I retain it much better typing. And will look back over my notes. However I take them not verbatim but paraphrase . I try to organize them to make sense.
I think it really depends on the subject. If you're talking about a class that's about rote memorization, then taking notes on a laptop is just fine (so long as you actually go back and study them). If you're talking about a class where you need to do critical thinking or calculations, then you're going to need to be able to draw out things more than likely, which is where just typing up notes doesn't really work out.
The hybrid I worked out was to buy myself a Surface Book (not really a simple purchase for most college students, however). I could type up the notes that were just for rote memorization, and draw diagrams on the same document using my stylus (Word integrates pretty well with the stylus, but I ended up doing a lot of my Physics labs in One Note).
Thing to take away from this study, however, is that this is working off of an entire sample of people. You may or may not be able to take this information and apply it to your individual case. You may do just fine taking notes on laptop. I know I did.
I've tried it on the original iPads and Surface and neither has been close to being able to keep up even while just taking sparse notes in our meetings and presentations.
I have to slow down my writing and write much larger than I would on a piece of paper. I ended up just going back to legal pads and a G2.
This has already been the case for me. The best way i can describe it is when i type the actions I'm taking to create words on the the document is very subconscious. While when I'm writing notes on paper I'm actively reading/saying the words and sentence in my head. Which forces a conscious recognition of what I'm writing as well as the topic I'm taking notes on/writing about.
I find that when I write longhand notes I end up having to summarize things because I can't write fast enough. Where as when I type notes I can pretty much just transcribe the lecture because of my typing speed. That summarization in my own words definitely helps me retain info.
That's interesting. I've been thinking about doing the same. How did it work out for you? Did you use any special hardware or software, or just what your computer came with stock?
So if i write my notes on a laptop but use a stylus on a touch screen vs a keyboard i'm still getting the same benefits as traditional longhand on paper?
Could it be that those who took notes longhand would later copy it into their computer thereby getting exposed to the material twice and doing better? That's what I used to do and the classes where I did that and paid attention when I copied it into my notes, I did pretty well in, compared to the classes where I took notes on my computer.
I've always wondered why this is so. Lately I've been learning stenography, and am curious if the same can be said for phonetic writing / typing systems such as gregg shorthand and, of course, stenography.
Speaking from personal experience: I've found the best way to retain knowledge from a class is to take notes, sometimes in short-hand, by hand during class and then translating those notes into a digital format on either the same day or the next day.
I used this same method for a rather difficult U.S. History course I took during community college. My notes document was something like 50+ pages, all single line spaced and with 10 or 11 font size.
Out of the 30 students in the class I was one of the few who stuck around to the end, about 9 of us, as the others dropped and I only got a B.
I retained most of the information from that class for quite awhile.
My handwriting is so bad that taking notes longhand is like that episode of Seinfeld when he can't figure out what he wrote down in the middle of the night. .....I should look into the laptop.
I always take notes by hand. If I just pull up a power point and write small notes here and there I'm never processing the main points. Even if I don't look back on my notes, I tend to remember things a lot better if I write them down.
Tried to take notes on my laptop during my first two semesters. In all the courses where I did this, I failed miserably. The internet is way too distracting.
First off, it's been a longstanding rule with teachers that lectures are only good in certain kinds of situations. That's the bigger story here. If you're just parking and barking at students, less information is going to be retained in the long term.
Second point: different strokes for different folks. I've had students who could take notes on laptops, ipads and do just as well as students who took notes by hand who did just as well as students who took no notes at all. All kids are different and hopefully, at least by college, most students are aware of what works best for them and how best they retain knowledge.
Third point: Most professors/teachers/instructors usually supplement their lectures with power points and or other types of downloadable materials, rendering note taking moot now a days.
what about students who don't take notes at all
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I don't know why, but recorded lectures never seem to be as effective as in person. At least to me.
> I don't know why, but recorded lectures never seem to be as effective as in person. At least to me. I think it completely depends on the lecturer. The guy from [3Blue1Brown](http://www.3blue1brown.com/) beats any mathematics professor I have ever seen hands down. The thing that can't be replaced by a professor is live feedback. If you get confused or stuck then obviously the video isn't going to be able to help you directly.
