Imagine you are sitting at a desk, pencil gripped in a sweaty hand, staring down a test with only minutes left. The last question sounds familiar. The answer is on the tip of your tongue, you remember reading over it in your notes, but you can’t quite recall it. If only you had—studied harder? Paid more attention? Taken better notes?
The answer is all of the above. To learn information well enough to recall it, not just recognize it, the science-backed strategy for success starts with how students take notes.
The process of learning new information is similar to forming memories. It occurs in the neural pathways of the brain.
“Scientifically, we think of learning anything, not just what we consider educational, but learning anything involves a change or a laying down of new neuronal connections,” said Meg Flanigan, a neuroscientist and professor of physiology at the University of Wyoming. “Writing something, as opposed to simply listening, is helping to consolidate that new network.”
When taking notes during a lecture, many students attempt to record what the professor is saying word-for-word. To do this, they may opt to take notes on a laptop instead of hand-writing them, since typing is typically faster than writing.
A 2014 study at the University of California Los Angeles and Princeton University found that this strategy can backfire.
In the study, researchers randomly assigned students either a laptop or a notebook to take notes on a 15-minute TED talk. Half an hour after watching the video, students were tested on basic facts and conceptual analysis of the video. Both groups, laptop and notebook, performed approximately the same on factual questions. The students who had handwritten their notes, however, performed significantly better on the conceptual questions.
The difference, researchers found, was students who had typed their notes directly transcribed more of the information than students who handwrote them. Because of the slower speed of handwriting, this group of students summarized more of the content.
“Laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning,” the researchers concluded.
“Because you can’t write as fast as you can type, you actually have to subconsciously be summarizing what that professor said and putting it into context,” Flanigan said. “So, you are using more of your critical thinking skills processing that information as it’s coming out of the mouth of the professor.”
In a second experiment, the researchers recreated the first experiment with one key difference: they warned the students with laptops to avoid the tendency to transcribe verbatim. Still, students who took notes on the laptops performed worse on the conceptual questions. An awareness of the tendency to transcribe does not solve the problem.
Like any other skill, good note-taking has to be practiced and developed over time.
“As a freshman, I would either write everything or not know what to include,” said Rachel Shade, now a junior Communication major at UW. “Each year, I got better at it and figured out what I needed to write down and what I didn’t need to, and how to write it down so it’ll click faster.”
The importance of notes doesn’t end when students walk out of the lecture hall. Reviewing notes is key for solidifying an understanding of new material.
“It’s important to go after class and take a look at what you wrote,” said Alli Brayton, a UW academic adviser. “I think a lot of students furiously take notes, shut their notebook, and then don’t worry about it until a few days before the test.” In Brayton’s experience counseling struggling students, that is a mistake.
Reviewing notes right after class helps students assess their own learning—what they understood, what they didn’t understand and what information might be missing. Organizing information in their notes enables students to begin studying before the test even approaches.
Reviewing notes regularly up until the test consolidates the neural pathways of newly-learned information. As this consolidation increases, a student will be able to completely recall the information more easily, and not just recognize it.
“The more you exercise those neural pathways, the stronger they get,” Brayton said. “So that’s the basis of studying, as students learning something, it gets reinforced, and then they learn it better.”
After handwriting quality notes and reviewing them regularly, students should be able to recall information on that next test with ease.
