-
About
Our Story
back- Our Mission
- Our Leadership
- Accessibility
- Careers
- Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
- Learning Science
- Sustainability
Our Solutions
back
-
Community
Community
back
- Macmillan Community
- :
- Psychology Community
- :
- Psychology Blog
- :
- Longhand vs. Laptop Note Taking—A Good Reason to B...
Longhand vs. Laptop Note Taking—A Good Reason to Ban Laptops in Classrooms?
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark as New
- Mark as Read
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Printer Friendly Page
- Report Inappropriate Content
Originally posted on May 2, 2014.
Many faculty fret over students’ in-class use of computers—ostensibly there for note taking, but often also used for distracting e-mail, messaging, and checking social media. A soon-to-be-published study by Pam Mueller (Princeton University) and Daniel Oppenheimer (UCLA) offers faculty an additional justification for asking students not to use computers.
In three experiments, they gave students either a laptop or a notebook and invited them to take notes on a lecture (a TED lecture in two of the studies). Later, when they tested their memory for the lecture content, they found no difference in recall of factual information. But taking notes in longhand, which required participants to summarize content in their own words, led to better performance on conceptual-application questions. “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard” is the apt title for their article, to appear in Psychological Science.
“Participants using laptops were more inclined to take verbatim notes,” explained Mueller and Oppenheimer. Better to synthesize and summarize, they conclude: “laptop use in classrooms should be viewed with a healthy dose of caution; despite their growing popularity, laptops may be doing more harm in classrooms than good.”
For one of my colleagues, this study, combined with the unwanted distractions of in-class computer use, inspires a new class policy: for better learning, no computer use in class.
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.
-
Abnormal Psychology
19 -
Achievement
3 -
Affiliation
1 -
Behavior Genetics
2 -
Cognition
40 -
Consciousness
32 -
Current Events
26 -
Development Psychology
15 -
Developmental Psychology
34 -
Drugs
5 -
Emotion
48 -
Evolution
3 -
Evolutionary Psychology
5 -
Gender
19 -
Gender and Sexuality
5 -
Genetics
12 -
History and System of Psychology
4 -
History and Systems of Psychology
7 -
Industrial and Organizational Psychology
50 -
Intelligence
8 -
Learning
63 -
Memory
37 -
Motivation
14 -
Motivation: Hunger
1 -
Nature-Nurture
7 -
Neuroscience
42 -
Personality
27 -
Psychological Disorders and Their Treatment
19 -
Research Methods and Statistics
86 -
Sensation and Perception
43 -
Social Psychology
122 -
Stress and Health
55 -
Teaching and Learning Best Practices
50 -
Thinking and Language
16 -
Virtual Learning
26
- « Previous
- Next »