Take a look around any university lecture hall, or any office, or even many school classrooms and you will see a plethora of lap-top or tablet computers being used where previously pen and paper would abound. Some of these computer users will even be doing work (if they’ve had enough of social media or solitaire for a while) but is a computer better when it comes to note-taking than the archaic practice of taking pen in hand?
To study the difference between computer based note taking and hand-written notes the researchers had university students watch TED Talks that were interesting but covering topics not in common knowledge. The participants were given either a lap-top computer or pen and paper to take notes from the talks.
As a distraction the subjects were then given a distraction task before being asked questions relating to the TED Talk they had seen. The questions were either factual recall questions like “How many years ago did the Indus civilisation exist?†or conceptual comprehension questions like “How do Japan and Sweden differ in their approaches to equality in their societies?â€
The results showed that factual recall was approximately equal for either method of note-taking but hand-written note takers did significantly better on conceptual comprehension questions. It was also noticed that notes from computer users contained more words and more verbatim overlap with the lecture than notes written by hand. Interestingly, hand-written note-takers still did better on tests than computer users a week later when the subjects were given a chance to review their notes before taking the test.
It appears then that handwriting engages the person in more processing of what they write than does a computer. Handwriting also involves greater selectivity in what is written thus making later study more effective than computer notes which tend to include more mindless transcription.
The old wisdom is correct then, as far as understanding and comprehension goes, the pen is mightier than the keyboard.
