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Using Laptop To Take Notes Lowers Grades

Posted by timothy on from the but-improves-slashdot-karma dept.

Meshach writes "A study in the journal Computers & Education found that students who took notes on a laptop got lower marks then student who took notes the traditional way with pen and paper. The study's author hypothesized that using a laptop leads to multitasking (i.e. surfing the net or checking email), which reduces concentration."

15 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. So basically surfing net while taking notes by cod3r_ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is the problem.. Common sense

    1. Re:So basically surfing net while taking notes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Back when I was in an undergrad psychology course, the general consensus was that the method used triggered different parts of the brain. There is something fundamentally different from moving your finger to a particular location and pressing a key than actually moving your hand around to create a string of letters and then focusing on what you have just created.

    2. Re:So basically surfing net while taking notes by Huntr · · Score: 4, Informative

      Exactly. Here's the paper. It says right there that the students who multi-tasked while taking notes did worse and that some of the participants didn't even adhere to the instructions for their group, i.e., they surfed and screwed around when they weren't supposed to. And then did poorly on a quiz. Gee, who saw that coming?

    3. Re:So basically surfing net while taking notes by David_Hart · · Score: 5, Informative

      Exactly. Here's the paper. It says right there that the students who multi-tasked while taking notes did worse and that some of the participants didn't even adhere to the instructions for their group, i.e., they surfed and screwed around when they weren't supposed to. And then did poorly on a quiz. Gee, who saw that coming?

      Why is it that we believe that we can multi-task? In regards to work, humans cannot do true multi-tasking. We are either concentrating on performing one task or are are task switching by concentrating on multiple tasks in much smaller time slices. People are lauded for being multi-taskers, but the end result is that they end up doing more than one thing poorly, as we see in the study results.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_multitasking

  2. Hardly surprising.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was schooled in the late 1970's/early 1980's - way before the advent of computers in the classroom. We were taught that writing things down (even copying from a book) helped the content to 'sink in' to your memory far better than just reading it and I believe this to be true - even now when I take my own notes I remember the content pretty well.

    Cut and paste or typing on a screen knowing you can save it to disc for easy recovery later does nothing for the memory - indeed the whole act is designed to save data to magnetic storage rather than brain cells!

    1. Re:Hardly surprising.... by 16Chapel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      YMMV - personally I learnt best by listening to the lecturer and digesting what they're saying (and, even better, asking the odd question). Writing things down doesn't help me remember, and never has - I actually find it distracting.

    2. Re:Hardly surprising.... by TrekkieGod · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I was schooled in the late 1970's/early 1980's - way before the advent of computers in the classroom. We were taught that writing things down (even copying from a book) helped the content to 'sink in' to your memory far better than just reading it and I believe this to be true - even now when I take my own notes I remember the content pretty well.

      I was taught the same thing but didn't really believe it for most of my time in school. That is, until I got to college and had this professor for diff eq. that had the oddest teaching method ever:

      At the start of the class he would start writing on the blackboard, not saying a word. He just copied his (very organized) notes to the board. Very dense writing, a lot of content. When that board was filled, he would continue on and do the same thing on a second blackboard that was located on a side-wall of the classroom. About half the class time was spent that way. Then when the boards were filled, and we were finished copying everything, he would go back to the beginning and start talking about what he had written.

      It sounds like a colossal waste of class time, but not only did we cover everything the classes in other sessions covered, I never had to study for an exam in that class. While we're copying things down we're reading it and we're paying attention to what we're reading because we need to replicate it. Then when he was actually there explaining things, we already had an idea of what he was going to talk about, we had already thought about it and understood a few things and not others. We weren't distracted by trying to take notes and were actually listening to what he was saying. In fact, when he said something that cleared something up in our minds that wasn't clear from the notes, I'd just jot something quickly in the margin. Which is funny because although that notebook contains the most detailed notes I've ever taken for any class, I've never had to go back to re-read it. Everything just stuck for the exam.

      Lowest amount of work and greatest amount of retention I've ever had for any subject in a classroom. It's been about a decade, and I still remember a good deal about slope fields, bifurcations, characteristic equations, and laplace transforms, among other topics. I think the prof also got a kick out of not explaining to anyone that this was his teaching method the first day of class. We were all sitting there and saw this guy just start writing a ton of stuff up on the board. He waited until he got the boards filled up before introducing himself.

      --

      Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.

    3. Re:Hardly surprising.... by Nemyst · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Interestingly, I had a similar experience with my classical mechanics prof, except he did away with the note-taking altogether. Instead, we'd have to read parts of the course textbook before each class, take a small and simple online quizz to check you'd actually read it (the quizz was very loosely timed so you could go back and pick up the answers from the book if you wanted) and then show up in class with nothing in hand. The entire course was dedicated to the prof showing us a variety of questions, usually in the form of simple problems, and asking us to choose one of four possible answers. Once the problem was exposed, we'd get a few minutes to discuss with others and then would have to vote on what we believed was the correct answer. The prof would then explain the right answer, with more details if more people got it wrong.

      It was truly a breath of fresh air compared to any other course structure I have since had. We didn't waste time taking an inordinate amount of notes we'd never read, we didn't have to split our attention between note-taking and what the prof had to say, etc. He also claimed that ever since he started doing that, grades had notably improved in his class.

  3. Recording pen by erik.martino · · Score: 4, Informative

    A computer is not the best device for note taking. Using a LiveScribe pen you can transfer your notes to the computer, including a recording the voice of the lecturer. The pen makes your notes hypertext because it is linked with the audio at the time of note taking. It makes it easy to navigate in the audio recording.

  4. Another hypothesis by Sigg3.net · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Another hypothesis, arguably more difficult to empirically explicate, would be that the brain treats the two tasks differently memory-wise.

    I prefer writing by hand. When the lecture is good, I do my best to get it verbatim. I find that an hour after the lecture has ended, I can cite the professor pretty accurate. However, when I write something on the computer my mind immediately blanks it out.

    Consequently, writing by hand is more efficient _in studying_ because my brain at least remembers some of it. I'd think people are different when it comes to this, but for me the difference is considerable.

    --
    Defining Statistics and Social Research
  5. Two other possibilities by barlevg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1. People who take hand-written notes often later transcribe them digitally, thus going over the notes one more time than people who just record them digitally in the first place.

    2. Studies have that reading harder-to-read fonts assist in recall/retention. Hand-written notes certainly fall in the category of harder-to-read.

  6. Handwriting Reinforces Learning by snookerdoodle · · Score: 4, Informative

    A memory trick I once learned (for remember names or phone numbers, for example) is to write the item with your finger on a roughish surface like your pants 3 times. This often works for me.

    There have been studies (like this one) that seem to show that writing something down by hand reinforces learning. I'm surprised the author didn't think this might be relevant.

  7. Re:what about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What about flying elephants? What about cheese?
    Obviously, students that don't take notes wasn't part of this study.

    They should have been. When I was in college I rarely took notes, because taking notes is also distracting. It may well be that the act of taking notes itself decreases grades.

    As to flying elephants, I doubt any high level Republicans had computers when they were in school. Considering my own Congressman, Rodney Davis, a tea party wacko who believes that global warming ended fifteen years ago and has said so publically, well, he's pretty cheezy but I don't think he even graduated high school. The man is a real moron.

  8. As the NRA would say by colinrichardday · · Score: 4, Funny

    You'll get my Freecell when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands!

  9. Re:what about by intermodal · · Score: 4, Informative

    I would tend to agree with you on note-taking. I found that when I took notes, I generally missed about half the class. My final GPA was something like 3.979, so I feel pretty confident that it worked for me.

    --
    In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!