The reason hand written notes are more effective is that it helps towards better learning just by writing the thing down and slowing it to a pace where your mind can make memories. Even if afterwards the notes are completely illegible, I would argue it's more effective than typed notes.
Slowing down to a pace comfortable for you means, at least in my classes, that you'll miss the next thing in the presentation. Notes are not for immediate learning, they're for assisting in learning later on. As an physics engineering student, I take notes with a combination of LaTeX and OneNote on my Surface 3.
Additional benefits by using a laptop to take notes is that they are searchable, archived and accessible for however long you like, and sharable between classmates. Hand written notes can obviously be shared and archived as well, but nowhere near as easily.
>> Slowing down to a pace comfortable for you means, at least in my classes, that you'll miss the next thing in the presentation.
That's exactly the point: you get a free exercise in divided attention, plus you are forced to digest your notes to only essentials, not full transcript of the lecture. That process is what makes handwritten notes superior - it forces you to focus and think, not just mindlessly type.
And for things that you didn't have time to note you still have a textbook. Handwritten notes are just outline, a basis to build upon.
> I take notes with a combination of LaTeX and OneNote on my Surface 3
I wonder how you do that - I can't imagine I would be able to make notes in LaTeX in real-time. To me, paper is just faster than any computer solution. Also sometimes you need to draw a diagram or arrow in the notes.
> Slowing down to a pace comfortable for you means, at least in my classes, that you'll miss the next thing in the presentation.
I was thinking about this recently. I teach (assembly programming) in our company using slideshow. But most teachers at my university used blackboard (for math). I am beginning to think that using blackboard is better, despite more effort, because it also forces the teacher to slow down.
One of my favorite electrical engineering professors gave incredibly well-planned lectures via overhead transparencies. He was quick to adjust the pace of an individual lecture to the audience, but also provided his presentations as PDF downloads. His presentations were supplemental to the textbooks, but served as amazing base notes. In his classes, I found myself writing prompts for further review and stray observations, rather than attempting to summarize as the lecture progressed.
Having worked on online learning applications since then, I still think that his was the best system for transferring complex knowledge in a classroom setting.
It's totally doable. I type fast and know my LaTeX. Only time I feel like I'm at a significant disadvantage is when new symbols are introduced that I have to look up.
Only math is done in LaTeX, for clarification. They're rendered as images and imported into OneNote (via EqualX, if anyone's looking to do the same).
Being a human photocopier in maths/physics lectures was the worst thing about university, when you're 6 blackboards behind. That was in 1999, hopefully it's changed now.
What makes handwriting different from typing in terms of memory recall, other than the fact that most, if not everyone, have written with pen and paper for far longer than typing?
Greater number of variables employed in creation. Any one of which could be a hook to remember by (location on page, made a particularly nice letter, where my pencil broke, after the smudge, before/after my hand started to cramp).
Typing vs handwriting is like finding the right door in an unnumbered hotel vs a picturesque medieval town
>Any one of which could be a hook to remember by (location on page, made a particularly nice letter, where my pencil broke, after the smudge, before/after my hand started to cramp).
I still don't get how that'd be any different. Location on a page corresponds with which notebook and section I may have taken notes down in OneNote, especially since you can also position notes all over the page.
There have been studies done with children that come to the same conclusion. For some reason, writing with pen and paper is better for recall. I don't know why, though.
In my experience it's everything--the scratchy pencil sensation dragging across the paper, cedar wood smell, that little curve at the end of letter e, ease of annotations anywhere on the paper, drawing arrows to connect pages because it doesn't fit in one page...
Wouldn't that only be effective insofar as initial recall goes? If the handwriting is illegible and you don't remember something, then you've missed out on everything that you can't remember. Digital notes may make you miss more on the first pass, but at least you'll have material to study.
75% of the value of notes is it helps me keep focused. My mind wants to wander away ("that reminds me of...") - 10 minutes latter I realize I've been daydreaming about some camping trip years ago and I have no idea what the lecture is about anymore. Taking notes helps me focus by giving me a goal: what about the lecture is important enough that I want to write it down. Sometimes I review my notes latter, but generally I find it isn't worth the time.
I don't disagree that there are pros to hand writing notes. However There are other ways to build those connections in your mind.
I spent my first year and a half of college at a community college. They arent exactly known for their academic rigor. However first semester I took World History 1. There were only like 3 tests and 5 Quizzes that made up our grade. The tests were not multiple choice or fill in the blank like some professors might do. They were several short essay questions and a long form essay. You would have a choice of like 6 short essay questions which you had to pick 3 to answer. and then had a choice of 3 long essay topics from which we had to pick one.
The Professor about 2 weeks prior to the exams gave us a handout of 12 short essay questions and 6 long essay questions. He randomized the questions that were on the test so that while we knew what questions were possibly going to be on the test we did not know which ones would. He also expected us to know both the facts such as people, places, dates and events. but also the concepts. If you only got the concepts but did not know the factual material you were in trouble and vice versa.
I took all my notes in that class on a laptop using OneNote 2003 (It came out right at the start of my first semester in college.)
As the semester went on I got into the habit of skimming over my previous notes for that class and adding annotations about connections to other concepts and facts in the class. I also would review my notes at the end of the day while it was still fresh in my mind, but had taken some time to digest the material to add things that I missed or make my notes more clear.
When it came time to start preparing for the tests the first thing I did was take my notes, create a new section in my notebook just for that test. I took all my notes for that test and instead of organizing them by lecture, i condensed them into a more concise and coherent form that linked all the different concepts and facts together. I also outlined my strategy for each question. Then I printed it out and put it in a ring binder, as I refined my notes, I printed out new copies for the binder. I probably printed about 200 pages for each test.
Maybe Writing them out would have been more effective for memorization in most cases. But to me there was simply too much information to memorize in one pass. and Wrot memorization was not going to cut in this class. I also think the fact that I was constantly working with those notes and synthesizing new material from them, replaced alot of the feedback loop of writing it all out by hand.
I learned a lot of history in that class. But more importantly I learned how to interpret requirements, sift through large amounts of information, making connections between that information and developing strategies to accomplish a goal.
