The first idea is called the encoding hypothesis, which says that when a person is taking notes, "the processing that occurs" will improve "learning and retention." The second, called the external-storage hypothesis, is that you learn by being able to look back at your notes, or even the notes of other people.īecause people can type faster than they write, using a laptop will make people more likely to try to transcribe everything they're hearing. Generative note-taking pertains to "summarizing, paraphrasing, concept mapping," while nongenerative note-taking involves copying something verbatim.Īnd there are two hypotheses to why note-taking is beneficial in the first place. Mueller and Oppenheimer cited that note-taking can be categorized two ways: generative and nongenerative. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them." "The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective - because you can't write as fast as you can type. "When people type their notes, they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can," Mueller tells NPR's Rachel Martin.
Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles sought to test how note-taking by hand or by computer affects learning. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. In the study published in Psychological Science, Pam A. And a study has shown that the fact that you have to be slower when you take notes by hand is what makes it more useful in the long run. But it turns out there are still advantages to doing things the old-fashioned way.įor one thing, research shows that laptops and tablets have a tendency to be distracting - it's so easy to click over to Facebook in that dull lecture. Typing your notes is faster - which comes in handy when there's a lot of information to take down. 13, 2014, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.Īs laptops become smaller and more ubiquitous, and with the advent of tablets, the idea of taking notes by hand just seems old-fashioned to many students today.
Students hear a lecture at the Johann Wolfang Goethe-University on Oct. You don’t have to go at a snail’s pace, but if you slow down even a little, it will help.Īlso, if you use a program like Evernote to digitise your handwritten notes it will have a bash at making your scrawl searchable.Laptops are common in lecture halls worldwide. Most of use write untidily because we rush and don’t take the time to form letters properly. A useful tip for taking notes from books (rather than in lectures) is to slow down. Conscious practice will improve it even more (I’ll talk about conscious practice another time). Simply, the more you do it the better you will get at doing it. Regular practice will improve your handwriting as it does for most skills. My own writing isn’t as lovely as I would like. Perhaps they struggle to read it again later, or are embarrassed for others to see it. Many people are reluctant to shift to handwritten note-taking because their handwriting is less beautiful than they would like. Like laptop note-takers, Victorian children would have been able to recite dates and names, lists and times tables, but may not have been able to apply or understand the material very well. Surprisingly, laptop note-taking is a lot like learning by rote in a Victorian schoolroom. We have to concentrate, sift and summarise. There’s no battery to worry about or pop-up notifications vying for our attention.
Instead, handwriting makes us engage with what we’re working on. I’m sure something similar is true beyond the classroom too- in business meetings, for example. Other studies show that students with laptops can spend 40% of class time on unrelated applications and are consequently less satisfied with their education. It doesn’t tempt us to keep Facebook open in another tab and quickly check it when the lecturer takes a breath.
#Handwriting notes vs typing notes free
The proliferation of laptops and tablets, and widely available free wifi has encouraged us to multitask.