To Remember A Lecture Better, Take Notes By Hand

[HDoug]

My friend Walter — who's here by a name that escapes me at moment — just sent me this link. Just another reason to write by hand. Thanks, Walter!

 

From The Atlantic:

To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand

 

Doug

[Sasha Royale]

I agree with the assessment, having used fountain pens throughout college. Additionally, using a fountain pen is less fatiguing.

As the hand tires, and begins to cramp, one begins to "selective" of the notes written. Sometimes, the choice for omission is wrong.

 

Writing is very therapeutic. (And, I deny the need for therapy.)

[Beechwood]

One of the most annoying features on modern business meetings is that each dipstick sits there behind lap top screens typing every word that is said - and causing delays - instead of thinking about what is being said and making appropriate and selected notes by hand.

[casualmerlinconstant]

One of the most annoying features on modern business meetings is that each dipstick sits there behind lap top screens typing every word that is said - and causing delays - instead of thinking about what is being said and making appropriate and selected notes by hand.

+1, except in lecture environment.

[proton007]

One of the most annoying features on modern business meetings is that each dipstick sits there behind lap top screens typing every word that is said - and causing delays - instead of thinking about what is being said and making appropriate and selected notes by hand.

 

Are they really taking dictation? I thought it was mostly web browsing .

[inkstainedruth]

I went to college back in the late 1970s, before everyone and their cousin had laptops. I only knew of one guy in my dorm who had his own computer (a freshman)

-- and I would go play "Adventure" on it sometimes. I took notes by hand for all my lecture classes, and wrote my papers on an inexpensive typewriter.

I would make little sketches of the artwork in my art history classes, (generally about an inch long, just to try and remember the specific painting being discussed), and then in the small group classes, where the professor would note the ones that we might have on exams, I would put an asterisk next to.

Although, admittedly, there was a philosophy class where it might have been useful to have a laptop to transcribe the lecture -- it was the last class before the final, and I had pulled 2 all-nighters in a row trying to finish art projects. The professor was going over his 50 page (!) article about why all these Marxist philosophers weren't "real" Marxists -- like I cared (other than that was what the exam was going to be on). And it was an evening class after the second all-nighter, and I'd been falling asleep during my 9 AM studio and 2:30 PM studio already.

When I looked at my notes later, the first page was okay -- but the second page was illegible chicken scratches.... Managed, somehow, to pull off a B in that class in spite of myself. Just dumb luck, I suspect.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Anne-Sophie]

Same here, everything was handwritten. A computer was too expensive and it was faster to write than using those clunky typewriters.

 

Videotaped courses can be run multiple times making it easy to write an outline by hand to retain the essential or just copy the one written on the blackboard, whiteboard or the screen.

 

Teachers with sleep inducing voices and subjects needing multiple cups of coffee or tea, can be closed captioned and transcribed with the computer to reduce day time and study time doze off.

[Orthostylos]

 

When I looked at my notes later, the first page was okay -- but the second page was illegible chicken scratches....

 

Had the exact same experience. I found I would start to begin study for finals, and my notes were completely illegible, and useless.

Don't rememeber the class, but there was no text book, just class notes.

 

From that point on, I adopted a "printing blended with cursive" style of my own, which I could do do pretty quickly, and yet have the notes be legible.

 

Needless to say, this was way before, laptops, before PC's, etc. If you had an electric typewriter, you were super high tech!

[Gloucesterman]

even as far back as the 60's, reviewing my handwritten notes soon after I took them help to anchor the information in my mind. Subsequent reviews just reinforced the information for future recall.

[daredevil22r]

As a machinist, I do ALL my notes in writing on a notepad. I even have a pocket protector, just in case I put my Sharpie into my pocket without a cap.

Coincidentally, we had a meeting today. Even the Chemists with their PhD's and fancy titles wrote down notes the old fashion way.

You'd be surprised how fast the mind forgets when you have a thousand things to do.

[tinysnail]

I agree with this! Matches my own experience, that's for sure. I often find that I'm able to recall information by visualizing where it is on the page or what colour ink I used. Besides, I'm in math and my LaTex isn't quick enough to be able to type up commutative diagrams during a lecture…

[Runnin_Ute]

I too, found that it was more effective - in a lot of ways to hand write rather than transcribe. Of course, I didn't learn to type until college in the early 1980's. To this day if I hit 35 wpm I am doing good. That would never work in a classroom. I can write much faster and get more out of it as well.

 

When I first started college, the only PC's that might have been available were several thousand dollars and took up the entire desk. (hence the name desktop). I saw the first laptop in a class sometime around 1990. And in a class of 50 or so students there might have been one or two at most. Everyone else was hand writing notes.