
Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/business/laptops-not-during-lecture-or-meeting.html
======
cjsuk
I will sit there in a meeting (or retrospectively in a university lecture) and
regularly derive nothing of value at all from my notes, be they written or
typed. It's the media that is wrong, not the note taking medium. You can't
rewind a meeting or a lecture. You can't pause to think. You can't review the
text in the middle. Everything is immediate, transient. If you lose the pace,
then everything after that point is wasted.

Lectures and meetings are broken, not the notes.

Now I will tend to write up my own notes in my own time on matters (in Pages
for lack of any motivation to try anything else).

~~~
lvoudour
Agree 100%. I went to college before tablets and affordable laptops became
ubiquitous, but the same problem applied to handwritten notes. After a few
tries to keep notes and re-read them at my leisure I gave up, it was
exhausting to take them and in the end I was missing too much.

The best solution is audio/video recording. I think every lecturer can record
their lectures and publish them online later in the college's database or
wherever. Cheap, easy and you don't have to worry about taking notes and
missing anything

~~~
sotojuan
Yeah I stopped taking notes after I realized I never looked at them. Even when
studying for an exam, I'd always make new notes from scratch rather than
rewrite or read old ones.

It doesn't work for all classes, but I found that listening closely to the
lecture and maybe writing down some main points and then reviewing or studying
later worked for me.

~~~
alistairSH
I'll have to dig for a citation, but I thought the act of writing the notes
was educational (helps with retention) in and of itself.

~~~
lmkg
I had one professor in college who told us that when she was in undergrad, she
would take pages of notes every lecture and then literally throw them in the
garbage on her way out of the lecture hall. She just discovered through trial
and error that this was the most effective way for her to learn the material.
And she did well enough to become a professor at a top-20 institution.

Conversely, I never took notes in her class (or any other), and that didn't
stop me from doing well.

The moral of the story is, people are different and find what works for
yourself. There are a lot of oddball strategies out there that some people
swear by, and I bet it really works for them, but you don't need to try them
yourself unless you're unsatisfied with the effectiveness of your current
approach.

------
retrac98
To be honest, I found lectures to be a complete waste of time at University,
with or without a laptop. You could just download the lecturer's slides and
speaker notes outside of class and learn the material ahead of
exams/coursework.

I managed to come near the top of my class this way with something like 5%
attendance at lectures.

I expect this isn't the case in the top Universities, but I left my University
thinking I could have just paid to take the exams and self-taught the rest of
the material. In hindsight, I was really taking out huge loans for a few years
of drinking, socialising and playing video games.

In the working world, I've found meetings to be similarly pointless. 95% of
the time I'd rather hash out a problem on an email thread where thoughts are
expressed clearly, re-read and understood by others in their own time.

~~~
cyphar
I found that the usefulness of lectures depends very strongly on how good the
lecturer is, as well as the topic being discussed. When studying physics I
found that the lectures were incredibly useful, because it's quite hard to get
in the "zone" of understanding the derivation being discussed when at home.
However, with mathematics subjects the textbook was almost always a much
better learning tool, because the derivation did not require a discussion of
the physics that justified said derivation. Computer Science lectures were
almost unilaterally a waste of time.

~~~
wastedhours
I had an engineering mathematics lecture where the lecturer was so bad
attending was a _net negative_ , as in, not only did he add nothing to the
notes, but his frequent mistakes and side tangents led us down so many useless
avenues we'd end up more confused.

------
Dave_TRS
My experience is that the bad professors are almost always the ones to ban
laptops. Students pay attention to engaging professors and use their laptops
for notes, and those good professors aren't phased by the laptops and rarely
ban them.

But When students listen out of one ear and spend the rest of the class
processing email, it's almost always an indication that the lecture is poor.
That's what I've seen over and over in 7 years of post secondary classes. I
don't know much about the professor in the article, but I would suspect
improving his lectures will be more effective in helping students learn than
banning laptops.

~~~
dgacmu
I have a counterexample - CMU's 15-112 bans laptops. The professor for it for
the previous 8 years, David Kosbie, is one of the most highly regarded
professors in the university.

His primary rationale for it is the "externalized cost" effect described in
the article, which I can attest is quite true in my experience teaching.

When you look out at a sea of faces, you can see where the laptops are because
of the reactions of people _around_ them -- eyes keep flicking involuntarily
to the interesting stuff happening on the screen, and then they peel
themselves back to the lecture. It amounts to a long sequence of micro-
distractions that have a pretty pronounced effect on learning. Humans are very
attuned to things like motion, flickering, and changes in their field of view,
and those are very present when browsing the web or reading facebook on your
laptop in class. Second, laptop screens are backlit, which means that they may
be the _brightest_ object in someone's field of view in the class.

Zoning out on a kindle or printed newspaper has much less of an effect on the
people around you. I don't care if someone ignores my class -- that's their
choice. I used to not ban laptops, but I've become convinced that it's worth
it for the _other_ students.

Also, think about the numbers. It's very possible to have a lecture that's
very engaging for about 95% of the class (which is a pretty impressive rate
all-told). But the remaining 5% have about 10 students each in a field behind
them that can see their laptop screen, so a very small number of students
goofing off on laptops can have a disproportionate effect on the class.

