My first ever lecture at Simon Fraser University was a learning experience in more ways than one. The prof, whose name I won’t reveal, began the class by sharing his golden rule, the number one pet peeve he would not tolerate. He told us to put our laptops away — there would be no typed notes in his class.
Having neglected to bring a pen and pad, thinking that most people would be taking notes with laptops anyway, I was surprised to find that most of my classmates had either anticipated this rule or simply preferred the pen-and-paper approach. Of the dozen or so students who were left unable to take notes on the lecture, about half scurried out of the room, surely rushing to buy a pad from the SFU Bookstore. Not knowing my way around campus, and too scared to stand up and walk out of my first lecture, I stayed in my seat. To this day, I’m missing the notes from this fateful day — I didn’t dare ask anyone to borrow theirs.
The second week, I arrived with a pen and three course notebook in hand, prepared to take my first handwritten notes since senior year of high school. No other prof had such a rule, so I’d gotten away with my laptop in my other lectures. Nervous and weak wristed, I waited, preparing to miss about half of what my prof said.
That lecture, I took some of the best notes I’d ever taken. By hand. Something was going on here.
Ask pretty much anyone who’s studied the difference between computerized note-taking and handwritten scribbling, and you’re likely to receive the same response: the pen is mightier than the laptop. A recent study conducted by Pam Mueller and David Oppenheimer of UCLA illustrates this seemingly paradoxical finding: of their test subjects, the group who took notes by hand retained about as much factual knowledge as those who used a laptop, but the former group performed significantly better when tested for comprehension than their computing comrades.
Research has consistently proven that, when it comes to lectures, you’re better off leaving your laptop at home.
The problem has to do with a laptop’s ability to take down notes more quickly than by writing them by hand — which makes them more likely to simply copy what a lecturer says verbatim. “The people who were taking notes on the laptops don’t have to be judicious in what they write down,” Mueller told The Atlantic.
Those who used pens and paper, on the other hand, had to choose which notes they took carefully, which led them to more accurately keep track of the concepts behind the lecture rather than the exact words the professor said. “When tested on what they had heard, the students taking notes learned better,” the report stated. “They came away with a significantly better conceptual understanding and did no worse than the laptop users when it came to recalling facts.”
Mueller and Oppenheimer found that, even after warning laptop note takers to focus on the conceptual aspects of a lecture rather than just the words, their results barely changed. It turns out that, even if you tell a group what to do to take notes more effectively on a computer, few are actually likely to change their note taking style.
Apart from making conceptual understanding of lecture material more difficult, computers can also be a very distracting presence in a lecture hall. Research on undergraduate students shows that note takers have non-course-related content open on their laptops about 42 per cent of the time — a number that seems confirmed by that kid at the front of lecture who’s always watching Youtube videos. As an added bonus, those who take notes on computers rate themselves as less satisfied with their academic experiences, and perform more poorly in classes.
This seems a little counterintuitive. Computers are supposed to increase our learning capacity, right? I can’t imagine having to write a 20 page final essay without the help of an online database. And it’s true that computers can be a huge help for your university degree. Still, research has consistently proven that, when it comes to lectures, you’re better off leaving your laptop at home.
According to a similar study conducted by Virginia Berninger, the hand has “unique relationship with the brain when it comes to composing thoughts and ideas.” Suffice it to say, it’s a relationship that a computer just can’t compete with.
“I don’t anticipate that we’ll get a mass of people switching back to notebooks,” Mueller said of her findings. In fact, it seems like every semester, more students are showing up to class with Macbooks, signalling the gradual death of the standard handwritten note-taking system.
But Mueller and Oppenheimer aren’t Luddites. Though they caution against the distracting nature of the Internet, both seem to support the use of tablets, whose styluses allow for handwritten notes which can be subsequently saved onto a computer. This system, which Mueller calls “the best of both worlds,” might replace both pens and laptops in near the future.
For the time being, though, brush off your old coil bound notebook, pick up a box of pencils from the bookstore, and try taking notes for your next lecture by hand. You might be surprised by what you’ve been missing — I sure was.