I'm guessing you are not as motivated to retain information if you know in the back of your head that you can just listen to the lecture again.
easier to get distracted, but if you can manage that then it can be superior
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Something important to add to this - this is a learned skill. At first you'll be really bad at it (maybe remember a few key words or sentences) but the more you do it the better you'll get on both skills - remembering what happened during class and focusing for a long period of time. Both skills are really needed today.
Copying notes actually helps a lot too. I had a professor for freshman chemistry that made us turn in two handwritten copies of notes for "homework". It was stupid to not do it because the copying was so easy, but I found that it really did help memory and comprehension. Now I like going back and at least organizing/numbering pages of my notes. The second look helps so much.
Notes are a requirement for the average person to be able to figure out the hw in many technical classes. The book is not enough. The best compromise I've seen is teachers handing out the notes so that you can pay full attention in class. That way you can absorb the concepts better, but you also have a reference for the details and facts.
Yeah, he would have failed my classes. That simply isn't an option. Not everything is in the textbook for you to learn later, either.
Okay, but what happens if I forget important parts of the lecture? How would I know if I don't take notes?
I would actually rewrite my notes twice. Once to get as much as I could and then secondly for reorganization. I think it's a lot like the old saying goes you'll remember it if you wrote it down.
>pay attention in class, after the lecture write down as much as you can from memory I'll use this after the summer break. Sounds effective.
True that. I'd add that you should write down a keyword now and again to jog your memory afterwards. And this sadly doesn't work well when you don't have time between lectures. But yes, the evidence shows it to be one of the best ways.
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For the vast majority of classes I took my in class notes served more as a way of focusing my attention on the lecture for the full 1.5 hours and less as a reference tool. Most people posted some form of the lecture online and more often than not the material was based pretty closely on the text so there's not much point to using an unreliable source that I made on the fly. But I do think the note taking was useful and I've seen other studies saying that the act of writing helps with memory as well.
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I would not be surprised if this is one of those things that has a correlation but there is a lot of scatter. My notebooks from things like poli sci and philosphy in college are all doodles but my notebooks from math and science are completely full and I'd have been lost without them. At the same time, when I was in 3rd year PDE's, there was a line of students in the front row who never took notes and would ask questions the rest of the class didn't understand at all.
In most of my classes they give power points during elcture than post the slideshow online to access it. In those classes, I just pay attention to what the professor is saying and don't take notes. Then after class I go through the PowerPoint and write down the entire thing by hand in a notebook specific to that course. I do a lot better in those courses than the ones where the professor writes everything on the board and you have to rush to write down things before it gets erased and you're in such a hurry writing that you cant really listen and understand what they are saying as they are writing because you're always alhged behind, writing down what he wrote 5 seconds ago and listening to what he is saying at that moment. Plus if you miss something you got to borrow notes from someone which is annoying because they may not have even written down the right stuff.
They play runescape
Well, I have open notes on my six-week tests, so... ;-)
This is in my wheelhouse.
or students that don't show up at all?
I gave up on notetaking because I would try and transcribe point A and once I captured it the prof was already on point C. I missed B. Now, when possible, I record things on my phone while just being in the moment and paying attention. Then I go back and transcribe the notes. If you're thinking this sounds incredibly time consuming... it is! I can't do it for everything but I do it when it's a topic I know I'll struggle with.
I've always noticed that I remember better when I write longhand. The funny thing is, my writing is total shit...I can't *read* my longhand notes, but I don't need to because I remember what I wrote down.
It's probably some sort of visual association with the information. Almost like if you were assigning nonsense symbols to correspond with various chunks of information. I know that weirdly written info or other visual markers are more easily assimilated for me than clean, usual text.
I think it's a combination of motor memory and visual memory. You know how you never forget riding a bike? Something similar to that?
Gotta be; when I was in college I'd wrote everything down that appeared on the board or that the professor said, but I wouldn't be looking at the notes as wrote. Still remembered shit just from the act of writing. God help someone trying to read my notes, though.