~~~
xenophonf
People like Professor Kosbie drive me up the wall. Let me show you why. Here
are the notes I took on my tablet PC for a week-long Tandberg TCTE+TMS
certification class:

[https://shared.irtnog.org/Tandberg-TCTA-TCTE-
TMS.pdf](https://shared.irtnog.org/Tandberg-TCTA-TCTE-TMS.pdf)

Admittedly, it's a big PDF because I didn't bother converting my handwriting
to text, but it's still a pretty useful reference when it comes to video
conferencing stuff, even though I don't do that kind of work any more.

Now here are my notes that I was forced to take on paper for a week-long ITIL
V3 Foundation class, because the instructor thought he knew better than I did
on how to learn:

''

Oh that's right, they were on paper, so I can't easily back them up, digitize,
and share them. In fact, over the course of several moves, I've managed to
misplace both the notebook and the PDF scans. I live and breathe enterprise IT
operations management and support. It'd be nice to have more than my memory as
a reference, especially since I think ITIL had some useful models for
conceptualizing this stuff. None of the official ITIL materials are public, so
instead of my curated notes, I have to make do with what I can scrounge off
the web. In my mind this wastes the time and money I spent taking the class.

I realize that I am paying for my instructors' knowledge, experience, and
insight---that sometimes I won't agree with them but need to trust them
regardless. Conversely, as an engaged student I need them to stop actively
interfering with the tools and methods that I've developed over my academic
and professional career to teach myself and to retain what I've learned.

~~~
dgacmu
I don't feel like you're hearing my point:

It's not about you. It's about the people _around_ you. But you're right: I'm
not willing to let you (bleep) up the educational experience for the people
around you, because (in my class), everyone around you has _also_ forked over
$60,000 per year to be there.

But it's also about context: 15-112 is not a "dump facts at you" class, which
the courses you're describing sound much more like. 112 is an intro to
programming course, where half of what happens is in-class demonstration of
how to solve problems with programming. Most of the real learning in the class
happens in recitation and by students doing a _lot_ of programming with a lot
of TA support.

It's also a first-year student course. You're welcome to make a prediction
about how many of those 17 and 18-year-old students are actually using their
bright distracting shiny to take notes vs. having blingy bleepies popping up
on facebook. (Answer: handwav-ily about half, where a lot of students attempt
to "multitask" between distractions and note-taking.) I'm pretty happy with a
blanket ban, because it improves the net educational outcomes in my classes.
_shrug_ (I still allow laptops in my grad classes. I may revisit it, but I
figure in general that with experience comes some greater degree of self-
control. That's a hunch, not a data-driven conclusion.)

The thread later on about the flipped classroom is the one to really look at
for resolving this issue -- it's entirely possible that we should get rid of
many of the conventional lectures and replace class-time with structured-
activity time (which would involve laptops). The problem, however, is that in
most flipped approaches, you have to get the students to watch -- often solo
-- a video of the lecture material, and/or solo read it. The number who
actually do so is somewhat low, even at a top school. The jury's still a
little out, but the potential is high.

------
brndnmtthws
NY times makes an amazing discovery: being distracted from whatever it is
you're trying to do isn't good for productivity.

The idea of 'multitasking' is a foolish thing, and I think most people have
discovered now that to be successful at any task you need to focus without
distractions. Singletasking is much more productive than multitasking. I might
even argue that multitasking isn't possible, since humans can't switch context
as fast as computers.

~~~
txcwpalpha
Agreed that this seems to be a no-brainer. But then again, if you look at the
responses in this thread, apparently it's not a no-brainer to some people.

On the other hand, if you read the article in full, the debate isn't just
about distractions and multi-tasking. Even when not being distracted, the use
of a laptop to take notes is less effective than hand-writing notes. This is
because laptops encourage a note-taking style where you don't necessarily need
to actually process the information before typing it out:

> The researchers hypothesized that, because students can type faster than
> they can write, the lecturer’s words flowed right to the students’ typing
> fingers without stopping in their brains for substantive processing.
> Students writing by hand had to process and condense the spoken material
> simply to enable their pens to keep up with the lecture. Indeed, the notes
> of the laptop users more closely resembled transcripts than lecture
> summaries. The handwritten versions were more succinct but included the
> salient issues discussed in the lecture.

