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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

#131

Post by mamon »

preben wrote: post #108
nambit wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

>> Slowing down to a pace comfortable for you means, at least in my classes, that you'll miss the next thing in the presentation.

That's exactly the point: you get a free exercise in divided attention, plus you are forced to digest your notes to only essentials, not full transcript of the lecture. That process is what makes handwritten notes superior - it forces you to focus and think, not just mindlessly type.

And for things that you didn't have time to note you still have a textbook. Handwritten notes are just outline, a basis to build upon.

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

#132

Post by ams6110 »

preben wrote: post #108
nambit wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

Can you really write LaTeX equations fast enough to keep up with the lecture? I'm impressed.

When I was in school I was often hard pressed to keep up with simple paper and pencil.

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

#133

Post by ams6110 »

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.

Back To School, Rodney Dangerfield.

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

#134

Post by free_everybody »

I find that having my laptop out is great for my learning, even during lectures. If somethings not clear or I want more context, I can quickly look up some information without interrupting the teacher. Also, paper notes don't travel well. If everything is on my laptop and backed up online, I know that if I have my laptop, I can study anything I want. Even if I don't have my laptop, I could use another computer to access my notes and documents. This is a HUGE benefit.

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

#135

Post by snakeanus »

izacus wrote: post #35
msla wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like we never left the Middle Ages, when books were expensive and the point of lecturing was to read the book, which was the only book, or one of a few, to students, who'd then copy it down in their notebooks so they'd have at least a copy of what was in the book. These days, despite the textbook publishers' best efforts, the information is freely available (up until you run into paywalled research papers, but t…

Copying content (any by extension doing practice like mathematical problems) is scientifically proven to improve recall by orders of magnitude. There's a reason why people demand you copy stuff down on your own.

> There's a reason why people demand you copy stuff down on your own.

If someone demands from you (instead of just suggesting) to copy stuff down by hand on your own it's probably because they want to fuck with you (or because they are too lazy to do actual teaching). I can see no other explanation. That was especially true during elementary, middle and high school.

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

#136

Post by Bartweiss »

DINKDINK wrote: post #85
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 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...

That's a pretty unrealistic experiment, though.

The full study is paywalled, but based on the SA article it had students take notes two ways, then tested them on retention and synthesis later - without any secondary study. That's not necessarily a good mirror for actual long-running courses.

I used both approaches in college. Longhand note-taking was vastly better for my retention of material, I don't dispute that. But computer transcription let me get everything, and sometimes that mattered more. I had to study more outside class when I typed, but I was aware of that and it was a worthwhile tradeoff for completeness.

Professors are not necessarily good, or even tolerable, at supporting effective learning strategies. They can click through dense Powerpoint slides faster than I can type or write. And they can refuse to release those slides, then test on material from them not available elsewhere. If writing means I get 60% and retain it, while typing means I get 90% and have to study further, typing wins without question.

More broadly, my take would be: many real classrooms are vastly less student-friendly than your average study environment. That changes what works.

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

#138

Post by wott »

striking wrote: post #27
ahussain wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely feel my attentiveness and focus dropped dramatically after computers were introduced into my work life. It's a shame that computers provide such a thin line between work and entertainment.

You can make that line thicker. You can create a new user on your computer specifically for work, with a restricted environment. You could use VMs or dualboot or something. Personally, I'm very happy that we have devices that are capable of doing so many things.

You can but you won't as long as it is possible to bypass the trick, because you are inevitably attracted (not to say addicted) to the online web content and interactions and you'll quickly switch back to it.

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

#139

Post by ue_ »

wott wrote: post #125
compuguy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sam…

It's worth first noting that there are indeed people for whom a laptop would be much, much better, due to some disorders which produce very quick pain or tiredness in the muscles from writing, with handwriting that may be unreadable even the next day. Such people obviously greatly benefit from laptops.

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

Have you used org-mode? I really like the ability to organise many notes, link them together (like a small personal wiki) and others. Typing is also significantly less fatiguing, at least for my hands, and I suspect at equal or even faster speed, though I have nothing to back that up, I can type at around 110wpm comfortably.

Typing notes also comes in quite handy if the course comes with digital material. You can copy that graph in, you don't have to draw it out. Tablet-laptops (if there's a word for them, I don't know it) let you draw diagrams with ease. It may also benefit to record what the lecturer is saying with the laptop's microphone, though you can do that with a separate device, it's more useful and convenient to have that as embedded media in your notes.

It also means you can do things other than note-taking. If the course requires some amount of memorisation of facts with definite answers, you can use spaced repetition flashcard programs such as Anki, and fill them in during the lecture, or better, copy-and-paste from your typed up lecture notes. This is especially useful for definitions of things.

Whether laptops are used as they could be used is a different matter, and my own lecturers have told me anecdotes of their misusage, though I think it's unwise to stop people who would otherwise use them well from using them. The people who misuse their laptops will find that not paying attention has consequences.

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

#140

Post by snakeanus »

wott wrote: post #125
compuguy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sam…

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

I had the same kind of problem since elementary school, I was first allowed to use a computer during class in uni.

> That's bullshit

Just because it doesn't occur to you it does not mean that it's not true. Just because you started paying attention to it now it does not mean that it wasn't there before either.

> No you can't

Well, you might not be able to but many people can.

> You can't draw graphs, you can't draw diagrams

Sure you can. There are many tools for this job, both text and graphical ones.

> You can't either type fancy maths, physics and chemistry formulas as fast and as "aligned" as you can do do it by hand.

With Latex + Emacs I can type fancy mathematical formulas much faster and much more aligned than when writing them down.

> There is zero benefit in typing notes vs writing them down

Except that writing down notes for me and for many other people is useless, tiresome and distracting.

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