Should university students take notes by hand or on devices?

Professor of Economics at the University of Waikato, Michael Cameron (blog: Sex Drugs and Economics) wrote an interesting piece on note taking by hand versus device. In his lectures he mentions that some students persist in using laptops for exercises even with those involving graphs which is not easy although most draw diagrams on paper.

Cameron goes onto to mention a number of studies that have shown that hand-written notes are better for student learning than notes on laptops or tablets. One in particular he refers to is by Abraham Flanigan (Georgia Southern University) and co-authors, published in the journal Educational Psychology Review 2024 entitled “Typed Versus Handwritten Lecture Notes and College Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis”. They combined the results of 24 studies involving university students focusing on two outcomes:

• student achievement; and

• the volume of notes taken.

In relation to student achievement, Flanigan et al. find: …a mean effect size of 0.248, p < .001[95%CI ∶ 0.181, 0.315], which was statistically significant. This finding indicates that the overall sample of studies found that handwritten note-taking had a positive effect on achievement, meaning that handwriting notes produced higher achievement than typing notes.…handwriting notes produce deeper processing than typing notes. Longhand notes tend to capture lecture ideas in a paraphrased and personalized style meaningful to the note-taker, whereas typed notes tend to capture lecture ideas in a verbatim, almost thoughtless way… Although typing leads to a greater quantity of recorded ideas than writing does, the shallow, verbatim nature of typing notes seems to hinder their external storage value, thereby rendering typed notes less useful during review than handwritten notes……handwritten notes contain more lecture images than typed notes. In studies measuring the number of images recorded in notes, college students typing notes recorded zero lecture images, whereas longhand notetakers recorded multiple images… According to dual-coding theory… learning occurs best when information is coded both verbally and visually.

Cameron says if students don’t take good notes in economics including the drawing of diagrams they are likely to struggle to learn in lectures and this ultimately impacts on their grade at the end of the semester.

Flanigan et al. do make the point that handwriting or typing lecture notes might not be an option for some students, whether their disabilities are physical or cognitive in nature. Other students might require note-taking assistance, such as having another student record notes for them or instructors providing notes for them.

Cameron does come up with two very valid points that Flanagan doesn’t address:

• Not all laptops, iPads etc are not created equal. Handwritten notes can be done on an iPad and converted to text although they do allow students to type as well.

• Note taking by AI versus student notes. He suggests that AI would probably go down the track of verbatim notes – typed notes by a student. This is contrast to paraphrased notes that a student who is hand-writing their notes would make.

All the courses I teach have a physical workbook with notes/exercises which is also available in an interactive format online – Elearneconomics. Students can use either an iPad/laptop or the physical workbook, in some cases they use both. Technology has become very prevalent in the classroom and I have really enjoyed developing resources in economics (like this blog and Elearneconomics) but the assessment is still the same as it was decades ago. This means that students (and teachers) are judged in both Cambridge and NCEA exams by writing essays/drawing graphs etc using pen and paper and under time constraints.

Cameron concludes: How students take notes has an impact on their learning, and on their achievement in assessments. For now it seems, hand-written notes remain best, at least until we can let an AI take over the note-taking.

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