In another study[1], it was found that this happens even when students are
warned against this "transcript" style of note-taking.

It all very much depends on the person doing the note taking, the information
being taught, _and_ the person doing the speaking, but in general it appears
that laptops encourage bad note-taking and bad listening habits that hand-
writing notes don't.

1: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/taking-notes-by-
hand-...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/taking-notes-by-hand-could-
improve-memory-wt/)

~~~
brndnmtthws
That's why I never take notes. I just give 100% of my focus and retain a lot
more information.

~~~
txcwpalpha
That's great for some situations (like some college lectures or a daily scrum
meeting) but simply doesn't fly in others. At my job, for example, missing a
single detail in one of our interviews can be the difference between the
success and complete failure of a project. Retaining just "a lot more" of the
information isn't enough, you must retain (or record) _all_ of the
information. In such situations, note taking is mandatory.

Those are the same situations that encourage the "transcription" style of
notes though, which as discussed above, presents its own problems. It's all
about finding a balance.

------
xenophonf
I'm sick to death of old school instructors making me put my tablet PC away on
the assumption that I lack self-control or won't pay attention or can't take
good notes. The whole point of a device capable of drawing stuff is the
synthesis of digital recording and writing/drawing. Dunno about anyone else
but OneNote has made me a way better student as a result, plus it makes my
logs and notes available (and shareable) in ways that no paper lab notebook
can replicate. By all means let's encourage students to not simply take
dictation during lectures, but let's also not simply throw away a great tool
in the process.

------
malkia
While I worked at Google, laptops @ meeting were pretty much the norm. A note-
taker (in our case the oncall person, or build master) would open a Google
Docs document, or continue from a long going one (well known to everyone) and
start typing notes, agenda, action items. At the same time the rest of the
team can join (especially useful, if meeting is happening in more than one
room, with people working from home, remote offices, etc.). And everyone can
correct, fix, assign, comment.

Now there is a time, when the manager would say - please close your laptops,
there is something important, sensitive, etc needs to be discussed.

I've never seen more productive use of them. And the oncall person for the
week can respond to alerts, msgs, etc. - the build master person can check
updates. I mean technically you can do whatever you like, as long as your
attention is not needed.

People can leave if they see that this part of the meeting no longer concern
them, or any other reason.

~~~
andrewla
I can second this; at Google I've found that meetings are unusually productive
because of the practice. For the most part, regular meetings will follow a
fairly strict agenda, which keeps them moving and stops them from going off on
tangents (not always, sometimes tangents do happen, for better or worse, but
I've found that it's for better significantly more often than at previous
workplaces). And the presence of laptops helps here -- people can add bullet
items to upcoming agenda items to ensure that they are discussed, without
having to interrupt the conversation currently in progress, and the use of a
single document means that the historical record is easily accessible.

For meetings that are more oriented as design sessions or free-form
discussions, the laptops tend to go away because they are not useful in that
situation, unless you're at a point where data that can be quickly acquired
can be useful.

~~~
malkia
To a degree, the same happens with a design doc - you may start it with a
peer, or have manager oversee it, or pull someone from a team, from which you
rely on specific technology to gain more confidence for you, and whoever later
reads the design doc that all important bits are covered... For example
decision to use system A (from your point of view) may be good idea, but
owners of system A may no longer support it, or may have in plans to deprecate
it soon, but haven't announced it yet, so adding key personnel there would
help for sure.

I'm trying this new model at my new workplace, but I'm already seeing pain
doing this with Outlook (the desktop version), the Mobile version is much
better in this respect, though the comment system need some features, that I
got used to (assigning action-items). The other approach would be google for
business, but I'm not a decision maker here.

(Or some other cool product - EtherPad?)

------
chasedehan
As a former economics professor, I did exactly the same thing these authors
were suggesting. While some students did use their technology effectively, the
vast majority of whom were just distracted, not to mention probably taking far
worse notes.

One small story, I was teaching a class during March one year and I had a
student obviously not paying attention. Then, all of a sudden, this student's
hands went in the air and an audible "Yes!" came out. I then asked him if
there was something important - "Kentucky just won in a buzzer beater!" The
vividness of this memory and the difficulty I had in containing my rage is
still at the forefront of my mind.

For me, the impact was that while students should be able to do what they want
for the most effective solution, it becomes a problem when activities disrupt
the learning of the students around them. Someone not paying attention and
watching cat videos is infectious as there is a lower percentage of
participation and others start to watch the offending student's screen.

My perspective is (although unproven) is that the real reason laptops don't
work is because of the temptation to do something else, not necessarily
because of the medium.

------
anotheryou
If you want me to remember more than just some big picture, let me write it
down. And if you let me write it down, please let me use my tools.

