Longhand or Laptop? The Winner Is...

Looking out at my audience one day last week I saw a sea of silver and black laptops. Fingers were quickly flying over the keyboards, as participants took notes at a furious pace. Taking notes on a laptop or tablet is increasingly common because of the many advantages. Many adults report that they can type faster than scribing by hand. Notes are then quickly stored or linked to other materials. Web sites are easily accessed for supporting information. And, to be honest, games or shopping are at your fingertips.
 
Researchers Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer (2014) set out to determine if the keyboard was mightier than the pen. A meta-analysis of the research showed that learners who type notes are processing the information more shallowly than those who write them out longhand. Students who type tend to record the information verbatim, rather than rewording it so that it makes sense to them. When tested, students who typed performed more poorly on conceptual questions than those who wrote longhand.
 
So should you ban the use of laptops at your next conference presentation or training? No. Not when there are other ways to encourage longhand note taking.

1. Provide a handout with sufficient white space for note taking. Instead of providing pages and pages of text, List a few key ideas and encourage participants to fill in the blanks.
2. Use a technology tool such as Doceri, which allows you to turn your iPad and projector into a whiteboard. As you talk about a key idea, model note taking. I find that if I write something down on the screen, everyone in the room follows my lead.
3. Stop every so often and ask participants to grab a sticky note and summarize the last concept. Suggest they pair up and share their summaries with another person in the class. This will ensure that they are processing your information more deeply, even if they are doing some note taking on a keyboard.

 
 
Mueller, P. and Oppenheimer, D. (2014) The pen is mightier than the keyboard.