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In April of 2014, Pam Mueller and Dan Oppenheimer struck psychology gold with their cleverly titled article, \u201cThe Pen is Mightier than the Laptop: Advantages of Longhand over Laptop Note Taking.\u201d1 <\/sup><\/p>\n No psychology article that I know of has gotten so much play: in newspaper articles, in teacherly blogs, in faculty room debates.<\/p>\n Heck, it shows up regularly on my Facebook feed, as my exasperated college professor friends vow to ban laptops from their classrooms. That prohibition will benefit students! Science says so!<\/p>\n Among the article\u2019s many strengths: it confirms what we knew all along. The way we did things back in the day\u2014that way was better. (If you\u2019re so inclined, you might now add nostalgic words about high cotton paper positively drinking the ink from a fountain pen\u2026)<\/p>\n More or Less Fidelity<\/strong><\/p>\n Mueller and Oppenheimer picked a research question with two impressive qualities: teachers agree that it\u2019s a really important inquiry, and it\u2019s relatively easy to investigate.<\/p>\n So, the research team had two groups of students watch a lecture. One group took handwritten notes; the second group took laptop notes. On a later test, which group remembered more?<\/p>\n Being careful researchers, Mueller and Oppenheimer went beyond \u201claptop notes\u201d and \u201chandwritten notes\u201d to investigate two other potentially important variables.<\/p>\n First: the number of words that students wrote. Did the students who wrote fewer words score higher on the ultimate test? Or, the students who wrote more words?<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s imagine the professor says this:<\/p>\n \u201cFour score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.\u201d<\/p>\n A student could write lots of words:<\/p>\n Or, relatively few words:<\/p>\n The second variable: fidelity to the lecturer\u2019s words.<\/strong><\/p>\n A student could copy down those words verbatim:<\/p>\n Or, a student could deliberately put those ideas into her own words<\/p>\n Looking at all these variables\u2014laptops vs. notebooks, number of words, and fidelity of notes\u2014Mueller and Oppenheimer reached three conclusions.<\/p>\n a) The Big Reveal: hand-writers remembered more than laptop note-takers. When it comes to classroom note-taking, in the authors\u2019 words: \u201cthe pen is mightier than the laptop.\u201d<\/p>\n b) The number of words does matter. Students who wrote MORE words remembered more information than those who wrote FEWER words.<\/p>\n c) The fidelity of notes does matter. Students who REWORDED their notes remembered more information than those who took down the speaker\u2019s words VERBATIM.<\/p>\n These conclusions align with our preconceptions. After all, a) OF COURSE handwritten notes are better. And, b+c) students who write more words, and write more of their own<\/u> words, have devoted more mental energy to processing the ideas in the lecture. As we all know, more mental processing = more learning.<\/p>\n Laptops with Limits<\/strong><\/p>\n These conclusions, however, create a bit of a puzzle. Handwriting takes more time and physical coordination than does typing, so laptop note-takers can write more words than hand-writers. If more words = more learning, why do the wordy laptop note-takers fall short of the relatively taciturn hand-writers on the final test?<\/p>\n Here we arrive at Mueller and Oppenheimer\u2019s key finding: laptop note takers write more words, but they use this excess word capacity to write more VERBATIM words. Because hand-writers simply can\u2019t write down everything the lecturer says, they have to REWORD the ideas in the lecture. This rewording leads to more cognitive effort, and that cognitive effort leads to more learning.<\/p>\n In other words, technology steers note-takers in meaningful directions. Those who use paper-and-pencil technologies write slowly, and therefore must<\/u> reword their notes. Those who use laptop technologies write quickly, and therefore take down the speaker\u2019s words verbatim. This second choice might seem wiser, but in fact reduces processing and thus undermines long-term learning.<\/p>\n Replacing evil with virtue<\/strong><\/p>\n Being careful researchers, Mueller and Oppenheimer didn\u2019t stop here. Instead, they asked a crucial question: can laptop note-takers learn to replace verbatim notes with reworded notes? Could they, in other words, use their capacity to write more words for good, rather than for evil?<\/p>\n To answer this question, they repeated their study, and they gave laptop note takers stern instructions: \u201cPeople who take class notes on laptops \u2026 tend to transcribe what they\u2019re hearing without thinking about it much. Please try not<\/u> to do this as you take notes today. Take notes in your own words and don\u2019t just write down word-for word what the speaker is saying\u201d.<\/p>\n The result? Nothing changed. Defying these admirably clear instructions, laptop note-takers took verbatim notes, and remembered less than the hand-writers, who used their own words.<\/p>\n So, there you have it. Laptop note-takers can\u2019t be retrained to reword their notes. Because hand-writers do reword their notes, the pen is mightier than the laptop\u2026<\/p>\n Case Closed.<\/p>\n Case Reopened?<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s try an analogy here. When I tell my students how to subordinate a quotation in a participial phrase, they often try and fail. When they try and fail, I conclude that they can\u2019t do it, and so I stop asking them to subordinate quotations in participial phrases. In brief, I give up. Isn\u2019t that what you do?<\/p>\n Well, of course not. We\u2019re teachers. When we show our students how to do something, they ALWAYS fail the first time. And, most likely, several more times. For this reason, we naturally build in time for students to practice. Learning any meaningful skill requires structured repetition. Obviously.<\/p>\n And yet, Mueller and Oppenheimer insist just the opposite. You can hear them cry: \u201cThose laptop note-takers really should have used their own words BECAUSE WE EXPLICITLY TOLD THEM TO.\u201d<\/p>\n Once. You told them to, once<\/em>.<\/p>\n Did they get to practice? No. Did you tell them why? Not really. And: you\u2019re surprised they didn\u2019t change a behavior they\u2019ve been practicing since they first started taking notes on laptops? Really?<\/p>\n A New Hypothesis<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s combine our experience as teachers with Mueller and Oppenheimer\u2019s research.<\/p>\n Teacherly wisdom shows that we can train students to learn new skills: how to multiply fractions, how to use the subjunctive, how to throw a knuckleball. It seems highly likely that we can train laptop note takers to reword their notes. This training might take some time. The students\u2019 progress probably won\u2019t be constant. But, they can learn to do it.<\/p>\n After all: hand-writers have learned to reword their notes, so it\u2019s hard to understand why laptop note-takers can\u2019t.<\/p>\n If students succeed in this project, then they will end up with an awesome classroom superpower: the ability to write more<\/u> words AND reworded<\/u> words. With this superpower, they should remember even more than the hand-writers, who write fewer<\/u> words that are reworded words. This likelihood, in fact, flows directly from Mueller and Oppenheimer\u2019s research.<\/p>\n Under the right circumstances, the laptop just might defeat the pen.<\/p>\n Mind you: the study to test this hypothesis has not\u2014to my knowledge\u2014been done. But the hypothesis is, I think, the best interpretation of Mueller and Oppenheimer\u2019s research.<\/p>\n Some Final Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n Reference & Further Reading<\/strong><\/p>\n In April of 2014, Pam Mueller and Dan Oppenheimer struck psychology gold with their cleverly titled article, \u201cThe Pen is Mightier than the Laptop: Advantages of Longhand over Laptop Note Taking.\u201d1 No psychology article that I know of has gotten so much play: in newspaper articles, in teacherly blogs, in faculty room debates. Heck, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lb-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1187,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions\/1187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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