Just teach people how to use tech right, the younger generation is
surprisingly much better at this. I have a full screen white on black text
editor and turn off the display while not typing (sometimes I even keep it off
while typing).

And yea, lectures... just gave me the stream so I can play it at double speed
and repeat the interesting parts.

The only things I need paper for are geometry, layout and surprisingly: math.
With math for me it's super valuable to keep something like nested contexts. I
write things down to free the brain for more, but need to be able to jump back
in on demand. Easier on a 2D pane than in a linear way.

With OpalCal/Soulver i tend to do more on the PC though, variables are damn
nice.

------
codingdave
Laptops are tools that can be used to help you with your tasks, or to waste
time. I'm sure the article is correct that many people use them poorly, but
that doesn't mean banning the tool is the right answer. Maybe training better
usage of them would be wise.

------
ptman
It's not the laptops that are the problem, it's the lectures. Check out
flipped classroom
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom)
\- watch lectures/read a book/etc on your own time and attend problem solving
with teachers / TAs available.

~~~
wpietri
Wow! Yes, this seems much better. The key opportunity of being all together in
a room is interactivity. Large lectures mostly waste that: the time gap
between having a question and getting it answered can be large. (E.g., having
to wait until discussion section puts a gap of hours to days between the Q and
the A.)

But when I'm trying to apply the material, I'm not in passive listening mode.
There, hopefully my feedback loop with the material is in the seconds-to-
minutes range. If I'm stuck, being able to get a question answered can keep me
in the zone of fast learning.

------
catchmeifyoucan
Student here.

200 people in a class, I can't even get my questions answered. True story,
miss one sentence, and you're lost at a point of no return. It makes sense for
me to learn it on my own pace outside of class and visit during office hours.
Let me use my laptop in class so that I can still continue to be productive
during the hour. (doing other work)

Whether I take notes or not should be up to me as a student. Banning
electronics does not guarantee learning. If I don't want to learn/listen, then
I won't. You can take a horse to the water, but you can't get it to drink.

~~~
racecliffer
From the article: "The strongest argument against allowing that choice is that
one student’s use of a laptop harms the learning of students around them. In a
series of lab experiments, researchers at York University and McMaster
University in Canada tested the effect of laptops on students who weren’t
using them. Some students were told to perform small tasks on their laptops
unrelated to the lecture, like looking up movie times. As expected, these
students retained less of the lecture material. But what is really interesting
is that the learning of students seated near the laptop users was also
negatively affected."

------
btbuildem
> Students writing by hand had to process and condense the spoken material
> simply to enable their pens to keep up with the lecture. Indeed, the notes
> of the laptop users more closely resembled transcripts than lecture
> summaries. The handwritten versions were more succinct but included the
> salient issues discussed in the lecture.

This seems to be the key point -- when taking notes by hand, you have to think
about what you're hearing and writing down. In a way, you're translating the
lecturer's language to your own, and that seems to help retain the information
better.

~~~
SPBS
There's no reason why one can't type notes the same way as well, first
listening and understanding before distilling that information into a few
choice sentences.

I find writing better because you can freely draw on your lecture notes. The
benefit is twofold: one, you don't have have to slavishly transcribe
everything your professor says if it's already in the slides. Two, the mental
overhead is very low as your thoughts go straight from pen to paper.

If you type from scratch, you end having having to 'transcribe'. If you
annotate the slides on your laptop, you have to deal with the high overhead of
textbox and geometric shape manipulation with a keyboard and trackpad.

If my lectures didn't have so much diagrams or equations(unlikely in an
engineering major), I think a purely text based notetaking software like org-
mode would be pretty good.

------
Fomite
I have never been able to stay awake in lectures. _Never_. Being able to have
a laptop in class helped me stay awake, and get through graduate school.

I'll never ban them in my classes. Students know what they need.

------
betterunix2
I have long known this to be the case for myself, and switched back to pen and
paper for taking notes. I also learned shorthand to reduce the amount of time
and mental effort I spend on taking notes, though I sometimes revert to
longhand when I need something to be more readable. It is also great for
diagrams, math notation, etc. Touchscreens may someday get there, but so far I
have found that even the best touchscreens/tablets (yes, even the iPad Pro)
still wind up slowing me down.

~~~
regularfry
Research on disfluency implies that you might be better off with longhand
after all. Increasing the mental effort in taking the notes has a positive
effect on how well people absorb material (subject to a few caveats).

------
cdancette
I think it's better to take notes with a pen and paper, because you need to
summarize what you hear, and you can't just write everything.

