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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

#121

Post by twinkletwinkle »

ksk wrote: post #99
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...

>There are studies that show that verbatim computer note taking is actually inferior to remembering the lecture content: I think people should be careful when looking at such things. 'There are studies' is not really the same as 'there is scientific consensus with demonstrated repeatability'. Ultimately though, you can't tell someone they're doing it wrong when they're successful, so YMMV.

Also a generalized statistical result doesn't really apply to an individual. Maybe verbatim note taking is inferior for 98% of people. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it if it works for you.

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

#122

Post by Terr_ »

ericcumbee wrote: post #96
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...

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.

IMO it's important to distinguish between two kinds of note-taking.

The first kind are notes that you take because the process helps memorize in that moment. The writing is a tool to help you manipulate and focus the idea in your head. The output is much less important than the experience. These are the records that -- in practice -- you will seldom go back to read.

The second kind are notes you take because you can't memorize them right now and plan to review or reuse them later in some way. When taking notes this way, you mentally avoid thinking too hard about what the note means, in order to copy it faithfully.

Personally, I think handwriting works better for the write-only notes, while typing (and copy-pasting, and links, etc.) are great for notes that are going to be reused later.

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

#123

Post by throwawayjava »

njarboe wrote: post #116

This is a summary of an article titled "Logged In and Zoned Out: How Laptop Internet Use Relates to Classroom Learning" published in Psychological Science in 2017; The DOI is 10.1177/0956797616677314 if you want to check out the details. Abstract: Laptop computers are widely prevalent in university classrooms. Although laptops are a valuable tool, they offer access to a distracting temptation: the Internet. In the st…

> ...Students who were enrolled in an introductory psychology course...

Ugh.

Also, from the paper:

> Five hundred seven students enrolled in an introductory psychology class in fall 2014... Each lecture lasted 1 hr and 50 min with a 10-min break in the middle.

Alternative headline: "500 person intro courses with meat-space lecture periods lasting TWO HOURS are stupid, and everything else is water under the bridge"

edit2: Also from the paper:

> Participants who logged in for less than half of the sessions were excluded from analysis

Why?! You don't think that frequency of use could correlate at all with type of use?! It's like they're willfully introducing unnecessary threats to validity...

And it keeps going like that for the entire paper. I smell experiment design hacking.

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

#124

Post by swiley »

throwawayjava wrote: post #123
njarboe wrote: post #116

This is a summary of an article titled "Logged In and Zoned Out: How Laptop Internet Use Relates to Classroom Learning" published in Psychological Science in 2017; The DOI is 10.1177/0956797616677314 if you want to check out the details. Abstract: Laptop computers are widely prevalent in university classrooms. Although laptops are a valuable tool, they offer access to a distracting temptation: the Internet. In the st…

> ...Students who were enrolled in an introductory psychology course... Ugh. Also, from the paper: > Five hundred seven students enrolled in an introductory psychology class in fall 2014... Each lecture lasted 1 hr and 50 min with a 10-min break in the middle. Alternative headline: "500 person intro courses with meat-space lecture periods lasting TWO HOURS are stupid, and everything else is water under the bridge" ed…

This is one of the classes I CLEPed while in highschool. I don't think I spent more than a couple of hours actually studying for it.

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

#125

Post by wott »

compuguy wrote: post #24
stevemk14ebr wrote: post #9

I think this is a highly personal topic. As a student myself i find a laptop in class is very nice, i can type my notes faster, and organize them better. Most of my professors lectures are scatter brained and i frequently have to go back to previous section and annotate or insert new sections. With a computer i just go back and type, with a pen and paper i have to scribble, or write in the margins. Of course computer…

Some of us also have terrible handwriting, so taking notes by hand is out of the question. Though I will also surmise that they can also be a distraction.

In 15 years of studies, I have never ever heard anyone complaining about his own handwriting. Even with a handwriting that can be very bad for others, one can always reread 99.9% of what one has written, because it is one's own handwriting and one knows its quirks.

This kind of complaint magically appeared after students got Internet-enabled laptops and were allowed to bring them at school.

That's bullshit of the same level as "I can take faster and better notes with my laptop". No you can't. You can't draw graphs, you can't draw diagrams, you can't draw small maps quickly and properly as you can by hand. You can't either type fancy maths, physics and chemistry formulas as fast and as "aligned" as you can do do it by hand.

"But it is searchable". Wonderful. As if you used to be lost in a 30 pages long course (which has a logical organisation and/or progression) that anyway you have to learn one way or another, by practice or rote memorisation.

There is zero benefit in typing notes vs writing them down. At best, in an unlikely optimistic case, it could be equal.

Laptop in a classroom are used to play, browse the web and social networks; the rest are made-up justifications to be allowed to bring them.

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

#126

Post by saint_fiasco »

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…

Why not take notes on paper instead?

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

#127

Post by snakeanus »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #110
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.

Or just log out of any social media. No need to turn off the internet.

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

#128

Post by throwawayjava »

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…

> I realize my experience is anecdotal

FWIW I'm not totally convinced that the paper isn't also anecdotal. They selected for people who would agree to have their internet activity spied on in exchange for extra credit, and then from that group selected only for people using the internet -- not their computers, but the internet! -- in more than half the lectures. And did all of this in a large enrollment undergraduate gen ed intro course with lectures that lasted two hours.

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

#129

Post by trustyhank »

pmiller2 wrote: post #49
stevemk14ebr wrote: post #9

I think this is a highly personal topic. As a student myself i find a laptop in class is very nice, i can type my notes faster, and organize them better. Most of my professors lectures are scatter brained and i frequently have to go back to previous section and annotate or insert new sections. With a computer i just go back and type, with a pen and paper i have to scribble, or write in the margins. Of course computer…

You might think laptops are as good or better than paper notes, but the research says otherwise. Here is a popular article from Scientific American about this very topic: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret... Tons of journal articles on this are available if you look.

Ive tried both, I perform significantly better taking notes on a computer. Dont need a research paper to figure that out for myself.

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

#130

Post by zitterbewegung »

When I was in College I would take notes using a notebook and pad and paper. I audited some classes with my laptop using latex but most of the time I used a notebook. Also, sometimes I would just go to class without a notebook and get the information that way. It also helped that I didn't have a smartphone with Cellular data half of the time I was in school.
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