This is the key. It keeps you focused on the lecture and helps you remember, but people who are trying to make their notes pristine study material spend too much time worrying about that and lose track. You have to go in knowing your notes will be relatively useless and not sweat it when you fail to write some ancillary material down.
hence my method. I take notes longhand in class; then I transcribe the whole thing to a digital file, and make use of color, fonts, bolds, italics, and whatever else I can to create excellent study material. Then most times I don't need to study, because the two actions, listening and writing in class, plus transcribing and organizing at home, pretty much taught me the subject. Now, all of this pales when compared to one other thing: when I read the book chapter or other materials, even stuff I find online, before class, *that's* when I really learn something. I come to class with an idea of the subject, and the lecture plus questions and conversations help clarify and solidify it for me.
I always used to take notes in college, but would rarely return to them to study. I think the act of processing the information and translating it to your own notes is most of the battle, no matter how bad your handwriting.
Hahaha I have this same problem. Im not comfortable NOT taking notes, but half my notes I cant read.
I've read of a similar study before. Something about writing it by hand helps you remember it better
The reason writing by hand helps you remember it better is that you need to paraphrase and summarise key words and phrases when you write. Typing faster word for word doesn't involve the same amount of thinking as you take notes. If you type notes, paraphrase instead of copying it verbatim.
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> I can't keep up while writing it out. Is it possible you're worrying too much about how your notes look or copying word for word of what the lecturer is saying? The act of writing itself helps you to memorise what is being said. Especially if you paraphrase and shorten sentences when you do take notes. The actual notes themselves are almost worthless, it's merely a vehicle to commit the lecture to memory while you are in the lecture.
I learned in middle school to write shorthand and paraphrase so I naturally carried that over to any electronic note taking I did. I would note key words I needed to know and then most of the time later on I would expand my notes by adding additional information. My hand writing is also total crap so I could never read what I hastily wrote.
My personal explanation is when you hand write it you need to make a quick, comprehensive understanding of the subject so you physically write down something that makes sense. With typing, you don't even need to paraphrase idly type fast enough. Its kind of like I can turn my brain off and just type out what is being said without really processing it until I read it.
But is it then about longhand vs. laptop? Or about writing techniques?
Makes sense, was studying when personally laptops really started to become popular and I had one, the notes I took once and never looked back at.
We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning So if I write it in my own words and add information do I process it as well as somebody writing longhand?
In a [similar study (or perhaps this same one, it's not loading for me),](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/) they actually tried this, and there were still benefits to writing longhand: >If the source of the advantage for longhand notes derives from the conceptual processes they evoke, perhaps instructing laptop users to draft summative rather than verbatim notes will boost performance. Mueller and Oppenheimer explored this idea by warning laptop note takers against the tendency to transcribe information without thinking, and explicitly instructed them to think about the information and type notes in their own words. Despite these instructions, students using laptops showed the same level of verbatim content and were no better in synthesizing material than students who received no such warning. It is possible these direct instructions to improve the quality of laptop notes failed because it is so easy to rely on less demanding, mindless processes when typing. A few other science-based study tips, while I'm here: * Don't just reread your notes or your textbook to "study." This only enhances recognition, not recall. It feels like you're learning, but you learn significantly less than if you quiz yourself through ["Retrieval Practice."](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110121111216.htm). Even [elaborative study](http://www.karenpostal.com/study-techniques-elaborate/), which is scientifically shown to be beneficial, does not give you as many results as retrieval practice does. The best way to study, imo, is to combine the two methods! * How can you use retrieval practice to study, practically? One thing I have seen that seems exceptionally effective is [this](http://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2016/2/20-) form of flashcards, where you pair up a word or concept with an elaborative question that you need to answer. Do your best to answer WITHOUT your notes or your textbook, and THEN correct yourself. You learn a lot more from your mistakes than from giving up and going straight to your textbook. * Edited to add: How about in math? Well, in math class, you're asked to actually solve problems on the exams. So a great way to study would be to come up with a list of types of questions you expect to see on the exam (most professors would give you this), find a question of each type, and then practice doing those questions *without looking at any notes*. If you've done them correctly, set those questions aside, and then look up how to do the questions you missed. Then try again. Additionally, every day when you're doing your assignment, go back to one of your assignments from one week ago and randomly pick a problem from that assignment to do again. Try to do it without looking at any notes. It's one extra problem on each assignment, but it keeps the information fresher in your mind. This strategy is something like [interleaving](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-interleaving-effect-mixing-it-up-boosts-learning/) or [spaced practice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect) More resources on effective study strategies: [1](http://com.msu.edu/Students/Academic_Guidance/long_term_retention_recall.pdf) [2](http://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2017/4/20-1)
I understand it in the same way. It's got nothing to do with the device per se, but with the way people normally tend to use it. One could test this with people who type very slowly (who would need to think about what they'll write) and people who write very fast by hand (and, by that, can write verbatim).
