Why Longhand is Better
There has been a long, heated debate in this new era of technology about whether or not a laptop is a better alternative for taking notes than the old fashioned pencil and paper. However, time after time again research continues to favor the side of longhand note taking. Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) have suggested that laptops might even decrease the effectiveness in which we learn and can have negative consequences on our overall learning experience. The two conducted three separate studies which showed the advantages that longhand note taking had over a laptop.
In the first study, sixty-seven students were instructed to take notes in a lecture that was projected on a screen as they normally would; whether it was through a laptop or a notebook and pencil. They then had distractor and after about thirty minutes participants were quizzed with factual questions and conceptual questions. Study two was designed to repeat the findings of study one but with a twist. This time the lecture was given through headphones and monitor and there was a …show more content…
There was also much more verbatim in electronic note taking compared to the pen. In study two, again did students who used a notebook to take notes perform better on conceptual questions than those who used a laptop and there was no difference in factual questions. The scores of the participants who received the laptop-intervention condition performed worse on conceptual questions than who did not received it. The type of lecture had no impact and students who used a paper wrote less with less verbatim overlap and performed better. The results from the final study done are unsurprising considering the results of the first two studies done. Students who wrote longhand and were able to study before the quiz significantly outperformed everyone
There has been a long, heated debate in this new era of technology about whether or not a laptop is a better alternative for taking notes than the old fashioned pencil and paper. However, time after time again research continues to favor the side of longhand note taking. Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) have suggested that laptops might even decrease the effectiveness in which we learn and can have negative consequences on our overall learning experience. The two conducted three separate studies which showed the advantages that longhand note taking had over a laptop.
In the first study, sixty-seven students were instructed to take notes in a lecture that was projected on a screen as they normally would; whether it was through a laptop or a notebook and pencil. They then had distractor and after about thirty minutes participants were quizzed with factual questions and conceptual questions. Study two was designed to repeat the findings of study one but with a twist. This time the lecture was given through headphones and monitor and there was a …show more content…
There was also much more verbatim in electronic note taking compared to the pen. In study two, again did students who used a notebook to take notes perform better on conceptual questions than those who used a laptop and there was no difference in factual questions. The scores of the participants who received the laptop-intervention condition performed worse on conceptual questions than who did not received it. The type of lecture had no impact and students who used a paper wrote less with less verbatim overlap and performed better. The results from the final study done are unsurprising considering the results of the first two studies done. Students who wrote longhand and were able to study before the quiz significantly outperformed everyone