Laptops in Lectures: Update

In a blog post last year, I shared the reasons I did not allow laptops in the classes I taught at Brooklyn College.  Succinctly, taking notes on a laptop leads to less learning than taking notes by hand, according to research.  When we are able to record notes as quickly as they are spoken, our brains don’t have to process the information – it goes straight from our ears to our screens.  Recently, The New York Times published an update on this line of research, and I wanted to share some of this interesting information with our readers.  According to the Times article, which referenced a study by Sana, Weston, and Cepeda of McMaster and York Universities in Canada, it isn’t just the laptop users who suffer during lecture.  The researchers gave a lecture to a group of students, all of whom were taking notes on a laptop. Half of the students were also given twelve simple tasks to do while taking notes.  One task, for example, was looking up what was on television at a specific time that evening.  This was meant to approximate typical multi-tasking by college students, who are often on Google, Facebook, or Instagram while also trying to take notes during class.

The results of the study are interesting and potentially alarming.  While it’s not surprising that the students who were given the distraction tasks recalled less from the lecture on a 20-question multiple-choice test, the more notable finding is that the students who were seated in view of the multi-tasking students also performed worse compared to students who were not multi-tasking and were not seated in view of a multi-tasker.  This spillover effect puts other students, not just the kids on Facebook, at a seemingly unfair disadvantage.  The study’s authors warn against a total laptop ban, however, noting that this would be “extreme and unwarranted.” 

Sana, Weston, and Cepeda argue that rather than banning laptops completely, their use should be carefully curated so that students are not simply using them for note-taking, which studies have confirmed is detrimental to learning.  Rather, they recommend the use of web-based research, pop quizzes, online case studies, and discussion threads, all of which can “foster positive learning outcomes.”  They also recommend that instructors have an open conversation with students about the use of laptops in classes, and discourage their use when the technology is not a requirement for learning (e.g., slides are provided, textbooks cover all the information).  Finally, the authors note that instructors have the responsibility to build enticing, interesting classes that can compete with the allure of online browsing.  Inevitably, college students must be responsible for their own learning.  It is up to the instructors, however, to lead them in the right direction.

One important exception to discouraging laptop use was noted by the author of the Times article: students with disabilities who require laptops for note taking, to access lecture materials, or otherwise, must be permitted to use their devices in class. This can single out these students as having disabilities, but the author notes that it is a matter of weighing the needs and best interests of one group of students against those of others. 

Reference:

Sana, F., Weston, T., & Cepeda, N. J. (2013). Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers. Computers & Education, 62, 24-31.

Photo credit: Tyler Ingram 

Doodling and Visual Note-Taking

As far back as your blogger can remember, drawing in class has been a big no-no, often resulting in a stern “talking to” after class. Even today, kids often have to get special permission from the school psychologist or learning specialist to be allowed to scribble away during lessons. What that special permission has taught us, though, is that allowing a child (or adult) to make pictures while attending to a lecture can help her focus and stay tuned in. So why not harness that power and take it up a notch? That’s exactly what Sunni Brown and Rachel Smith, two TED speakers, are hoping we’ll all start asking ourselves next time we’re sitting in history class or attending a board meeting. 

Brown and Smith, in separate TED and TEDx speeches, described and demonstrated the practice of visual note-taking, or doodling with purpose. For the most part, we’ve always relied on using the alphabet to take notes. Unfortunately, even the fastest young writers can’t capture everything a teacher says, nor should they. A previous blog post has already explored the ways in which verbatim note-taking cuts out the requirement for comprehension and synthesis during class, allowing students to record their instructors without absorbing what is being said. For many, taking notes by hand, using the alphabet, is a great system that gets them where they need to be. For others, though, it just doesn’t cut it. That’s where doodling can help.

Brown defines doodling as the process of making spontaneous marks to help yourself think. She heralds it as a preemptive measure to stop yourself from losing focus. Lots of us have small habits that help keep us focused – tapping our feet, twisting a rubber band, or doodling, for example. By expanding our doodles into basic iconography, we can use the habit to increase our comprehension and retention of lectures or meetings. According to Brown, the reason doodling works so well is because it combines visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthesia, the four modalities of sensory input in school, with emotion and context. That key piece – adding context with personal significance – is what leads to good learning.

                                                                          Illustration by Austin Kleon via flickr cc

Smith gets more into the nitty-gritty of how we can adapt doodles into note-taking. Doodling is freer than writing, and allows you to see the big picture displayed across a page. By looking at the page as a canvas rather than a series of sequential lines, we can draw-quite literally-connections between pieces of information that come up at different times. Most importantly, drawing what you hear requires you to listen to and to understand what’s being said, so that you can translate it into your own system of icons. Doodling allows you to capture what you’re hearing in a way that’s relevant to you, and Smith advocates doing so with a personal set of icons that can be tweaked depending on the circumstance.

There are three steps to start your doodling-as-note-taking endeavor. First, pick a tool. This may be a notebook, a pencil, a thin marker, a set of colored pens, or a tablet with a drawing app. Second, develop a few basic icons. Trying to come up with your icons while you’re doodling during a lecture is like trying to develop a new language while writing – it takes 100% of your attention. It’s best to figure a few out beforehand and practice using and adjusting them over time. Third, focus on capturing the speaker’s main points. You can always add details later to capture the smaller pieces of information, and seeing your icons will aid your recall of these details. Smith’s final piece of advice – don’t get sucked into the drawing. Focus on listening and using your icons. Nobody needs to understand your drawings except you.

