Effective notetaking: by hand or digitally?
Typing out your notes on a computer, instead of writing them down with a paper and pen, is a very practical way of taking notes in your classes: it's faster, available on several devices and you don’t have to waste time, a few weeks later, when you’re revising for an exam and you can’t decipher your own sloppy handwriting. Which method is actually more efficient in retaining course information, though? Is it really better to take notes on a computer, or by hand?
First we need to outline why notetaking is such an effective learning tool. Simply put, there are four primary reasons for taking notes during your classes:
- to concentrate better
- to remember better
- to understand better
- to revise better
We know that the best notes (those which help you to learn the most) are the ones you have written yourself. Writing your own notes helps you to engage with the content and will be written in your own words, with your own particular word-associations. We learn more when we think about what is most important, organize the notes based on our own understanding of the topic, and place this new information and new perspectives into the frame of what we already know.
There is not a lot of research on whether handwritten or computer-written notes are best in achieving this, but one large American study (Mueller & Oppenheimer 2014) that has been used as a reference for many teacher suggests that taking notes by hand may be a more efficient learning tool than previously thought. In this study, students were asked take notes while watching pre-recorded lectures, and then were tested on how much they remembered and had understood from these lectures.
Link to the study by Mueller & Oppenheimer 2014 (PDF, 612 Kb)
Faster is not always better
The findings of the American study revealed that the students who wrote on a computer recorded faster, more accurate notes, recording what the lecturer had said much more literally than those who took handwritten notes. When both groups were tested a short while later, they were equally good at remembering factual information. However, the students who took notes by hand were better at the more complicated questions, which involved applying concepts and remembering connections from the lecture. Moreover, when the students were asked to take the test a week later, after having been allowed to study based only on their notes, those who took notes by hand outperformed the other students both in the factual questions and in the more complicated questions.
The researchers believe that this result is due to the lack of time for the students hand-writing notes: since they do not have time to note everything, these students must listen more carefully and assess which information is most important to write down. They thus process the content while taking notes. Those who record verbatim what the lecturer says focus more on the writing itself and less on learning.
There are other studies which show that more areas of the brain are activated when we write by hand than when we type on a keyboard. Additionally, our own handwriting seems to be a better trigger for memorising content. If this were to be the case, it would explain why the students with handwritten notes performed better after basing their revision on them.
Don’t get distracted
The students in the American study did not have access to the internet on the computers they used to take notes. However, there is plenty of research that shows that students with access to social media on their computers or phones while they study consistently perform worse than those who do not. These studies suggest that it is the possibility if multitasking which is distracting for students: irrespective of whether they actually are multitasking or not. It is a troubling insight in the age of Zoom lectures.
It seems that taking notes on the computer might not be as advantageous as it originally seems when it comes to taking lecture notes. The research, however, is not unequivocal. In addition, laptop or pen are no longer the only two options, but there are both hardware and software that allow one to write in handwriting on the screen or make digital mind maps. Maybe it matters. Another aspect to consider is that the brain gets worse at what it rarely does, which is a good argument for varying and practicing different techniques. It's simply hard to say which option is best.
In summary, there is research that suggests that it can be easier to understand, remember and concentrate if you take notes by hand, but the most important thing is not if you use a computer or pencil, but that you actively work on processing the material: sorting and organizing, anchor new knowledge in prior understanding and test yourself on the content afterwards. And that you don't let yourself be disturbed by other things when you take notes.