This helps a lot the learning process, because summarizing makes you
understand better the content, and the relations between concepts

------
sandworm101
I always allowed laptops in my lectures. I encouraged the kids to google
things and challenge me when they thought me wrong. If i was unsure of a fact
id have them look it up. That back-and-forth kept them engaged, and made my
life much easier. If your lecture isnt more interesting than facebook you have
to up your game.

~~~
dredmorbius
Education isn't entertainment.

That's not to say it _cannot_ be entertaining, at times, but there's also a
lot of POHW: plain old hard work.

------
melling
This story was posted 5 times within the past 3 days (never by me). I was
wondering why it never took off because it’s one of those HN stories. Anyway,
Monday morning at 7am EST seemed to do the trick.

For anyone wondering why their stories don’t initially gain traction, timing
is important.

------
grogenaut
It's pretty common where I work to bring laptops to meetings. If the meeting
is engaging they close, and sometimes in deep meetings they are asked to be
closed. In other meetings it helps to have many hands on keyboards updating
the sprint board in jira and entering new tasks, or the meeting is rolling
attention and people are there and do work until they are needed by the
meeting. This is often what happens in all hands on deck situations or
launches.

People who are holding meetings where I work realize when they're wasting time
and generally dismiss people if they're not needed and everyone is generally
free to just leave if the meeting isn't of use to them.

------
simion314
Interesting how many people prefer videos, my experience is that some
professors are bad but the others are good, you can skip writing notes and
just listen and later xerox the notes from others or get the book from the
library. The advantages or the lectures is that you can ask questions, the
professor gets feedback and provide more examples then needed, the professors
will tell some interesting side story that you will remember it forever and it
will help you remember the concepts. I am wondering if the people that hate
lectures are more likely to have paid for the university studies so maybe they
resent the entire institution and prefer learning from internet.

------
proginthebox
I am not sure about meetings since I do not have much experience with them.
But if you do not want people to use laptops during lectures 1\. Record your
lectures and make them available later (course website, internal network
anywhere). 2\. Create PDF of your own notes and distribute them BEFORE
lecture. 3\. Ideally, though this is a huge amount of work, so not always
possible, write down in detail the steps in your lecture like a book chapter
and distibute this BEFORE lecture. Alternatively, assign a book chapter pre-
reading.

In short, if you want people to pay attention to the content during the
lecture, remove the incentive to take notes during the lecture.

------
gilbetron
Oddly, I've found that I pay better attention if I use a laptop during a
meeting, but not for taking notes. Rather I will either lightly browse related
information, or look for the answer to a question that pops in my mind. It
can't be intense usage, but just simple. It seems to keep my mind more alert
and I'm able to absorb the meeting better. I also can tune out if they are
talking about something I already know. If I don't have a laptop or phone, I
tend to zone out or fall asleep.

On the other hand, I get pissed if someone is in my meeting using a laptop and
isn't paying attention at all. It's a weird thing.

------
ontouchstart
I am reading the book "Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint
(2012)" on the iPad

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745202](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745202)

and it seems that PowerPoint kind of "solved” the first half of interactive
classroom information exchange: presentation (output). Note taking (with
laptop or tablet) can be think of as the second half of the problem (input).

Perhaps we need to rethink the challenge of "realtime face-to-face group
interactive information exchange" in a more integrated way and come up with
more revolutionary solutions.

------
jdblair
I prefer a notebook to a laptop in business meetings, but then I have to spend
time afterward transcribing the notes so I can share them (something expected
at my workplace).

I'm experimenting with using Evernote on a tablet computer along with a
Bluetooth keyboard. So far this is working well - there's no laptop screen
separating me from my colleagues, I can sketch diagrams and the notes are
instantly available.

I have no disagreement that paper is better for learning. Computers were first
starting to be available in lectures when I was an undergrad, and while I
could type like mad I wouldn't retain as much information.

------
mcfunk
It's unfortunate to see laptops conflated with "all electronics" here. I
benefitted greatly from using SoundNote on an iPad in grad school, which
allowed me to make recordings of lectures that I could then annotate in real
time. Rather than taking a transcript or feeling I had to record all key
concepts, I could stick to noting where in the lecture was an especially
important concept, or where I had spaced out and should re-listen. More
valuable than any written notes I could have taken.

------
jupp0r
It seems like the more obvious conclusion from the facts stated in the article
would be: lectures are more efficient when people can dedicate their brain to
understanding the content instead of having to write down everything being
said/shown. I never understood why some lecturers thought that making students
write things down would be a good way to teach them anything. Certainly did
not work for me. I got much more value from mentally following the lecture and
thinking about the topic.

------
rocqua
For a very long time in university, I never took notes and suffered nothing
for it. Near the end, the only exceptions were classes taught from very
succinct paper material where a lot of supplementary examples were only
treated in lectures and so complicated as not to be (easily) found on the
internet.

Beyond that I always got a much better return on paying more attention to the
lecture, and trying to see how what is told fits with what I know rather than
how to fit it into my notes.

------
Overtonwindow
I have such terrible attention problems that I have secretly recorded just
about every class, meeting, and discussion in the last ten years. Legalities
and ethics aside, afterward I'll listen and make detailed notes, then
depending on the content, destroy or keep the audio. The legalities and ethics
will always trouble me but without the audio I get very lost. The medium has
never made a difference, nor the delivery method.

------
kkylin
I think an effective strategy depends highly on the subject matter. Also,
appropriate use of technology by the lecturer makes a huge difference.

For mathematics (my field) or something similar like theoretical physics, the
pace at which the lecturer can write on a blackboard with a piece of chalk is
just about the right information rate for the audience to absorb. Not to say
one cannot teach well using more modern media, but it has to be done with
careful thought and planning to be effective. (Same applies to lecturing at
the board; we just have more practice at it.)

As for note-taking, I used to write everything down in class when I was in
college & grad school. Sometimes this worked, sometimes not -- what's right
for a course in abstract algebra isn't going to be right for a course in
computational neuroscience. What I think is very effective, but requires some
discipline, is: \- take minimal notes (or even photos) in class \- reconstruct
lecture after class \- go to office hours and clear up any questions that
arise. It would be hard to do this for everything. For the subjects you really
care about, this might be a useful approach.

------
LyndsySimon
I didn't get much value from notes until I started using fountain pens and
focusing on my penmanship. Once I did, I had to slow down and take more
concise notes to avoid falling behind, which in turn lead to my needing to
actually understand what was being presented so I could write it in fewer
words instead of just writing down key points verbatim.

------
another-dave
I think banning laptops is a good idea, but I think it should be coupled with
other study aids, like fully recorded lectures to let students learn in their
own way.

One of the best lecturers I had at university passed round a printed copy of
the lecture summary at the start, allowing students to concentrate on making
their own notes & transcribing the lecture that the article talks about.

Many, many other lecturers objected though to lectures being recorded (by
individual students, e.g. dictaphone, we didn't have campus-wide video/audio
recording).

Most meetings are completely different beasts to lectures, I think — e.g. if
you have ten people round a table in a room, people should be participants not
audience members; the dynamic is completely different. That said, I would
agree with banning laptops from meetings for the most part!

------
839083
Little late, but my two cents as someone who majored in a humanities field
(although working in tech now):

Our lectures were almost always intended to be heard after doing the readings.
They were comprised of helpful info professors knew from academic experience,
not easily found in any print material. Relevant historical context was
especially hard to pick up without knowing what exactly to look for.

I felt like my humanities lectures were more analogous to demos and labs in my
STEM courses, learning that relies on a certain spontaneity and physical
presence, even if not all of the material is strictly "necessary". As for a
counterpart to my STEM lectures, I too would've been bored out of my mind
listening to most humanities professors read our readings to us...

------
ttlaxia
I took notes in college in org-mode on a little eeepc and graduated summa.
Instead of banning laptops to cater to the least common denominator, why not
just tell the kids not to surf the web during lectures? Have the TA sit in the
back of the class or make a video recording from the back if it's a problem.

It's hard not to imagine that the ones who surf the net on their laptops are
the same ones who would be busy doodling in their notebooks otherwise.

And I'm not too sure about the study they cite that claims that other people
are distracted. The assumption seems to be that people using laptops are ipso
facto on Youtube and Twitter all the time. And the questionnaires they gave
the test subjects beforehand practically begged them to be distracted during
the test.

