A 2024 meta-analysis by Flanigan and colleagues1 examined whether handwritten notes improve retention and recall compared with typing. The researchers found that handwriting had an advantage. The study noted that typing let students produce more notes. But as with most things, more isn’t always better.
Interestingly, two studies noted in that meta-analysis by Morehead and colleagues in 20192, and Urry and colleagues in 20213 could not replicate the findings of a 2014 study by Mueller and Oppenheimer4 , which suggested that longhand note-taking was superior to laptop note-taking. If typing produced more notes, did longhand writing just help those students slow down and better discern what was important to note? Has technology changed note-taking in ways these studies can’t capture, or has it advanced so far that these studies are now irrelevant?
Or could there also be an issue with how the notes are used after the lecture? I struggled with note-taking in class. Taking more notes or taking the time to handwrite them didn’t make much difference for me. When I tried to take notes, I couldn’t attend to what the professor was saying. I also couldn’t tell what was important to note or try to contextualize what I was hearing to my own experiences. When I did that, I missed parts of the lecture and had to rely on others to fill me in on what I missed. I bought a mini-recorder and got permission to record the lectures, but trying to write notes from recordings just created the same attention problem I had in class.
Yet plenty of study-habit books (4,000 in a search on Amazon.com), online and in-person courses, and YouTube videos (http://google.com site:youtube.com/watch “study habits”) will tell you the optimal way to study. What are the chances these one-size-fits-all solutions could have improved my study habits? I may have been lucky to have a strong memory. I couldn’t remember names very well, but I could remember other things fairly well if I applied context to them. Maybe I was unlucky, too, because it masked my deficit in how to study.
When I searched for studies on copying important passages from a textbook to better encode them into memory, I couldn’t find much support for longhand writing over typing in studies done after 2010. However, a 2005 meta-analysis by Keiichi Kobayashi 5 found that taking notes while learning from written or spoken material can improve subsequent test performance.
I suspect study habits are likely a personal thing that takes some trial and error to find out what works best for you. I do wonder, though, if you could narrow your options by creating some feedback loops. I’m not sure what those are but it would interesting to investigate further.
Flanigan, A.E., Wheeler, J., Colliot, T. et al. Typed Versus Handwritten Lecture Notes and College Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis. Educ Psychol Rev 36, 78 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09914-w
Morehead, K., Dunlosky, J., & Rawson, K. A. (2019a). How much mightier is the pen than the keyboard for note-taking? A replication and extension of Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014). Educational Psychology Review, 31, 753–780. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09468-2
Urry, H. L., Crittle, C. S., Floerke, V. A., Leonard, M. Z., Perry III, C. S., Akdilek, N., ... & Zarrow, J. E. (2021). Don’t ditch the laptop just yet: A direct replication of Mueller and Oppenheimer’s (2014) study 1 plus mini meta-analyses across similar studies. Psychological Science, 32(3), 326–339. https://doi.org/10.1177/095679762096554
Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159-1168. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524581
Keiichi Kobayashi, What limits the encoding effect of note-taking? A meta-analytic examination, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Volume 30, Issue 2,2005, Pages 242-262,ISSN 0361-476X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2004.10.001. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X04000621)