Traditional note taking in college seems to be a thing of the
past in that students often do not want to take notes in class, or they type on
their laptops. I personally, have gotten in the habit of posting my PPT slides
for the students to look at after class because I know that is as close to note
taking as some students will get.
It is amazing how many students do not have notes for exam, even
after I announce an open note test; I see many students scrambling to make notes
last minute or trying to make photocopies of their classmates notes (which I do
not allow anyway).
“Taking Notes by Hand
Benefits Recall, Researchers Find”
“
Distractions posed by laptops in the
classroom have been a
common concern, but new research suggests
that even if laptops are used strictly to take notes, typing notes hinders
students’ academic performance compared with writing notes on paper with a pen
or pencil.”
“Daniel M. Oppenheimer, an associate professor of psychology at the
University of California at Los Angeles, and Pam Mueller, a graduate
student at Princeton University, studied the effects of students’ note-taking
preferences. Their findings will be published in a paper in
Psychological
Science called “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of
Longhand Over Laptop Note-Taking.””
“The researchers’ goal was to figure out whether typing notes—which is
becoming increasingly popular—has any direct effect on a students’ ability to
understand a lecture.”
“In a series of studies, the researchers provided students with laptops or
with pen and paper to take notes. (The computers were disconnected from the
Internet.) Students were then tested on how well they could recall facts and
apply concepts. During the first test, students were told to “use
their normal classroom note-taking strategy.” Some typed, and others wrote
longhand. They were tested 30 minutes later.”
“The researchers aimed to measure the increased opportunity to “mindlessly”
take verbatim notes when using laptops.”
““Verbatim note-taking, as opposed to more selective strategies, signals
less encoding of content,” says the researchers’ report. Although laptop
users took almost twice the amount of notes as those writing longhand, they
scored significantly lower in the conceptual part of the test. Both groups had
similar scores on the factual test.”
“In another part of the study, some laptop users were instructed to avoid
taking verbatim notes. Instructors explained that “people who take class notes
on laptops when they expect to be tested on the material later tend to
transcribe what they’re hearing without thinking about it much.” But
members of that group received lower scores in both conceptual and factual
tests than did their longhand counterparts.”
““While more notes are beneficial, at least to a point, if the notes are
taken indiscriminately or by mindlessly transcribing content, as is more likely
the case on a laptop, the benefit disappears,” says the report.”
Read here:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/taking-notes-by-hand-benefits-recall-researchers-find/51411?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
So those of you who insist, “they do not need to take notes because they
will write them down when they get home” (and never do), or those who like to
type away incessantly in class, you might consider trying it the old-fashioned way.
Dr Flavius A B Akerele III
The ETeam