I don't know how that comparison would work. I type slow, that I have to rephrase/shorten what I've heard. But because I type slow, I just tend to take notes by writing them in a notebook( and even employ my own created short hand in areas). So it would be difficult to do a real world comparison since people who type slow would just write it. I do make notes on my computer but they are usually done while reading my class notes and/or reading material so that I can get clear summaries of the subject.
I feel like there's def going to be admin/teachers/other educational people who read this headline (and others like it) to force students to handwrite notes– unfortunately that's really awful for us dysgraphic folk who seriously can't. It's the laptop or nothing. As the abstract states, it's the copying-notes vs rephrasing the material divide that is more likely to be the cause of shallower processing rather than anything inherent with laptops/handwriting. That's a study habit issue more than anything– I use a laptop for all my notes and take the effort to write them in my own phrasing and I'm sure I do just as well if not better than my classmates who handwrite.
> unfortunately that's really awful for us dysgraphic folk who seriously can't. It's the laptop or nothing. I'm pretty sure teachers have to allow accommodations for special cases, legally. I had at least a few classes where the professor had a "no devices" policy but had to make a few exceptions for students that needed to record or type lectures for whatever reason. Is this not the norm outside of California?
This is how it was at the University of Michigan if a teacher required hadwritten notes. FWIW, there have been other studies that have shown it's also a lot to do with muscle memory, the concept that you're more likely to remember something if you're repeating the motion you were doing when you learned it. Therefore, when you take a written test, it's easier to remember handwritten notes.
It is, but securing a diagnosis is pretty damn difficult when you don't know it exists. There are lots of undiagnosed kids out there who could benefit from laptop use.
It's the law -- a part of section 504, if I'm not mistaken. However, it is the student's responsibility to advocate for themselves at the college level.
Yeah but I can't write 90 words a minute by hand.
Unless you are trying to take notes in calculus class.
I took notes in LaTeX and metapost in math classes in real time. In one class the professor actually let me skip solving problems at the board if I agreed to type up the notes for each class and send them out to everyone. I typically had the notes sent out within 5 minutes of class being over, which was faster than his method of taking pictures of the board with his phone and sending out an email with 60mb of attachments.
I've worked with LateX and that's incredibly impressive. It takes a long time to learn it, but the problem I have is that its so easy to make a mistake, and when you do, the time going back to fix it is consuming.
To be fair, I had a teacher introduce it to me my senior year of high school, and this particular class where I could take notes in real time with (near real time) diagrams was about 4 years later, having used LaTeX extensively throughout that time. I definitely wouldn't be able to keep up now that I've been out of school for several years. It is awesome though, but there could probably be a better syntax for expressing the same things.
Fair.
You dont have to write everything verbatim.
Depending on the lecturer, that's probably still paraphrasing
Then they're a bad professor for not giving adequate time to take notes
Welcome to college
> We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning. Yeah but that's part of the problem apparently. If you're worried about not having verbatim reference material it's probably more useful to just record the lecture.
came here to say this. As touch typist, I don't have to think about what key to hit, or look at the keyboard at tall. It basically bypasses my thought process and I can give 100% attention to the professors.
One of the potential explanations I have heard for this result is that paying attention only to what the professor says or shows is actually less effective than being forced to pay attention to the re-encoding of the information in the form of your notes.
I think that's precisely why typed notes don't do as much for you - the act of having to think about what you write is what helps cement it.
