"Typing vs. Handwriting Notes: An Evaluation of the Effect of Transcription Method on Student Learning"

Mattew Hertogs

Matthew Hertogs is a sophomore at the University of Washington, and he is currently pursuing a degree in computer science with a minor in mathematics.  When he is not too busy with schoolwork, he enjoys writing and recording music, playing soccer, and watching his favorite television shows. Along with his interest in computer science, he has a strong passion for education and he hopes to pursue a career where he can combine his computational knowledge and his affinity for teaching to help benefit education worldwide.

Contents 

Introduction

Methodology

Data

Discussion

Works Cited

Appendix

Data

There were two students that took notes and participated in interviews about their various notetaking strategies and perspectives on notetaking for this study. Student 1 is an undergraduate freshman who is part of the interdisciplinary honors program; he is planning to major in engineering and he went to a public high school in California. Student 1 took notes with his laptop for two days and wrote notes by hand for the next two days in Chemistry 142 and Honors 394 [3]. Student 2 is also an undergraduate freshman who is part of the interdisciplinary honors program; however, unlike Student 1, he was homeschooled. Student 2 took notes in Honors 230 [4].  for two days with his laptop and wrote notes by hand for the next two days as well. Both students used Word 2007 when typing their notes. The notes were scored using a variation of the NOTES evaluation system (see tables 1 – 3 below).

Student 1's Chemistry 142 Notes

Student 1's Honors 394 Notes

Looking at the scores given by an adjusted version of the NOTES evaluation system (see appendix), Student 1's notes were more effective when typed for his Honors 394 class, the more word intensive class out of the two. The average score for his typed notes in Honors 394 was 38.5 while the average score for his handwritten notes in the same class was 33.5. However, in his Chemistry 142 class, the differences in scoring between typed and handwritten notes were quite minimal – 33 and 33.5 respectively.

By analyzing the scoring system in three different categories – format, organization, and meaning –distinctive trends within each method of transcription become more apparent. For instance, all of the typed notes scored higher in the “format” category of the evaluation system; Student 1's legibility and usage of page with the laptop were usually much more adroit than the handwritten versions. Furthermore, the ease of dating and storing the notes in an accessible fashion gave higher scores in the formatting category for the typed notes.

However, while the formatting score was consistently higher for Student 1's typed notes in all his classes, the scoring began to diverge between Chemistry 142, which is a more mathematical and formula-based type of lecture, and Honors 394, a more word-based type of lecture. In his Chemistry 142 class, the handwritten notes scored higher in the “meaning” category, signifying a more prominent acknowledgment of the relationship between the smaller details and examples with the main ideas presented in the lecture. In contrast, the exact opposite phenomenon occurred within his Honors 394 class; the typed notes consistently scored higher in the “meaning” category.

Due to the disparities between the “meaning” scores of the Chem 142 and Honors 394, the only class that revealed a significant difference between the typed notes and the handwritten notes was Honors 394, in favor of typed notes. In the Chemistry 142 class, Student 1's typed notes had better “format” scores, comparable “organization” scores, and lower “meaning” scores than the handwritten notes so that the overall averages between the two methods of transcription were approximately equal. In the Honors 394 class, the typed notes scored higher in “format,” comparable in “organization,” and higher in “meaning,” so the typed notes had an overall higher score than the handwritten notes.

When I revealed my findings to Student 1, he was not very surprised. Student 1 initially told me that he found it easier to take better notes in class with his laptop, except for when he had to write “anything involving numbers or formulas because it is much easier to write them than type them.” Despite the inclusion of numbers, formulas, or symbols, Student 1 claims that he types faster than he writes, making it easier to keep up with the professor during the lecture. Therefore, when he saw that his typed notes scored better than his handwritten notes in his Honors 394 class but not in his Chemistry 142 class, he believed that the differences in the types of lectures resulted in these varying results between the two classes.

Another aspect that interested me about Student 1's notetaking habits was the various distractions associated with each method of notetaking. A few studies reveal that the inclusion of technology in the classroom may actually hinder students because they might end up multitasking by checking Facebook, reading e-mails, or playing games, but this does not take into account the distracting nature of handwritten notes. When I came to collect Student 1's notes, I noticed that both handwritten notes had doodles drawn in the margin; Student 1 admitted that he usually doodled a lot during lectures. However, Student 1 also admitted that he checked Facebook “maybe once or twice” during lectures when he used his laptop. When I asked him whether he thought doodling or Facebook was more distracting in the lecture, he said “I doodle more than I check Facebook, but I can listen to the lecture while doodling; with Facebook I don’t really listen that much.”

In the end, Student 1 believes that he can take better notes with the laptop for lectures that are more word intensive rather than number intensive. However, the typed notes are not so decidedly better to make him want to carry around his “really heavy” laptop to all of his classes so he plans to continually handwrite his notes.

Student 2's Honors 230 Notes

Although the quality of Student 2's notes vacillates more than Student 1's notes, there are still evident patterns within the scoring system that can help identify his beneficial tendencies with each method of notetaking. Student 2 stated that he was never taught any particular form of notetaking, but he is intuitively able to structure notes in a coherent, organized manner when the lecture logically progresses through topics in a manner conducive to notetaking.

In all three of the categories, format, organization, and meaning, Student 2's typed notes score higher than his handwritten notes. Again, Student 2 was not particularly surprised by these results, claiming that “once [he] actually sat down and looked at the differences between the two, it was really obvious how much better the typed notes were.” The lowest-scoring handwritten notes were all squeezed into a tiny space and featured a jumbled diagram filled with arrows doubling back to certain points and words crossed out. The lowest-scoring typed notes were not much more sophisticated in an overall sense, just listing random strings of details with spaces in between, but the utilization of the word processing made the results more legible, more organized, and more understandable. When I asked Student 2 about why he thought his typed notes scored higher, he claimed that “the format helped to organize ideas and put down relevant information.”

Another positive incentive for Student 2 to type notes would be the differences in transcription speed for each method; Student 2 answered definitively that he can type faster than he writes. This benefit was evident when analyzing the differences between the higher-scoring typed notes and the higher-scoring handwritten notes. In the typed notes, Student 2 was able to organize his thoughts more clearly because he spent less time having to type out all the details; the headings and subtopics were consistently grouped together and he was able to summarize his thoughts in more detail than the handwritten notes.

In terms of distractions, Student 2 also found himself doodling on his handwritten notes and checking Facebook occasionally when he used his laptop. However, Student 2 was more certain that the doodling was more of a distraction than Facebook was, adding another positive aspect towards typed notes. Also, similar to Student 1, Student 2 mentioned that he believes that the laptop would be more useful for non-mathematical classes due to the difficulty of entering numbers and formulas into the computer.

Overall, Student 2 decided that the utilization of the laptop to take notes would be beneficial to his learning in the Honors 394 class, but he also doubts that the benefits from taking notes on the laptop would outweigh the negative aspects of having to carry his laptop around such a large campus.