I took a shot at some visual note-taking based on these two TED talks, using the starter icon Smith taught her audience. My drawing skills have always been wanting, but when I look back at the notes I took, the pieces fit together. The doodles I made do a good job reminding me of the information because I had to really engage myself in the process of creating them.

For more information about visual note-taking, check out these websites:

• How to Sketchnote without Drawing

• Sketchnoting 101

• Book: The Sketchnote Handbook

Rethinking How College Students Take Notes

Over my five years of teaching undergraduates at The City University of New York campuses, your blogger noticed a growing trend of students relying on their computers during class and, later, their tablets and even smartphones. My students were using these devices to do everything from take notes and view readings to play Candy Crush and make weekend plans. Some of my highest-achieving students were quietly texting or gaming under their desks, while some of my struggling students were rushing to type down every word I said; there didn’t seem to be a real pattern to how device usage related to student grades or engagement in discussions. 

After discussing the topic with my students and exploring the research, I decided to implement a no-device policy. Their one saving grace was a mid-class “tech fix” that I allowed – a few minutes in the middle of class when students could check their phones and “check out” as a way to relax and refocus. Without this break, students’ device “withdrawal” may get the better of them when they’re trying their best to pay attention. If college grads are going to be expected to use computers for almost all tasks once they enter the work force, why did I decide to go back to the old-fashioned pen (or pencil!) and paper policy? The answer was clear and simple – Evidence-Based Research. There’s a lot of research out there about the way millennials engage with their devices and how tech use influences grades, happiness, relationships, and sleep. There are even university departments completely devoted to studying the relationship between people and their technology.

So how does technology play a role in college students’ learning? For starters, students who take notes on paper have the upper hand when it comes to test performance. This may seem counter intuitive – if we take notes on a computer we can capture so much more of what the instructor is saying, right? This may be true, but if we’re just blindly typing every word we hear without processing the information, we don’t have to summarize or paraphrase the concepts in our heads. When we take notes by hand, we’re forced to process all that information and be selective about what we want to write down. This helps us learn the material by focusing in on what’s important and how the concepts relate to one another. No matter how many times I reminded my students that all my slides were available online, a significant number insisted on trying to re-type everything I said – no easy feat given my rate of speech! When I took away their ability to use a keyboard, I nudged them towards developing effective note-taking skills. When I checked in with my class a few weeks after instating the policy, I got only positive feedback. The take-home message here: put away the laptop and immerse yourself in the lecture while jotting down only the most important, inter-related points. You can always audio-record the session or use a Livescribe Smartpen  if you’re worried about missing information.

Photo credit: Luke Jones: flickr cc

To Type or Not to Type? For Young Kids, It’s Not a Question

Adults of a certain age (in this case, over, say, 40) would notice a very startling difference between the college lectures of their university days and the lectures of today if they sat in on a class. Sure, some professors might use PowerPoint presentations instead of the whiteboard (or chalkboard, for those much older than 40). But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking, instead, about the laptop revolution. Students who take notes on paper with actual pens are fewer with each passing year. Instead, the professor’s voice floats over a sea of muffled bursts of staccato as students frantically type their notes into word processing programs (or, to be fair, chat with their friends on social media).

coolabanana/Flickr

For some students, being freed from a pencil and paper is a lifesaver. Kids with graphomotor difficulties and real spelling problems benefit enormously from keyboarding and access to all the editing tools that are included in word processing programs. And by college, or even high school, most students can type much more quickly than they can write. But for the average student, is making the switch from hand writing to typing a good idea? A recent article in Scientific American unequivocally urges young children to step away from the keyboard.

The article discusses a series of studies that examine the relationship between handwriting and literacy tasks, like learning letters, spelling, and writing quality discourse. Highlighted findings include:

• Subjects who hand wrote foreign letters were better able to recognize those letters later as they endeavored to learn them.
• More brain activity was measured in subjects who looked at letters they had learned to hand write than in subjects who had studied the same letters by typing them. Interestingly, activity was found in both visual and motor areas of the brains of the former group.
• Legible, automatic handwriting in young children was the single best predictor of spelling ability and quality and quantity of writing generated in written compositions when those same children grew older.

It seems that there are many good arguments for developing handwriting, even in the digital age. Here at The Yellin Center, we notice that children who don’t use systematic patterns of pencil strokes to form letters tend to produce sentences and paragraphs of lower quality; the act of forming letters seems to sap their cognitive resources too much to come up with strong sentences, choose good vocabulary, and remember the rules of written mechanics. We encourage teachers and parents of young children to scrutinize a child’s letter formation, not just the legibility and uniformity of the letters that end up on the page. If it is determined that a young child forms letters slowly and laboriously, instructional programs such as Handwriting Without Tears can be enormously helpful. On the other hand, older students—third grade and up, or so—may be better off learning to keyboard quickly.

Little research exists on handwriting versus typing in older students and adults, but Teachers College professor Stephen Peverly notes that his students, especially after learning about handwriting’s role in memory and knowledge acquisition, tend to leave their laptops in their bags when they come to class.