Is it best to take notes by hand or electronically?
According to this article, a study suggests that students who use a laptop to take lecture notes do not learn as well as those who make handwritten notes. I’m not so sure about this.
At every meeting, conference and lecture I attend, I take notes on my iPad. I believe that there are the following benefits to using a computer rather than a notebook.
- I can read my notes much more easily because they are more legible than my handwriting and and the text can be formatted later with highlighting or bullet points.
- I can have all my notes over several years with me all the time, instead of these notes being in various notebooks accumulating at home.
- I can organise the notes thematically, so all the meetings of a particular organisation, all the conferences on a particular subject, and all the lectures on a particular course are grouped together.
- As the event progresses, i can build up a list of action points at the bottom of my notes.
- I can connect to the web to check on a term that I do not understand or a website that is mentioned.
- I can easily e-mail any meeting note to a colleague.
- Since all my notes are routinely uploaded to the cloud, if I should lose my iPad or change it, I can easily download all my material to the new device.
I can see two potential downsides to this approach:
- I type more slowly than I can write. However, many students can type as fast or faster than they can write.
- There is a temptation to look at e-mail or web pages instead of concentrating totally on the event. However, very few meetings or conferences are so interesting that they merit full attention 100% of the time. Multi-tasking can be an efficient use of time.
What do you think?
April 7th, 2015 at 11:29 am
Roger, first of all may I say I am shocked – SHOCKED! – that you think very few meetings merit full attention 100% of the time!
But seriously, according to the article:
That sounds plausible, and I would expect that in your case typing rather than handwriting notes would be just as effective, both because your typing is not fast enough to let you “mindlessly type” everything and because you’re not the type of person to do that, anyway!
April 7th, 2015 at 3:26 pm
I have never considered taking notes electronically, for the following reasons:
1. I was brought up in the pre-digital era and have retained the ability to take good and mostly legible notes by hand.
2. Most meetings I attend have a Minutes Secretary whose job it is to record the meeting proceedings and circulate members – by email, so I have digital notes for future reference.
Presentations usually come with handouts of the slides/important points anyway.
3. If I need to write a report or a response to anything that has arisen from a meeting, I write more creatively on paper than on screen so would only type it up afterwards, even if I had digital notes.
I can understand a younger generation making more use of laptop notes, but why are they not taught touch typing?
April 8th, 2015 at 1:25 am
Taking notes electronically does have all the advantages you list Roger. However students may be expected to later memorize their notes for an exam. Then having taken the notes by hand writing may have advantages. There has already been a degree of mental processing through the physical act of writing. In addition the pattern of hand-written notes on a page is unique, and may later serve as a memory aide.
April 8th, 2015 at 10:48 am
Nick, Janet and Nadine, you raise interesting points.
Nick, mindlessly typing or handwriting everything one hears is stupid. One should be making a mental selection and organisation of the material as one hears it, regardless of the technique used for turning it into script.
Janet, this answers your point about touch typing. This skill should not be necessary because one should not be trying to take down every word. Indeed a decent presenter or lecturer will supply copies of slides or notes, so that voluminous writing should not be necessary.
Nadine, I often wonder what assists memory recall. I can’t see why writing notes rather than typing them should necessarily make recall easier. Also a good memory is obviously helpful for recalling facts, but that is not the same as understanding and analysis which are just as important in academia and business and life.
April 12th, 2015 at 3:45 pm
Good discussion. Of course you have to see Roger’s handwriting to see the point he makes! Imagine gothic script circa 1400AD
April 12th, 2015 at 4:04 pm
Dan, It’s now much worse than you remember!