Now Even the New York Times Has It Wrong |Education & Teacher Conferences
You've probably heard that taking handwritten notes results in better learning than taking notes on a laptop. That research has been oversimplified in the media reporting though. What the researchers found is that rewording and summarizing while taking notes is more effective. People taking handwritten notes are more likely to reword as they go because we write slower than we type. However, if people could be trained to take notes on a laptop while rewording and summarizing, taking digital notes would probably be MORE effective.
It's HOW you take notes that matters, not the media or technology--just as has been seen in numerous other studies about learning.
The correct way is: students should <span style="text-decoration: underline;">reword</span> the professor’s lecture, rather than simply copy the words down <span style="text-decoration: underline;">verbatim</span>.
<p>If students can learn to reword the professor’s lecture when taking notes on a laptop, then Mueller and Oppenheimer’s own data suggest that they’ll learn more. And yes, I do mean “learn more than people who take handwritten notes.”</p>
<p>(Why? Because laptop note-takers can write <em>more words</em> than handwriters, and in M&O’s research, more words lead to more learning.)</p>
