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The study has been cited in other peer-reviewed journals more than 1,200 times, according to Google Scholar, and it has been pointed to in op-eds and other popular articles as well. And it fit with the hunches of many “laptop skeptics,” says Michelle D. Miller, a psychology professor at Northern Arizona University, “confirming that people write more and remember less when keyboarding.”
But there’s one problem with the research, Miller points out. When other scholars have repeated the same experiment, they haven’t been able to get the same result.
Via Nik Peachey
In a 2014 article in Psychological Science called “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard,” Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer claimed that while note taking in itself could be beneficial to student learning, using a laptop proved to be detrimental. A recent article from Scientific American, “Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom,” added fuel to this fire.
As the fall final exam season creeps up, students are returning to their notes and — hopefully — recalling everything they learned this semester. But what kind of notes do they have, and will those notes be helpful? We wondered whether taking notes via pen and pencil versus typing made a difference for students. Here’s what we found!
“More is better.” From the number of gigs in a cellular data plan to the horsepower in a pickup truck, this mantra is ubiquitous in American culture. When it comes to college students, the belief that more is better may underlie their widely-held view that laptops in the classroom enhance their academic performance. Laptops do in fact allow students to do more, like engage in online activities and demonstrations, collaborate more easily on papers and projects, access information from the internet, and take more notes. Indeed, because students can type significantly faster than they can write, those who use laptops in the classroom tend to take more notes than those who write out their notes by hand. Moreover, when students take notes using laptops they tend to take notes verbatim, writing down every last word uttered by their professor.
Laptops in the classroom are a hot topic, with educators often citing them as a distraction. But might they be a step up for note taking?
In April of 2014, Pam Mueller and Dan Oppenheimer struck psychology gold with their cleverly titled article, “The Pen is Mightier than the Laptop: Advantages of Longhand over Laptop Note Taking.”1 No psychology article that I know of has gotten so much play: in newspaper articles, in teacherly blogs, in faculty room debates.
Using pen and paper for note-taking helps boost memory and the ability to understand, more so than laptops.
Longhand note-takng results in a better conceptual understanding of the material and is easier to recall later.
Handwriting notes is better than using a computer because it slows the learner down, writes Drake Baer.
Over the past decade or so, there’s been a fair amount of discussion relating to the impact that our omnipresent technology has on handwriting. Cursive handwriting is no longer a mainstay of elementary education as it once was, usurped by typing on laptops and tablets. Teachers with many subjects to teach and time in …
Students do worse on quizzes when they use keyboards in class. Knowing how and why typed notes can be bad doesn't seem to improve their quality. Even if you warn laptop-notetakers ahead of time, it doesn't make a difference. For some tasks, it seems, handwriting’s just better.
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Given the opportunity to take notes by hand or on the computer, most students choose the latter. After all, modern technology offers plenty of benefits for writers.
The digital writing workspace is convenient for several reasons. A single laptop or tablet can hold all the books and materials a student needs. It can also contain tools for research, entertainment activities, and curated music. The tech devices make learning more accessible. With the push of a button or a tap on a screen, students can activate engaging learning experiences, or they can record lectures.
Convenience, however, doesn’t trump old-fashioned writing by hand when it comes to learning. Writing by hand has benefits that technology has not been able to reproduce – yet.
This is the first year I had to seriously consider why I ask my students to buy composition notebooks for journal writing. As every ninth grader now has their own Chromebook, teachers have been encouraged to consider how they can utilize technology to update their practices. Although I tried, I couldn’t quite embrace the idea of abandoning the hardbound composition notebook.
Note-taking is easier than writing your essay. But it is more complicated than simply listening to your professor or reading the assigned textbook chapters. So why should you bother?
The idea of note-taking benefits is based on the premise that a student cannot remember every word the lecturer says, no matter how attentive he or she is. It can be helpful for you in the following ways:
* Notes enhance understanding of the material forcing you to paraphrase it;
* Reviewing information commits it to long-term memory;
* It prepares you for constructing better arguments in your academic papers;
* Reviewing the notes helps to score higher results on tests and exams.
Beyond the emotional connection adults may feel to the way we learned to write, there is a growing body of research on what the normally developing brain learns by forming letters on the page, in printed or manuscript format as well as in cursive.
Recent research illustrates how writing by hand engages the brain in learning. And in an interesting twist, new technology is starting to reinvigorate this age-old practice.
Can Handwriting Make You Smarter? Students who take notes by hand outperform students who type, and more type these days, new studies show
In "what does your handwriting say about you" we learned that the way we write can reveal great deal about our personalities. For instance, the people who use small letters are said to be shy, withdrawn, or meticulous while those who tend to opt for moderate letters are well-adjusted and adaptable. Using wide spacing, on the other hand, indicates a person who enjoys freedom and doesn't like to be overwhelmed or crowded.
ONE POINT FOR THE PEN: Do students lose comprehension by taking notes on keyboards, rather than by hand? It’s a tense debate, dotted with research and rebuttals. First up, researchers Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer think so, as they argue that “laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe le
It’s hard to blame students for wanting to type notes instead of write them out longhand. Think of how much quicker you can type an e-mail than write a letter: Digital note-taking is simply easier. A paper published online in the journal Psychological Science last month, however, suggests that longhand may actually hold an advantage when it comes to the most important reason we take notes—that is, to help us remember what we’ve heard. What Pam Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel Oppenheimer of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management observed is an illuminating example of what psychologists call “desirable difficulty”—the fact that sometimes, obstacles that frustrate us actually help us learn.
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An interesting article and podcast interview.