
Study: Students who take notes by hand outperform students who type - walterbell
http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-handwriting-make-you-smarter-1459784659
======
cperciva
It would be nice to see a comparison against students who don't take notes. I
never took notes in any of my classes, and my father (a senior Chemistry
professor) is a firm believer in this approach -- while he doesn't _prohibit_
students from taking notes, he has provided lecture notes for two decades and
encourages his students to pay attention instead of transcribing.

Of course, there's always the inherent problem of observational studies: Is
the note-taking style affecting student performance, or does student aptitude
determine note-taking style? The students who already have a reasonable grasp
of course material are likely to be manage with the limited bandwidth of
handwritten notes, whereas students who don't understand anything and are
consequentially unable to identify which parts are important may be
predisposed to prefer a higher-bandwidth note-taking system.

~~~
f_allwein
This is what the Hagakure (book of the Samurai) says about this [1]:

"In Yui Shosetsu’s military instructions, “The Way of the Three Ultimates,”
there is a passage on the character of karma. He received an oral teaching of
about eighteen chapters concerning the Greater Bravery and the Lesser Bravery.
He neither wrote them down nor committed them to memory but rather forgot them
completely. Then, in facing real situations, he acted on impulse and the
things that he had learned became wisdom of his own. This is the character of
karma."

Personally, I'm all for taking digital notes as they are searchable and can be
backed up. I think either way, the process of taking notes is more important
than the tools.

[1]
[https://github.com/hollanddd/hagakure/blob/master/chapter-10...](https://github.com/hollanddd/hagakure/blob/master/chapter-10.txt)

~~~
CarolineW
So what you are saying is that in your personal opinion you think the
carefully designed and executed study reported here is wrong, because you
disagree with it. Because the study specifically says that when taking notes,
handwriting outperforms using a computer.

So tell me, why is the study wrong?

~~~
rustynails
I don't necessarily agree with the findings, but you may have missed
something. The article talks about typing vs writing. This person talked about
listening instead, and that does work for some people.

Let me give you an example where the study can be wrong. My son is an
Aspergers. He is classified as gifted or near gifted (it's a fine line).
However, he struggles to write. So, in his case, he has 2 options: (1) just
listen [he has a great memory and this has proven to work well], or (2) type.

I take these types of advice with a grain of salt. Rather than the what, I
focus on the why.

My own experiences reflect those of many commenters here: I wrote notes and
either couldn't read them or didn't go back to them. I most probably should
have listened rather than scribe myself.

~~~
brashrat
you are saying that a large collection of self-reported anecdotes more
correctly describes a population than a study; we say "you're wrong," and
there is plenty of statistical evidence that proves you are wrong, but of
course you don't believe in statistical evidence, instead you'll tell me that
you can think of ways you could be right and you can remember some times when
you were right and some times when your family members were right.

I'm exaggerating of course, but I think that sums up the discussion here?

------
JTxt
I can see the correlation to student performance, comparing typing on a full
laptop with a big bright screen and distractions VS a blank sheet...

However, at least for some subjects, I think note taking with technology can
be perfectly accurate and enable review better than handwriting. (At least for
me.)

This was my note taking system for a more recent history class, (usually a
poor subject for me) where most everything in the lectures had to be
remembered:

Record audio, while basically typing a transcript... (I used audionote and a
Bluetooth keyboard on an iphone (small screen) with no notifications.) This
helped me stay focused on every word. I also sat near the front.

In an audio editor, (audacity) I removed background noise, changed the rate
2x, detected and removed pauses between words, then edited out where he
repeated himself...

That compressed a two hour lecture to about 25 minutes.

Then I could listen and follow along and correct my notes, reviewing the
entire semester fairly quickly.

Students that took handwritten notes near me asked for a copy of my compressed
audio and transcript/outline, which I put in a Dropbox.

I personally would not have aced or (perhaps) survived that class by just
handwriting notes. I'm too slow/messy and prone to doodling...

With malleable text and audio it's easier for me to accurately trim, condense,
and focus on what is needed.

