note taking for college students on laptop

The external-storage hypothesis says that being able to reread notes, even if taken by someone else, helps students to learn the lecture material. Research suggests two main ways that taking notes helps learning. But I’ll get to that below.įirst, here’s a bit of background and a summary of the NPR story. I think it’s more important what students do with the notes once they’re written. The more I think about it, though, the issue of whether handwritten notes are better than typed is not that simple. I was intrigued that this story was challenging my own experience. I would have loved to use a laptop during class lectures (except for the math and science classes that required writing a lot of equations).īut as my school’s technology director, I want to make sure I’m giving our teachers and students the best advice on using laptops in our classrooms, as well as help our students develop good habits and skills that will serve them well in college and beyond. I’m a very slow writer, and I struggled to diligently record every bit of information my teachers and professors offered. Taking notes in high school and college was excruciating for me. So when I came across this NPR story about the apparent downsides of taking notes with a laptop instead of good old-fashioned handwriting, my gut reaction was a very visceral, “No way that’s true!” I can type much faster than I can write, and it’s a huge benefit being able to quickly search and reference my notes. I love taking notes with my laptop in meetings and at conferences.

Laptops were not common, and no one used anything but pen and paper to take notes during class lectures.įorward to today, and laptops and tablets are virtually ubiquitous in college classrooms.

It was a giant, Windows 95 tower PC (a P120 with 16MB of RAM). I didn’t get my first computer until my third year of college in 1995.

Is this better than taking notes with pen and paper? Christopher Bailey lecturing, Geology 101, College of William and Mary.

Note taking for college students on laptop