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Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#101

Post by killjoywashere »

discreditable wrote: post #89
DINKDINK wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I opened up a word processor, focused my eyes on the professor's slides or visual aids, and typed everything I saw There are studies that show that verbatim computer note taking is actually inferior to remembering the lecture content: A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...

I'd really like to see a comparison of written notes on a laptop vs paper. Many schools are moving towards tablet PC devices to enable handwritten notes on the computer.

I did this study! In med school I did a survey of my class. I asked them to estimate how many hours they spent engaged in various study behaviors, and asked as one question, what quintile of the class they thought they stood in. Allowing for the Duning-Kruger effect, taking notes by hand was one of the top three things you could do (out of about 30), taking no notes had no effect, and taking notes with a laptop was the single worst idea you could have. N = 84 of 150.

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#102

Post by [deleted] »

microcolonel wrote: post #29

Students are also better off without forcible teacher's unions and federal curriculum mandates; no chance of hearing about that. Maybe the best way out of this mess is vouchers. If the schools are functioning, it should be obvious to them that the laptops are not working out.

[deleted]

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#103

Post by noxToken »

nambit wrote: post #100
ericcumbee wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they aren't as effective as hand written notes. but in my case Neatly typed, well organized notes using OneNote 2003 were more effective than hastily hand written mostly illegible notes.

The reason hand written notes are more effective is that it helps towards better learning just by writing the thing down and slowing it to a pace where your mind can make memories. Even if afterwards the notes are completely illegible, I would argue it's more effective than typed notes.

Wouldn't that only be effective insofar as initial recall goes? If the handwriting is illegible and you don't remember something, then you've missed out on everything that you can't remember. Digital notes may make you miss more on the first pass, but at least you'll have material to study.

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#105

Post by marlokk »

tjr wrote: post #7
makecheck wrote: post #2

If students aren’t engaged, they aren’t going to become star pupils once you take away their distractions. Perhaps kids attend more lectures than before knowing that they can always listen in while futzing with other things (and otherwise, they may skip some of the classes entirely). The lecture format is what needs changing. You need a reason to go to class, and there was nothing worse than a professor showing slide…

Most interesting, engaging class I have ever had was Philip Greenspun's short database class at MIT. All day for three days, a cycle of ~15 minute lecture, ~15 minute problem sets worked by each student on their own laptop, ~15 minutes of reviewing student solutions (and, if needed, presenting the "correct" solution). I imagine that many classes could be presented in a similar format. I also imagine it would be a lot…

+1 also had a professor who did this for his courses and it was a win. The theory being people only have ~20 minute attention spans, so instruction should be switched up as such. Result was I learned more, actually collaborated with classmates, and motivated me to prepare for class.

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#106

Post by drblast »

pmiller2 wrote: post #34
ourmandave wrote: post #31

This reminds me of the running gag in some college movie where the first day all the students show up. The next cut some students come to class, put a recorder on their desk and leave, then pick it up later. Eventually there's a scene of the professor lecturing to a bunch of empty desks with just recorders. And the final scene there's the professor's tape player playing to the student's recorders.

FYI, this gag appears exactly as described in Real Genius . I wonder if there are any other movies that use it?

I'm pretty sure an episode of Scrubs did something very similar.

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#107

Post by ghaff »

JTon wrote: post #97
Balgair wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For real though. Many large undergrad lectures kinda run this way. I'll take the video of the lecture (many large universities record all lectures now) and just play it back at ~1.3x speed later. I can rewind, stop, and fast-forward to the stuff I know I need to know. Since the tests/HW are the only thing that matters, why would I not do it this way? It's a better use of all of our time.

A counter argument for the sake of discussion: students in the classroom can add value to the recorded lectures by engaging the professor with questions that ask to clarify, extend, etc. If there are no students left, the students rely fully on the profs ability to monologue. Could be a risk. Could dilute the lecture's potential.

I suspect a lot depends on what is meant by lecture. If it's a 500 person lecture (or conference talk, etc.), questions are mostly a distraction. In fact, at large events, I find that most speakers prefer to defer questions to the end.

In a 25 person class, even if it's nominally a lecture, I'd expect it to be far more interactive.

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#108

Post by preben »

nambit wrote: post #100
ericcumbee wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they aren't as effective as hand written notes. but in my case Neatly typed, well organized notes using OneNote 2003 were more effective than hastily hand written mostly illegible notes.

The reason hand written notes are more effective is that it helps towards better learning just by writing the thing down and slowing it to a pace where your mind can make memories. Even if afterwards the notes are completely illegible, I would argue it's more effective than typed notes.

Slowing down to a pace comfortable for you means, at least in my classes, that you'll miss the next thing in the presentation. Notes are not for immediate learning, they're for assisting in learning later on. As an physics engineering student, I take notes with a combination of LaTeX and OneNote on my Surface 3.

Additional benefits by using a laptop to take notes is that they are searchable, archived and accessible for however long you like, and sharable between classmates. Hand written notes can obviously be shared and archived as well, but nowhere near as easily.

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#109

Post by spike021 »

nambit wrote: post #100
ericcumbee wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they aren't as effective as hand written notes. but in my case Neatly typed, well organized notes using OneNote 2003 were more effective than hastily hand written mostly illegible notes.

The reason hand written notes are more effective is that it helps towards better learning just by writing the thing down and slowing it to a pace where your mind can make memories. Even if afterwards the notes are completely illegible, I would argue it's more effective than typed notes.

I've always wondered about this.

What makes handwriting different from typing in terms of memory recall, other than the fact that most, if not everyone, have written with pen and paper for far longer than typing?

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#110

Post by Florin_Andrei »

zeta0134 wrote: post #74

Oh, okay, I thought the study was going to be on the benefits of attempting to use the laptop itself for classroom purposes, not for social media distractions. This would be more accurately titled, "Students Are Better Off Without Distractions in the Classroom." Though I suppose, it wouldn't make a very catchy headline. I found my laptop to be very beneficial in my classroom learning during college, but only when I m…

> not for social media distractions

But that is the main issue, isn't it? The social media machine with its hunger for "eyeballs" and its myriad of notifications and popups. Shallow entertainment in the form of Youtube videos, always just one click away. Heck, even hypertext with its going-off-on-a-tangent links to external documents.

If you really want to do a focused, deep study of something, turn off the Internet.

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