Another route would be to improve at hand note taking, but I'd worry that I
missed something important.

~~~
Cyph0n
As a college student, I've considered recording lectures, but have never done
that for two reasons: overhead and referencing.

How much time did it take you per lecture just to clean up the audio
recording? My guess is 10-15 mins. The way I see it is that it's not a lot in
general, but if you factor in the cost of context switching, it can become a
time sink.

Then, as you noted, there's the task of writing a pseudo-transcript to make
later referencing easier. Without it, the audio is completely useless in my
view. But there's a trade-off here between granularity and effort required to
set it up.

I might still give it a go though, just to see if I can manage it for more
than a few weeks. I get distracted easily :(

~~~
reledi
There's also a third reason. It can be illegal without consent of those
involved (e.g. lecturer, students, university). To comply with the law, you
would have to clear rights such as copyright, performer's rights, moral
rights, and privacy rights before any recording takes place.

~~~
JTxt
Yes, great point. I did ask permission before the class. I was not allowed to
offer the recordings to everyone, and I took them down after the class.

------
anexprogrammer
As someone who always "thinks with a pencil", this isn't terribly surprising.
Even if coding, if something was especially tricky, I'd sketch/doodle/write on
paper to get ideas straight. Always worked out quicker and better for me,
though I know some saw it as quaint.

Same for note-taking and todo lists+organising (I have smart phone always on
me, but small notebook that's my todo list). I tried and failed with dozens of
electronic organisers, apps and so forth.

I've only ever seen anecdotal ideas as to _why_ this is so. I'd be fascinated
to see some study into why. Is it a more manual process, does it involve more
brain regions, does it interface with memory differently?

~~~
broodbucket
My anecdotal contribution:

I always took notes on paper, even though I never even read them. I have
trouble sitting still and get bored and distracted very easily, so having
something to do with my hands helped me pay attention in university. Doing the
same on a computer would mean I would tab into something else and get
distracted.

Note taking is similar, if I write something on a piece of paper on my desk,
when I get fidgety and move around I'm going to see it. If I wrote it on my
computer, it'd be buried and forgotten behind my 20 browser tabs, mail client,
editor windows, terminals, etc, and that's if I remembered to open it the next
day.

Having a whiteboard on my desk made me way more productive at work. So I would
think the reasoning is less deep, it's more that there's less distraction on
paper than on a computer.

~~~
anexprogrammer
I am near certain that if I were 40 years younger I'd have been ADHD
diagnosed. So I can easily believe it's a distraction / concentration
mechanism, for me at least.

~~~
cturner
I suspect the same, am also a rabid note-taker, and rarely revisit my notes.
Writing is a means by which I build houses of cards in my head.

Last year I tried some Ritalin I'd been given so I could understand the
effect. What I found was that it gives me a sensation that is similar to when
I'm in flow. But - for me - it feels plastic. I found it to be inferior to
normal flow and I felt less in control than with normal flow. That might
improve with exposure.

I can see where Ritalin would be useful if you needed to get to flow on-
demand. A back-door I use for this - write a throw-away dear-diary whinge
about why I can't get started. The obstacle is a feeling - so I name that.
Then I look for a source of it. This is generally a technical problem that's
energy-intensive to load into my mind. So I write about the complications that
make me see it as energy-intensive. By then it's started. [I've mentioned this
before on hn and apologise if I get boring]

~~~
meric
Thanks for the trick. (Writing about the issue)

------
imgabe
I left college right as the "everyone always has a laptop" trend was
beginning. I never could see the point of one in a class.

You can type much faster, yes, but you can't easily draw. Especially for math,
engineering, science type class you really need to be able to quickly copy
down diagrams, graphs, equations, etc that aren't always easily entered into a
text editor. For me those always helped understanding much better than trying
to describe the same concept in words.

~~~
jff
Yeah, I tried taking notes on my laptop a few times in engineering classes
before I realized how hard it is to sketch digital logic in an emacs text
buffer!

Even the guy who used a Windows tablet with Onenote didn't actually use it
much... and now that I have a Surface for work, I hardly use it as a tablet, I
just carry a notebook with me.

------
robertelder
When I went to university, I took a 10 megapixel camera to every class and
took pictures of all the notes. The first 2 years or so of notes (5731 photos)
are here:

[http://notes.robertelder.ca/](http://notes.robertelder.ca/)

You can also view page visit statistics for how many visits the site got in
relation to each exam.

[http://www.robertelder.ca/2anotessite/visitsandexams.jpg](http://www.robertelder.ca/2anotessite/visitsandexams.jpg)

Also, I apologize for the site design on the notes site. It was an experiment
in building the UI entirely in Javascript that I won't do again.