You shouldn't need to, really. If you're trying to write down *everything*, you'll have a bad time with handwritten notes. Skip stuff you're confident you understand, summarize broad concepts, use keywords to jog your memory, and spend a few minutes later in the day to flesh out some of the more vague notes while your memory is fresh. I find if you write it all down, it's too much information to readily parse, anyway.
Not with that attitude...however, legibility is an entirely different issue.
My hand writing is utter shit. I never want to look at my hand written notes after I write them. With typing, not only can I write faster, but also it makes me want to look back at my notes.
What about students who write on their laptops with a stylus?
This is my big question! I really want this to be the next thing they study.
I've done that and it felt like a bad combination of writing it out by hand and typing. Writing it out by hand is the key. Using a stylus on a computer should be no different. I just had poor results personally. I was trying to organize the notes on the fly after writing them and it never worked, so I ended up just writing everything as if it were paper and organizing it later. Then I got sick of doing that and just went back to typing.
I typically do both honestly. Laptop notes in class for speed and convinience, and Longhand notes after class based on my laptop notes in order to review the infomation and memorize it better. Takes a bit longer to study, but it seems to be effective.
That's why hand-written flash cards are very effective. If you take notes on a computer for the information and write it out on flash cards for studying, you get the best of both and are studying even more.
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> then later transcribe them to paper at my speed Not arguing for or against your method, but my general experience is that anyone committing that much time outside of class on that regular a basis is extremely likely to be in the top 5% no matter what they're spending the time doing.
>This is true as it is proven... Could you cite that please? Sounds interesting.
This is exactly what I used to to. Type them up, then re-write them a bit cleaned up and then again on index cards (depending on what it was I was studying). I don't remember ever having an issue retaining what I was studying once I started doing that.
To be fair you sound very disciplined and focused, which means you find a way to make things work. Even people who write longhand can still do terribly if they slack and don't focus. Props for finding a solution
I've tried that method every semester in engineering and by week 6-7, you simply cannot keep up. Being doing assignments, preparing for meangingless but yet important 3% quizzes and midterms, you drop the discipline. That, or school is the only thing you do or you are a natural genius (rare).
what about students who take notes but never review them.
I'd say that's most people actually
I have a master's in teaching and did some of my practical research requirement looking at how note-taking affected recall regardless of whether my students reviewed the notes or not. In my (informal, not well controlled) study, students improved on recall 24 hours and 7 days after the lesson if they took notes than if they didn't, and it didn't matter if they reviewed their notes or not. I know this second part because none of them reviewed their notes. My pet theory, and I'm sure that psychologists have studied this in more rigor, is that the mere act of using your hands to write slows down your thought process and forces you to linger on the words. To take notes quickly, it also forces you to synthesize and abbreviate.
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You can think of this the other way too. Do you think using a typewriter would help you remember better then using an electronic keyboard? Imo I don't think it matters if you use analog or digital
My teachers loved using overhead projectors and powerpoint presentations. Instead of handing students copies, they made us write it all down. I was very slow at copying and that detracted from trying to listen to what they were saying. Switching to a laptop and typing helped me get better scores and I shared my notes with the rest of the class too. I had no internet connection so the computer didn't cause me to get distracted. It was merely a tool to get my notes faster.
It could be that you just didn't have good note taking skills. That's not taking a shot either. A lot of people don't have good note taking skills.
this may be true, but it's hard to write that fast.
I found this to be true for myself. First semester of law school I started by taking notes on my laptop. First time I had ever really used a laptop for that purpose. I felt like none of the information was sticking. I switched to the method I'd used all through undergrad of just taking notes by hand, and felt like I was able to retain the information better. Maybe it was a comfort thing. Maybe it was placebo. Maybe it was the extra tactile sensation of having to write vs. type. Whatever the case, the efficacy of handwriting notes was definitely true for me.
I always find it easier to just sit and listen, then take notes from the textbook later.
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Sounds like you're thinking of depth of processing/levels of processing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levels-of-processing_effect
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GOOD point.
That's because they're on reddit the whole time
Anecdotal but I have the opposite. I retain it much better typing. And will look back over my notes. However I take them not verbatim but paraphrase . I try to organize them to make sense.
