You may want to tell your college students to put their laptops away during class lectures. It appears the “old way” of taking handwritten notes in class trumps typing notes into your laptop. If you’d like to know why, a study by researchers Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles, found that taking notes by hand wins out for several reasons.
Taking notes by hand offers you the opportunity to write key points as you listen, which engages active listening in students. Students are more selective and write down main ideas, and they highlight and circle things that seem to be the most important. The opposite was true with those taking notes on the laptops; they often wrote longer sentences, trying to capture every word that was spoken instead of listening for those key points and adding their own notes to it.
Students often referred back to their handwritten notes and were able to decipher why they wrote the key points and what made them important to know–often using their own shorthand and indicators as to why the information was important. On laptops, the same was not true, as more full sentence notes were taken. Taking handwritten notes also helps organize the material for students and give them a starting point for studying.
As a college professor, I can tell you from experience that I see students take notes in class by hand and on laptops. I can also tell you that students on laptops are also checking their email, texting, and surfing the internet simultaneously in class. These students can miss key points and information regarding assignments and tests. They also lack eye contact and engagement with the professor. Students who take handwritten notes — and students who are good at taking handwritten notes — are often more engaged in class, ask more questions, are better prepared, do better on tests and assignments, and contribute during discussions of course material.
As our spring semester is about to begin, I would urge students who have sat back and not taken notes because professors post their Powerpoints on Blackboard, or who rely strongly on note taking on their laptops, to give the old-fashioned way of note taking a try. It may be worth it to see what happens this term. When I was a freshman in college, my psychology teacher had written a book on study skills, and he taught us the proper way to take notes to do well on tests. I am forever grateful to the late Dr. James Furukawa of Towson University for helping me be a better prepared student and lifelong learner.
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Stephanie Verni is Professor of Business Communication at Stevenson University and is the author of Inn Significant, Baseball Girl, and Beneath the Mimosa Tree. Along with her colleagues Leeanne Bell McManus and Chip Rouse, she is a co-author of Event Planning: Communicating Theory and Practice, published by Kendall-Hunt.
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Stephanie Verni
The second a child comes into your life, you know at some point, you will have to let go. They are babies, and they need you as infants, but not too long after, they find their own two feet can take them places, and they start walking, exploring and discovering. Even as toddlers, they are beginning their journey away from you. As much as you want to hold on, the truth is, you are already beginning to let go.
To college.
Stephanie Verni
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Another fallacy is that people think procrastination is just about putting off a task. It’s not. It’s also about being late to meetings, events, interviews, or parties; not paying your bills on time; or even something that can be good for you, like taking your paycheck to the bank. These are all forms of procrastination.
When it came time for the presentations, the teacher also chose the order. I was second from last. In a class of 35, that was an eternity to wait, and a long time for communication apprehension to build. When I finally got my chance to get up and speak, I froze. Completely. I made my way along, until I could no longer take it. My hands were buzzing, my knees were knocking, my heart was causing all kinds of trouble in my chest, and I felt as if I could pass out. I asked to get a drink, and she allowed me to go in the hallway and calm down. When I came back into the room with questionable stares and few smiles, I became even more uneasy. The bottom line is this: I couldn’t finish my speech. I failed, and then felt humiliated by my failure.
Looking back on that college classroom at the age of 19, I can say it was that failure that made me become a more serious student. With the acquisition of my job at the Orioles, I learned how to budget my time, get my studies done, and work a job that had incredibly demanding hours. My grades got better, my work ethic became stronger, and I developed a drive I didn’t know quite existed in me.
While there are many trite (and incorrectly structured) phrases that people use constantly, i.e. phrases like “It is what it is” and “I could care less,” whereby the first just sounds silly and the latter actually means you care, there is another phrase that I’d like to see stripped from our sentence constructs.
In a little over a week, I’ll be back on campus teaching my fall college courses. Some people may dread the thought of work, but not me. I always look forward to the fall and going back to school, to using my brain, to being in the classroom, and to seeing young, eager minds ready to work.