~~~
txcwpalpha
It's not just about distractions. Laptops also encourage a note taking style
where you simply are transcribing every word that the lecturer says. This is a
less effective way to learn material, as you can go on "auto pilot" where the
words flow from your ears to your fingers without you really having to
synthesize any information or really understand it. Studies[1] have shown that
this happens even when students are warned against doing this.

Hand-writing notes, on the other hand, encourages you to process the
information you are hearing and summarize it into your own words, improving
understanding and memory of the information.

Anecdotally, my entire school (the business school at UT Austin) banned
laptops in all classrooms, and I think it was hugely beneficial to my
understanding of the materials. In other, non-business classes that allowed
laptops, I tended to have to spend a lot longer re-reading my notes and
textbooks before I felt like I really understood the information.

1: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/taking-notes-by-
hand-...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/taking-notes-by-hand-could-
improve-memory-wt/)

------
emodendroket
> The researchers hypothesized that, because students can type faster than
> they can write, the lecturer’s words flowed right to the students’ typing
> fingers without stopping in their brains for substantive processing.
> Students writing by hand had to process and condense the spoken material
> simply to enable their pens to keep up with the lecture. Indeed, the notes
> of the laptop users more closely resembled transcripts than lecture
> summaries. The handwritten versions were more succinct but included the
> salient issues discussed in the lecture.

