hand written class notes vs typed

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/head-the-class/201402/nota-bene-how-we-take-notes-matters

Nota Bene: How We Take Notes Matters

The old ways prove to be best.

Published on February 14, 2014 by Dana S. Dunn, Ph.D. in Head of the Class

Nota bene is Latin for "note well" or, in our vernacular, we might phrase it as "take note." This entry is a variation on these phrases: To wit, how should students take notes?

The mechanics of note taking may not seem like a big deal. In fact, in our time, the issue is well defined: Should you write with pen or pencil? Or, given the ubiquity of laptops, iPhones, and tablet devices, should one type notes during class? The later smart devices also allow students to record material, say, a professor lecturing, or to download material (some instructors rely almost exclusively on PowerPoint slides and a subset of these folks will put their slides online for whomever wants to use them).

In other words, the decision for students now is to whether to be scribes on paper or to embrace our digital tools. (I neglected to mention that many tablet devices allow you to "write" in your hand on the screen which software then "reads" and converts into typed notes--so, to clarify, being a scribe is also possible with technology, too.) Does it matter which method one chooses?

Well, many people are wailing about the loss of penmanship and the new generation's relative inability to write using cursive with all those flowing letters. I think losing cursive is a loss, though perhaps not in my case--my handwriting is abysmal. Well, to be fair, even my printing using block letters (unless I really take my time, an act that does not lend itself to teaching using a blackboard) is pretty abysmal. The highpoint of my handwriting career was back in second grade when I won "honorable mention" for "most improved penmanship"--surely, the booby prize for handwriting--so, yes, my cursive was never/is not now a thing of beauty.

Interestingly, however, whether one writes or types one's notes in class may matter a great deal. Two psychologists at Princeton wondered whether using laptops for note taking might have some pitfalls not associated with using pen and paper. Pam Mueller and David Oppenheimer wondered if typing on a laptop might lead to a more shallow form of information processing and lessened learning than the older, more traditional method of note taking. In other words, taking notes with a pen or pencil might require deeper cognitive processing as one translated classroom concepts into one's own words on paper than doing so with a laptop.

To explore this hypothesis, the researchers conducted various experiments, most of which relied on the same methodology. Students were assigned to classrooms where they either used laptops or traditional notebooks. Both groups heard the same lectures and both groups were told to use their usual note taking approaches. About half an hour after the lecture, all the students were given an in-class test on the lecture material. Here's an important point: The students were examined for their memory for both factual recall (What year did the Titanic sink?) and conceptual material (Explain how the study of physical anthropology differs in content and scope from cultural anthropology?).

What did they find? The students using the laptops tended to take more notes but--and this is a big important "but"--they were more likely to take verbatim notes, which is a relatively mindless activity with fewer benefits than putting ideas and concepts into one's own terms. So, while both groups of students worked to learn the same set of facts, the laptop group did much worse during the recall test.

Here's the real clincher: Another study in the series found that students who wrote in longhand and who had time to study their notes in preparation for an exam did significantly better than other students in the experiment--including the crack typists who wrote much more--or even the students who were veritable court stenographers, transcribing the whole lecture! The traditional writers wrote less (fewer notes) and did so with much less transcribing than the laptoppers, and they still scored higher on factual learning and higher-order thought, that is, wrestling with concepts. Even when laptop note takers were explicitly told NOT to transcribe the lectures word for word, there was no improvement--it seems the association with transcribing when typing is too hard to override.

So, what's the lesson here? At least one old way of note taking may be superior to newer, faster ways of taking notes. If you are a student, take notes with pen and paper in class--nota bene. Teachers, tell your students! A digital device may seem easier, faster, and better, but that only affects the task of note taking, not the important consequence of note taking--learning, retaining, and using knowledge.

Nota bene!