Now it's official: taking notes by writing works better than typing
Some time ago, I had a discussion with the chairman of our university about classroom boards. He was surprised to hear that I favoured the 'old-fashioned' model of me writing on the board and the students copying it down. He expected 'modern technology' to provide opportunities to make this process more efficient.
I countered that learning requires (a) getting facts into the heads of the students and (b) the students processing these facts into a coherent framework, and if we're lucky also (c) the students making links to other things they know. Although technology may increase the 'fun' and create other motivational advantages, the essentials of the learning process happen inside the brain of the students, and no technology can change that.
It turns out that technology can even get in the way, something that many, if not all, active teachers know from experience. First there's of course the potential of distraction, which is why quite a few teachers don't like students having their laptops open. But even when there is no chance of distraction, it now seems, taking notes on a laptop works less well than taking notes by hand.
In The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard Mueller and Oppenheimer compared fact-recall and conceptual understanding of groups of students, where some groups took notes on a laptop, and others by hand. It turns out that the hand-writers wrote significantly less words than the laptop'ers, and the laptop notes followed the lectures more verbatim than the longhand notes did. Interestingly, 'even when allowed to review notes after a week’s delay, participants who had taken notes with laptops performed worse on tests of both factual content and conceptual understanding, relative to participants who had taken notes longhand.'
This connects nicely to earlier work, in which it was shown how the brain reacts to the act of writing. Forming those shapes on paper, by our own hands, has an impact on our brain that typing simply doesn't recreate.
Teachers have known this for a very long time: for the student, taking notes by hand simply is one of the best first steps on the path of learning the material. It would be nice if the 'technology will revolutionize learning' activists would take note too. Preferably by hand.
I countered that learning requires (a) getting facts into the heads of the students and (b) the students processing these facts into a coherent framework, and if we're lucky also (c) the students making links to other things they know. Although technology may increase the 'fun' and create other motivational advantages, the essentials of the learning process happen inside the brain of the students, and no technology can change that.
It turns out that technology can even get in the way, something that many, if not all, active teachers know from experience. First there's of course the potential of distraction, which is why quite a few teachers don't like students having their laptops open. But even when there is no chance of distraction, it now seems, taking notes on a laptop works less well than taking notes by hand.
In The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard Mueller and Oppenheimer compared fact-recall and conceptual understanding of groups of students, where some groups took notes on a laptop, and others by hand. It turns out that the hand-writers wrote significantly less words than the laptop'ers, and the laptop notes followed the lectures more verbatim than the longhand notes did. Interestingly, 'even when allowed to review notes after a week’s delay, participants who had taken notes with laptops performed worse on tests of both factual content and conceptual understanding, relative to participants who had taken notes longhand.'
This connects nicely to earlier work, in which it was shown how the brain reacts to the act of writing. Forming those shapes on paper, by our own hands, has an impact on our brain that typing simply doesn't recreate.
Teachers have known this for a very long time: for the student, taking notes by hand simply is one of the best first steps on the path of learning the material. It would be nice if the 'technology will revolutionize learning' activists would take note too. Preferably by hand.
posted by Mark Peletier at 7:22 AM
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