Notes on Notes on Computers

18 January 2017

I'm part of the minority of students in the HFAC (Harrison Fine Arts Center, the arts-and-crafts building on BYU campus) that actually doesn't have a Mac. I use a Surface Pro, and I love it. I'm a PC person. There, I said it.

I know, I know that doesn't make me special or anything, I just wanted to say that to build some sort of ethos when I add my testimony to that of the author of the article about why taking notes on a computer is not as good as taking notes freehand, because if people know that I'm a PC person, they're more likely to assume that I don't also don't pull up apps like Messaging or Messenger on my Mac while I'm in class, since those are way harder to do conspicuously on a Surface.

Anyways, yes, I do believe that note-taking on a computer is both less efficient and less engaging than handwriting. Not only because there is the element of "that thing" about handwriting, that physical, tangible, fingers-moving-a-pen thing that cements the material into your brain as you write, but also logistically, because of the way a pen or pencil can use the free space on a page.

If I have Microsoft Word out, I take advantage of the Tab function, and of bullet points, and of italics or bold or underline, or sometimes all three, but after cycling through the functions enough times, the cycles lose the sense of patterns. With a pencil, I may not be able to italicize as well, but I can use fonts, I can circle important things after the fact, I can add sweeping arrows, side notes, bubbles, clouds, stars, hearts, and any sort of pattern of organization that engages my brain in a way that not only cements the knowledge I'm taking note of, but also, I'm forcing myself to anticipate and organize my thoughts conceptually with what the professor is saying, immediately and concurrently.

The previously mentioned article discusses a study that briefly explored this idea. In the study, half of the subjects were instructed to take notes on a laptop, and the other on paper. By the time of the test, "those who wrote out their notes by hand had a stronger conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material than those who used took notes with their laptops." 

I would, though, be interested to know what other students think. There are many arguments in favor of taking notes, and several of them hold a lot of weight--to me, the most persuasive one is that anything written and saved on a computer can be pulled up at any time. Copy and paste is also fantastic. Even still, to me, nothing beats a good ol' pen and paper.