The moment of truth for me came in the spring 2013 semester. I looked out at my visual-communication class and saw a group of six students transfixed by the blue glow of a video on one of their computers, and decided I was done allowing laptops in my large lecture class. "Done" might be putting it mildly. Although I am an engaging lecturer, I could not compete with Facebook and YouTube, and I was tired of trying.
The next semester I told students they would have to take notes on paper. Period.
A study published last year in Psychological Science showed that students who write out notes longhand remember conceptual information better than those who take notes on a computer. "Whereas taking more notes can be beneficial," the article’s abstract reported, "laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning." Continue....
-- Carol E. Holstead
