Using Laptop To Take Notes Lowers Grades 313
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."
So basically surfing net while taking notes (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardly surprising.... (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!
Re:Hardly surprising.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't need to be multi-tasking (Score:4, Insightful)
Multi-tasking is a plausible explanation, but I can posit another one quite easily.
If instead of focusing on writing the content you're trying to do any form of formatting, layout, entering equations, trying to do diagrams -- you are already multi-tasking and part of your attention is on the device instead of what you're listening to.
I've tried taking notes on a laptop, and I found it distracting and more trouble than it's worth. If you can see the Prof is drawing a quadrant or a graph, you can do that by hand far faster on a sheet of paper.
Maybe someone can do it, but for me, I find that good old fashioned paper is still the most effective way for me to take notes and commit stuff to paper and I can annotate it later.
I just don't think the input techniques we have available to us are anywhere near as effective as pen and paper.
My guess? Give someone a laptop which has no internet connectivity while they're taking notes, and with only the application open they're directly using -- and they'll still do worse.
Re:what about (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.