Finally, since we're talking about grades, here are all of my grades from
university:

[http://photos.robertelder.ca/view/se-
grades.jpg](http://photos.robertelder.ca/view/se-grades.jpg)

~~~
codecamper
When I went to university, we didn't have any digital cameras.

And we liked it!

------
hannob
The article doesn't link the study which it is based on. This is terrible
science journalism to begin with.

In case anyone wonders, it's probably this study:
[http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/04/22/095679761452...](http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/04/22/0956797614524581.abstract)
It's paywalled, so... [http://sci-hub.io/10.1177/0956797614524581](http://sci-
hub.io/10.1177/0956797614524581)

It doesn't strike me as an incredibly powerful study. I see no indication that
it has been independently replicated. Usually these kinds of studies shouldn't
be trusted unless you have a bunch of them and can do a metaanalysis.

------
wallflower
My theory is that typing is more of an automatic brain activity (e.g. learned
muscle memory) than writing (which involves more brain centers because you
have to expend more CPU on recognizing what you wrote). Also, when you type
notes, you can edit furiously - while with hand writing, usually (but not
always) you need to maintain a 'stack' of what has been said in your head.

------
jamii
I've been publishing notes on many of the books I read this year. I found that
taking notes on my laptop is a pretty damaging context switch whereas writing
notes on paper doesn't cause much of a problem, to the point that it's faster
to take notes on paper and transcribe them afterwards.

But... I started learning to write at 3 years old and I started learning to
touch-type at 16 years old. I wonder if a more native typist would not need to
split their attention in the same way.

~~~
FreeFull
I've been touch-typing for most of my life (as long as I can remember), but I
still think that paper is better for taking notes too.

------
todd8
My own observations have led me to believe that this is true; I'm glad that
there are now studies being done on this subject.

I've had the frustrating experience of trying to influence the way classes
were being taught in my daughter's lower school (grades Pre-kinder through
8th). I tried to prevent the early introduction of tablet/laptops into the
school, but the whole industry built up around selling teaching systems to
schools has been very successful in convincing teachers and school
administrators that more money spent on technology will produce better
educational results.

------
0xCMP
I think I have very poor studying skills. So I've been wondering lately if
maybe how I think about notes is wrong.

How often do you review your notes for a topic? It probably varies between
subjects, but I bet the answer is that once you take notes once most people
never review their notes. This is probably more the case for studying done on
your own and outside of a school setting because you don't get tested on those
topics as much. I guess thats not as effective, but it probably works for most
topics given that we all usually have limited time.

And, are the notes concise versions of the information (like pegs in a memory
system to find the real information) or copies of the information entirely so
you don't need to refer to the original anymore? I wonder if with computers
the fact that you don't need to copy information form a book to avoid carrying
it thanks to PDFs and Kindles has made natural habits that happened before
unnatural. Why copy everything when it's right there? Why not just copy and
paste it? "Thats what I would have written, it's so much easier if I just copy
and paste it."

It's kind of like with programming books, esp the intro ones, which always
offer the code but tell the reader to please type out all the code.

So maybe when we teach those like myself with poor study skills we should
explain: Use pen/paper because you can express more, you will probably not
read this later so using pen/paper will help you remember more given that,
copying information isn't bad (Even if it's duplicate thanks to computers)
because it helps that retention factor with information that prior to it being
on computers would have been smart to take notes on.

------
santaclaus
I find that when I am studying something tricky (weird or new math), outlining
as I read helps a ton. I almost never refer back the notes later, but the act
of trying to write something down intelligibly forces me to make my high level
understanding explicit and prevents me from glossing over important details.
To some degree taking notes during a lecture did the same thing for me when I
was back in college.

------
0xCMP
I've put a lot of effort into figuring out which way is the best to take
notes. I think the key to notes is to understand that _yes_ sometimes all
you're doing is copying everything they're saying, but you're effectively
writing your own book on the subject to _maybe_ review in the future. The act
of doing it is enough to help the overall goal: learn this material well. The
notes don't need to be perfect. However, if they're good then they can act as
a good way to catch up again on a topic and limit your need to re-learn from
brand new source which you can then use to just fill the holes you left in
your note taking (which if you take notes on those parts now you don't have
those holes anymore).

I have also finally accepted that digital forms do not work as well for
reading or notes when learning new topics. Our brains and systems of learning
simply operate better with pen/paper much to my extreme distaste. (I have a
strong hatred of paper. Ever since I was younger.)

------
barney54
When I was in school I was surprised that my hand written notes were better
than my friends who typed their notes during class. My notes had all of the
relevant information, without being a long as my typing friends.

I really thought I would miss some things by writing, but that was very seldom
the case.

I'm a big fan of writing notes during a lecture and then typing them up after
class.

