Sharing: Taking Notes By Hand May Be Better Than Digitally, Researchers Say

Taking Notes By Hand May Be Better Than Digitally, Researchers Say : NPR

In the study published in Psychological Science, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles sought to test how notetaking by hand or by computer affects learning. “When people type their notes they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can,” Mueller tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. “The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective — because you can’t write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them.”

I think the researchers are asking the wrong question. In these situations, was a lecture the best way to convey the material to the students?

But, if you are taking notes, what format could you use? I stumbled upon the Cornell Notes method of organizing notes and it looks like something I could have used in my college days.