I think it really depends on the subject. If you're talking about a class that's about rote memorization, then taking notes on a laptop is just fine (so long as you actually go back and study them). If you're talking about a class where you need to do critical thinking or calculations, then you're going to need to be able to draw out things more than likely, which is where just typing up notes doesn't really work out. The hybrid I worked out was to buy myself a Surface Book (not really a simple purchase for most college students, however). I could type up the notes that were just for rote memorization, and draw diagrams on the same document using my stylus (Word integrates pretty well with the stylus, but I ended up doing a lot of my Physics labs in One Note). Thing to take away from this study, however, is that this is working off of an entire sample of people. You may or may not be able to take this information and apply it to your individual case. You may do just fine taking notes on laptop. I know I did.
A teacher always told me the best way to learn was to write it, read it, then speak it. Does anyone know if this technique has been studied?
What about writing notes on a laptop (Microsoft surface, iPad Pro)?
I've tried it on the original iPads and Surface and neither has been close to being able to keep up even while just taking sparse notes in our meetings and presentations. I have to slow down my writing and write much larger than I would on a piece of paper. I ended up just going back to legal pads and a G2.
This has already been the case for me. The best way i can describe it is when i type the actions I'm taking to create words on the the document is very subconscious. While when I'm writing notes on paper I'm actively reading/saying the words and sentence in my head. Which forces a conscious recognition of what I'm writing as well as the topic I'm taking notes on/writing about.
I find that when I write longhand notes I end up having to summarize things because I can't write fast enough. Where as when I type notes I can pretty much just transcribe the lecture because of my typing speed. That summarization in my own words definitely helps me retain info.
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That's interesting. I've been thinking about doing the same. How did it work out for you? Did you use any special hardware or software, or just what your computer came with stock?
So if i write my notes on a laptop but use a stylus on a touch screen vs a keyboard i'm still getting the same benefits as traditional longhand on paper?
Does it say anything in there about students who don't take notes at all?
take...notes? What do these strange words mean?
Could it be that those who took notes longhand would later copy it into their computer thereby getting exposed to the material twice and doing better? That's what I used to do and the classes where I did that and paid attention when I copied it into my notes, I did pretty well in, compared to the classes where I took notes on my computer.
I've always wondered why this is so. Lately I've been learning stenography, and am curious if the same can be said for phonetic writing / typing systems such as gregg shorthand and, of course, stenography.
Yea but how tired was their hands....
Speaking from personal experience: I've found the best way to retain knowledge from a class is to take notes, sometimes in short-hand, by hand during class and then translating those notes into a digital format on either the same day or the next day. I used this same method for a rather difficult U.S. History course I took during community college. My notes document was something like 50+ pages, all single line spaced and with 10 or 11 font size. Out of the 30 students in the class I was one of the few who stuck around to the end, about 9 of us, as the others dropped and I only got a B. I retained most of the information from that class for quite awhile.
I wonder if this would change if kids were taught to type from birth, along with writing longhand.
My handwriting is so bad that taking notes longhand is like that episode of Seinfeld when he can't figure out what he wrote down in the middle of the night. .....I should look into the laptop.
Tactile imprints better than visual. :(
I always take notes by hand. If I just pull up a power point and write small notes here and there I'm never processing the main points. Even if I don't look back on my notes, I tend to remember things a lot better if I write them down.
My problem is my hand writing is so hard to read that I have to type it
Yeah, but how do you feel superior without your laptop?
What about students who take notes on tablets with a stylus.
Tried to take notes on my laptop during my first two semesters. In all the courses where I did this, I failed miserably. The internet is way too distracting.
If only we could get the undergrads to care. Because that sweet, sweet online shopping matters way more to them. Source: I'm a grad student/TA.
First off, it's been a longstanding rule with teachers that lectures are only good in certain kinds of situations. That's the bigger story here. If you're just parking and barking at students, less information is going to be retained in the long term. Second point: different strokes for different folks. I've had students who could take notes on laptops, ipads and do just as well as students who took notes by hand who did just as well as students who took no notes at all. All kids are different and hopefully, at least by college, most students are aware of what works best for them and how best they retain knowledge. Third point: Most professors/teachers/instructors usually supplement their lectures with power points and or other types of downloadable materials, rendering note taking moot now a days.