------
rml
I taught at a school for students with dyslexia. Handwriting comprised a large
part of their tutoring. We were told (paraphrasing from memory) that engaging
the muscle groups in the arm during writing engaged more of the student's
brain. Maybe something similar is going on during the pencil-on-paper note-
taking process.

------
dade_
Definitely aligns to my experience for studying. I started using handwritten
notes again with my Surface after years of only typing notes and my retention
has been far better and certification exam results, especially for self paced
Web /video training. The difference in business meetings using a pen vs using
typing on the display or laptop was huge because I find that people can't help
but think that the other person is working on something else or otherwise
distracted. Handwriting recognition works surprisingly well in OneNote and my
experience with EverNotes handwriting recognition was positive too, I used to
scan my paper notes into it. The benefit of being able to find a specific note
months or even years later is invaluable to me.

------
baby
I've constantly observed in my highschool/university life that students who
didn't take notes were performing better than students who were taking notes.

Worse, the few that dared typing everything in LaTeX and share it to the rest
of the class flunked their years.

~~~
ycmbntrthrwaway
I guess you studied some technical subjects. In this case, best students are
usually doing their pet projects that take all their time, so going to
lectures and typing notes in LaTeX will reduce the time they can spend working
on their projects and learning from hands-on experience.

------
otterpro
I wonder if we could reach a compromise, by using stylus instead of using
keyboard on a digital device (such as iPad pro or MS Surface Pro) and apps
like OneNote.

On a side note, there is a handwriting organization
([http://www.chirography.org/](http://www.chirography.org/)) that really
inspired me to start writing more with pen/pencil/markers/etc instead of
digital counterpart. What struck me the most was the image of an old postcard
inviting a friend for a drink. It felt so personal and memorable, compared to
a quick text message or an email.

------
johntellsall2
I'm currently reading Sunni Brown's "Doodle Revolution", which goes into
detail on how drawing-writing notes is really helpful. Just moving a pencil in
circles helps people concentrate on the information! Taking notes using
dramatic fonts and diagrams helps the user understand and process information.

She also has a brief TED talk on the subject.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/sunni_brown?language=en](https://www.ted.com/talks/sunni_brown?language=en)

~~~
vidarh
I've stopped using my todo app and note-taking apps and instead write hand-
written notes. I can visualize the page structure of what I've written as part
of recall, and the emphasis on specific words, and the ability to spread
sheets of paper out for a broader overview is also amazingly helpful.

Before I used to put everything on a private wiki, but I found it makes it
hard to maintain an overview, and the information often gets stale and
unmaintained very rapidly.

It's frustrating, because I'd like it all searchable etc., so I keep looking
for a digital workflow that is good enough to replace how I work with the
paper notes, but I keep going back to paper regularly.

------
Gommaar
I used to write my notes by hand, but eventually I switched to using my
laptop. At the end of the semester, I often found my handwritten notes
illegible.

While many other laptop students seem to simply try to type down everything
the professor says, I still use the same method as when I wrote by hand:
filter out what's non-important. When comparing notes, I've seen fellow
students go as far as writing down jokes and anecdotes told by professors…

------
cs2818
I've noticed this in my own classes. I switched to using a tablet with a pen
years ago for this reason. Paper and pen are nice too, but I do like the
ability to look up things if questions arise. It's also great for classes that
are based on discussion of current research articles, as it eliminates the
need for printing and carrying a big stack of papers to class.

------
matwood
My strategy in school was to take quick notes by hand during the lecture.
Basically highlight big points and jot down things I had more questions about.
Studying was then just typing up those notes and expanding them where needed.
Usually after typing them up I never looked at them again, since it was really
the act of typing them that made the information stick.

------
wapapaloobop
I've a very limited working memory and thus at university lectures my choice
as I saw it was either (1) trying to understand the content, or (2) taking
notes.

Looking back, it never occurred to me that notes written without comprehension
were unlikely to be good. Yet without notes the finer, unofficial details of
the exam syllabus would not be recorded.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
A few people have made this same point and the thought of this being true, and
it very likely is, genuinely makes me angry.

What a waste of time and effort and human potential to have hundreds of bright
young minds, sitting for hours just to catch details that could have been
written down years ago in a shared textbook and tested on a shared exam.
Across the globe this must squander centuries of human progress.

------
leed25d
I have always taken handwritten notes. I have been out of college for decades
and I still carry a small 3x5 bound notebook in my shirt pocket for things
that I want to remember. Truth be told, though, I sometimes use my smartphone
camera to take pictures of things that I want to recall, like a pylon in a
parking garage for instance.