I mean, that's possible, but my experience is if I'm using my laptop during a
lecture I'm more likely to start surfing the Web and not pay attention to the
lecture.

------
frou_dh
I'm so glad that I attended university before it was the done thing for
students to be on laptops during lectures. If nothing else, it's simply a
distraction to have all the other peoples' bright and animated screens in your
field of vision.

~~~
slantyyz
>> I'm so glad that I attended university before it was the done thing for
students to be on laptops during lectures.

I'm also glad I finished before laptops (and even www) became a thing.

For me, the clicking and clacking of the keyboards would drive me bonkers.

------
markussss
I don't think taking notes is the most important part of learning from a
lecture. For me, throughout the years, actively participating in lectures
through asking questions or discussing the concept being talked about, either
with the lecturer or the person I'm sitting beside. Compared to taking notes,
this has lead to me gaining a deeper understanding than when writing or typing
everything that is being said during the meeting or the lecture. Usually, the
only things I write down in meetings and lectures are words or concepts I
don't already understand so I can research those later, or specific tasks that
I am going to do as a result of the meeting or lecture.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I've never understood the thing about taking notes myself (mind you I never
did any higher education); what is the lecture explaining that isn't in the
textbook? The textbook should be all the notes and information you need, maybe
supplemented with online; not keeping notes will allow you to focus on the
lecture itself, which should be an extra on top of the book.

~~~
txcwpalpha
The actual act of taking the information and processing it into your own
words, and then also the act of actually writing those words down, has been
shown to improve memory retention and understanding of that information over
what you would get from simply reading the same information in a textbook.

------
Communitivity
The idea that we can't use laptops in meetings is outdated. You can do active
listening while taking notes, as long as you practice good note-taking instead
of verbatim transcription. I typically use a concept-mapping tool such as
CMapTools from the great folks at the Institute for Human and Machine
Cognition (IHMC) in Florida. That lets me capture the essential concepts from
the meeting and the relations among those concepts.

~~~
txcwpalpha
One of the arguments against laptops is that even when people are aware of the
fact that they shouldn't take verbatim transcriptions, they still tend to do
so when using laptops. Hand-writing notes tends to make it almost impossible
to write verbatim transcriptions, which forces active listening and processing
the information as it comes in.

It's very much a "YMMV" thing, as it's certainly _possible_ to take great
notes and listen well while using a laptop, but for the average person,
laptops encourage bad meeting/lecture habits.

------
ALee
Btw, an executive at Twitter did this. And well, it seems like it's working
well: [http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/wired-
workplace/2017/11/...](http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/wired-
workplace/2017/11/twitter-executive-banished-laptops-his-meeting-and-
reactions-were-excellent/142367/)

------
Double_a_92
I don't remember needing to take notes for any lecture I've been in.

Either the lecture was designed to take "notes", i.e. the prof would literally
explain and write a nice recap on the board that he wanted us to copy.

Or we got prints of the slides, where we could just add a few comments were
needed.

Or we just got a printed "textbook" that the prof wrote, and the lecture was
just to get an overview and see which parts are important...

------
Taylor_OD
If I have my laptop or phone our during a meeting it's because I've either
already had this meeting with whoever if giving out the information and don't
need to pay full attention to it or I'm in a meeting that I shouldnt be in
because I have nothing to add.

I assume everyone else is the same way and It's a really easy way to tell who
does and doesnt need to be in future meetings for me.

------
baldfat
I used OneNote with a microphone on my 2003 PC Tablet. Syncing my lecture
notes with my the professor was amazing in Graduate School.

I searched my notes for test and the audio of the professor was right there.

Had to repeat Art History and do a Freshman Course due to a mess up from the
registrar's office = Civ 3 but still got an A.

------
alchemism
I've found (full-sized) tablets to work out better in these environments than
laptops. Both in terms of focused-usage as a information recording or
reference/retrieval tool, and the favorable reception it gets from other
participants when used for such purposes.

------
nicebill8
I’m at university and often find myself ignoring the lecturer and reading
through the slides in my own time, making my own notes. The only reason I show
up is because the lecturers often give extra information they don’t put on the
slides, so I always keep an ear open.

------
pklausler
I don't mind laptops being used in meetings, so long as their use is relevant
to the meeting. But I find it highly distracting when somebody is pounding
away on a keyboard while paying no attention to what the rest of us in the
room are trying to accomplish.

------
pellanti
In a digital age, where we should be recording lectures, we still talk about
the merits of note taking (whatever medium) vs. learning.

I agree the value is in the teaching itself and learning in the moment;
however, I would still like to go back and access that lecture/class.

------
bargl
I think my preference is a table with a stylus followed by pencil and paper
over a computer. I never found computers to be useful in meetings but
something I can write on and get handwriting recognition has been useful for
me.

------
Cu3PO42
I dislike the style of note taking described in the article, i.e. mindlessly
writing down what the professor is saying. I don't believe however that this
is necessarily tied to typing rather than writing with pen and paper. I have a
lecture where no notes or textbook is provided and it is required that you
copy everything written on the board. Personally I'm not great at writing
fast, so I usually lag behind a bit with writing which makes it that much
harder to follow along with what the professor is saying. In a situation like
this, writing with pen and paper may be worse than typing (except the specific
course I'm talking about is maths and short of writing LaTeX in real time,
handwriting is necessary).

From my personal experience as a student the most effective way for me to take
notes is to annotate existing material, i.e. slides or lecture notes. In some
classes where material is available beforehand that would be possible by
printing it all, bringing it to class, annotating it and then digitalizing it
again to make it searchable (and create backups). However I feel this is
highly inefficient and a massive waste of paper. Suppose there are roughly 60
slides per lecture, 8 lectures a week across courses and I can get roughly 4
slides on a sheet of paper in such a way that I can work with them
comfortably; that is 120 pages of paper a week!

For many lectures where material is not provided in advance, but only at the
beginning of the lecture, presumably to prevent students to only selectively
attend the lectures it would be impossible to work in the way I find to be
best for me.

That is not to say, the problems described in the article don't exist. I
remember many instances of people browsing social media rather than following
the lecture. Ignoring any detriment it has on themselves (it is their choice
to not pay attention after all) we are left with the negative impact it has on
others.

As I outlined in another comment, there are approaches to combating this that
I feel to be more appropriate than a blanket ban. One is to have people using
electronic devices to sit somewhere else, usually behind people not using
them, so they can only distract other people using electronic devices. This
offers people the choice of either using their devices and being potentially
exposed to visual noise or not use them and be free from these distractions.

I also had a professor that disallowed electronic devices for everything but
slides of the lecture and related material. I can only hypothesize how he
managed to do this consistently, but I believe he was able to tell by the
expressions on peoples' faces and if people sitting nearby stole glances at
other screens.

------
djtriptych
I bought an iPad Pro 2 this september and it immediately replace my laptop for
meetings. Light computing when I need it, but primarily a note-taking advice.
Really great.

