"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

Introduction

The utilization of laptops in a college environment has become a widely accepted practice due to the increasingly technological nature of our society. Essays, papers, and notes that were previously handwritten are now being written with the aid of word processors on computers and laptops. While this trend of technologically-based writing has been accelerating due to positive feedback from students who prefer writing on a word processor to handwriting (Burnett, 1984), researchers are continually studying whether word processors actually benefit students’ writing. Some researchers have found improvements in the writing quality of students who used word processors (Oliver and Kerr, 1993; Louth and McAllister, 1988; Owsten, Murphy, and Wideman, 1989) while others have concluded that there was no statistically significant difference between handwriting and word processing (Teichman and Porris, 1989). However, although these studies have attempted to address the efficacy of word processing for expository compositions, there is a dearth of research on whether typing notes or handwriting notes for class lectures is more beneficial for students.  Therefore, this study will analyze the differences between the handwritten and typed notes of two college students to assess the effectiveness of each method of notetaking and to gain a further understanding of why students may prefer one method over another.

Although there are few studies specifically about typed versus handwritten notes, there are a large number of studies about typed versus handwritten compositions in general. While these studies may seem inconclusive due to varying results as shown in the previous paragraph, Reay and Dunn believe that the inconsistency of these experiments can be attributed to the negligence of the researchers to the disparate transcription speeds of typing versus handwriting; they found that the writing of those who were more proficient at typing benefited from the use of word processing. In a university full of technologically savvy college students, it makes sense that the inclusion of word processing would have a beneficial impact on the quality of writing for college students as certain studies have discovered (Bernhardt, Wojahn, and Edwards, 1988).

While researchers have extensively studied the effects of word processing on composition to determine whether the utilization of computers in an educational environment is appropriate, there has been less focus on the topic of notetaking, which is arguably the most commonplace activity within college classes; according to Palmatier and Bennett, 99% of all college students take notes and 96% of students believed notetaking is crucial to their success in college. Large portions of students use their laptops to take notes, but it is unclear whether word processed notetaking is more beneficial than handwritten notetaking. Consequently, there are many varying opinions on whether laptops should be present in the classroom.

Some critics of laptops in the classroom, such as D’Agostino, believe that laptops provide too many opportunities for distraction to be a productive tool; she claims that students spend about half their time on social networking sites instead of taking notes when they use their laptop. However, other studies on notetaking strategies may point to some of the benefits of electronic notes. For instance, according to Eggerts and Williams, students who reviewed their notes were most likely to achieve at a higher level than their peers. Therefore, the organizational benefits of computerized notes may serve as a significant asset for students. Another major source on the efficacy of different notetaking strategies is Stahl, King, and Henk, who devised a quantitative system to analyze the effectiveness of a particular individual’s notes. Utilizing a wide array of research on notetaking strategies, Stahl, King, and Henk created NOTES, a coding system which assigns a point value to certain criteria that previous studies have deemed conducive to beneficial notetaking. Positive traits like legibility, accessibility, organization, proper spacing, heading, utilization of examples, and summarization are all assigned point values. Whenever a sheet of notes is determined to possess a certain positive trait, it is given more points – the more points a sheet of notes has, the more beneficial it is for the student.

In general, there are inconclusive results regarding the effectiveness of competing transcription methods for expository compositions and virtually no results on transcription methods for notetaking. However, by synthesizing what other researchers have found to be beneficial notetaking strategies–higher transcription speed, accessible storage, organization, etc. – with data I collected from two university students, this study will fill the gap in the research by assessing the effectiveness of each method of transcription for notetaking.