------
perfectfire
I would've liked to have taken notes, but there was no possible way I would be
able to take notes and listen (no actually listen) to the lecture at the same
time. I can only really focus on one thing at a time. Sometimes less. Usually
lecture material could be reviewed from some other source after the fact
anyways.

------
JamilD
I find — anecdotally, of course — the people who type notes in class are
usually the ones that sit at the back, don't pay attention, and seem
inattentive.

The people with their notebooks open, and pens in hand, are usually in the
first few rows. I've never seen someone handwriting notes at the back of the
class.

~~~
codecamper
Obviously you were not cool enough to sit in the back. ;-)

~~~
JamilD
I won't deny it :P

------
nunez
I can believe it. I typed all of my notes for the last three years of college,
yet it was re-writing those typed notes by hand that helped soak in that
knowledge. It's very easy to type mindlessly.

------
merpnderp
I always took notes on paper and just the act of writing them down helped me
internalize the info. I almost never had to read my notes, which is good
because they were rarely very legible.

------
chrisper
I think the goal to be good at taking notes when typing is to learn how to
take notes. It seems the only way to do that is by starting with hand written
notes.

But I just think it depends on the class.

------
emmab
Would be interesting to compare writing by hand to typewriters

------
ijhnv
Wasn't this in a recent Freakonomics Radio episode?

~~~
euske
I was about to type the same thing. cf. [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/who-
needs-handwriting/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/who-needs-handwriting/)

------
kutkloon7
Weird. In my lectures (I study in the Netherlands) almost nobody uses a laptop
to take notes. Maybe it is different for each major, but I study computer
engineering so you would expect more laptops there if anything.

I myself would never use a laptop during lectures, too distracting. Also it
would feel like I'm disrespecting the professor. I don't like to talk too
people who are practically ignoring me. At least one professor feels the same
way, since he banned laptops.

~~~
mamoswined
For a short time I took notes using my phone and the reaction to that was
interesting to me. People just assumed I was texting and not paying attention.
With a laptop in the US you can be browsing Facebook and at least look to
other people like you are taking notes.

~~~
Joof
In math, I pretty much always need a reference. Professors don't seem to like
explaining every property of things, particularly when it should have been
explained previously. I used my phone continuously to look things up. That
professor hated me.

My personal preference is working through proofs and problems on my own and
being able to pause lectures. Sure it takes an extra 30 minutes, but it saves
hours of time later when I don't understand what I'm doing.

------
microcolonel
Study: _These_ students who take notes by hand outperform their colleagues who
type them.

~~~
vorg
Study: Students who will outperform take notes by hand instead of typing them

------
okyup
Laptops in university are mostly about status signalling. Paper is much more
efficient and practical for note taking.

------
kstenerud
Found this little gem down the article, past the "eyes glaze over" point:

"Laptop users instead took notes by rote, taking down what they heard almost
word for word."

This would explain why they're adhering to Betteridge's law of headlines: "Can
Handwriting Make You Smarter?"

Intellectual dishonesty at its best.

------
innocentoldguy
It seems others are always trying to convince me that reading traditional
books is better than reading ebooks, and that taking notes by hand is better
than typing. I'm willing to be open-minded about such things, so I put both to
the test in my classes at school.

I've taken two classes per term during the last year. In one class, I've made
a point to only use traditional textbooks and handwritten notes, and in the
other class, I've gone all digital.

Here were my results:

In all classes, I received As (I have a 4.0 GPA), so there wasn't really a
difference there. However, my digital classes were a lot easier for me. I was
able to organize my notes better, use Flashcard Hero to memorize my notes, and
listen to my textbooks in the car while I drove. In the all-paper classes, it
took me longer to read my assignments, longer to write out my notes, and I
felt like I missed a lot while I was note-taking. I never used my paper notes
after I wrote them, because they were disorganized and hard to read.

Perhaps the situation is different for others, but for me, my grades were the
same, but the digital options were faster, easier, and better able to fit into
more aspects of my life.

------
spectrum1234
I don't have to read the article to know this is meaningless.

The top 1% of performers will be those who take notes by computer. Why?
Because if you are strategic, using a spreadsheet with tags you can optimize
note taking of anything. Even if the human brain memorizes better when taking
notes by hand, an optimal system that involves sorting, etc, will outperform.

~~~
1stop
I don't think it's the quality of notes that makes the difference but the act
of taking them in a physical sense.

So optimal system for a better grade may be writing it by hand.

Optimal performance for producing a good course reference could be a spread
sheet with tags erc