~~~
criddell
What software do you use on the iPad? I also have one but have things
scattered between Nebo, GoodNotes, Apple Notes, Bear, Pages, and Evernote. I
really need to pick the best app and focus everything there, but each one has
different strengths.

~~~
djtriptych
yeah they're all kidna terrible. I started a roundup review but gave up due to
costs of downloading each app.

I've settled so far on Linea. It has plenty of problems but hit my key points.
I was aiming for a paper-like experience to replace my favorite tools: a
technical pen/pencil and a nice graph paper pad.

\- Use finger to erase (like a whiteboard). \- Focus mode with no toolbars /
chrome. \- Good-looking graph paper background. \- Technical pens and pencils.
\- Zoomable.

All the apps have layers - that's table stakes. Linea does NOT allow you to
make selections and move components individually. I think I might do better
design work with a few technical restrictions.

------
k__
I studied computer science while WoW was hyped.

Many students sat in the back row and played it in the lectures.

------
perseusprime11
Dear NYTimes, please write a story in why Laptops are great and why meetings
suck.

------
walshemj
Actually laptops in a meetings can be useful as they can replace a lot of
paper.

~~~
walshemj
Really down voted ever worked in properly run organisations with proper
procedures ISO 9000 or BS 7570? even more so in parliamentary based orgs
having to lug around 4 or 5 ring binders of paper gets old quickly

------
snambi
If the professor is really interesting, why would someone look into a laptop?

------
otakucode
The problem here lies not with the laptops or with their use. It lies with the
continued existence of such radically and absurdly inefficient and pointless
traditions as 'lectures' and 'meetings'. They were started because physical
co-location was necessary for knowledge transmission. Physical co-location is
no longer necessary for, and indeed is severely hampering of, knowledge
transmission.

Anyone who proposes an in-person meeting is planning to abuse the frailties of
human biology rather than meet with you honestly. They intend to use bluster
and charm to convince you of ostensibly objective claims - and it will
probably work. It usually does. That's one of the reasons they fight so hard
to avoid being put on an actual even playing field where their ideas must
stand or fall solely on their own merits.

~~~
dgacmu
[Citation needed]

Here's a competing citation that disagrees with you and suggests that people
pay more attention in-person:
[https://www.maritzmotivation.com/~/media/Files/MaritzInstitu...](https://www.maritzmotivation.com/~/media/Files/MaritzInstitute/White-
Papers/The-Case-for-Face-to-Face-Meetings-The-Maritz-Institute.pdf)

