Close your laptop and pick up your pen. Taking notes by hand—rather than typing—makes you smarter, according to research conducted at Princeton, UCLA and other universities.
Hand-written note-takers have these super powers:
- A longer retention of information
- A better grasp of new ideas
- Information is encoded more deeply in memory
- More organized notes
- With writing fewer words, they better process what they hear
So why are college students typing instead of writing when taking notes in class?
- Most college students today have laptop computers small and light enough to fit in their backpack.
- Today, the primary means of university instruction is the classroom lecture.
According to research, these two factors have led most students to believe that capturing the maximum number of words spoken by a professor is the key to capturing and retaining the information that seems most important. According to research, here are the average speeds at which students can transcribe what a professor is lecturing.
Typing | 33 words per minute
Longhand | 22 words per minute
The upside and downside of typing
Typing is a faster way to transcribe lecture notes.
Typing does have short-term benefits. Tested immediately after class, typists perform slightly better than longhand note takers.
By the next day, keyboard note-takers’ information retention starts falling behind.
(via: WSJ.com)
Photos: Thinkstock
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