All through high school/college I just always wrote my notes once during class, then almost never referred to them again. For me, just the act of writing out the notes was usually good enough to help me retain the information, for the tests at least. I’ve forgotten most of it, but it was there when I needed it.
I think it’s a focus thing… If you take notes you give yourself a task and force yourself to pay attention rather than zoning out and telling yourself you’re still listening.
You aren’t the only one. I was taking an upgrade class at work and another student saw me taking notes. The instructor told her that a lot of his pupils do something similar.
I’ve seen several articles that claim that taking notes with pen and paper helps people retain information better than taking notes on a keyboard.
I just saw a paper on that. I think the basic idea is that the reason you remember better from handwritten notes versus typing is that each letterform has a unique shape that you have to write down. So your fingers/hands are following along by some sort of choreographed muscle memory when you’re writing stuff down, it’s like a sort of dance that our hands do, tracing out all these letter forms, there’s more uniqueness and complexity to it that somehow stays with us better. Compare that to typing where you’re literally just doing the same action over and over again, you’re just pushing buttons down. You might be able to focus more on what the professor is saying, but you’re more just passively taking it in and your mind isn’t as engaged in your note-taking.
Writing things down does really help with remembering them. A good chunk of my biology class in high-school was spent copying notes in silence then the teacher reading them out loud. It was pretty effective to have to read, write, and hear the same thing.
All through high school/college I just always wrote my notes once during class, then almost never referred to them again. For me, just the act of writing out the notes was usually good enough to help me retain the information, for the tests at least. I’ve forgotten most of it, but it was there when I needed it.
I think it’s a focus thing… If you take notes you give yourself a task and force yourself to pay attention rather than zoning out and telling yourself you’re still listening.
You aren’t the only one. I was taking an upgrade class at work and another student saw me taking notes. The instructor told her that a lot of his pupils do something similar.
I’ve seen several articles that claim that taking notes with pen and paper helps people retain information better than taking notes on a keyboard.
I just saw a paper on that. I think the basic idea is that the reason you remember better from handwritten notes versus typing is that each letterform has a unique shape that you have to write down. So your fingers/hands are following along by some sort of choreographed muscle memory when you’re writing stuff down, it’s like a sort of dance that our hands do, tracing out all these letter forms, there’s more uniqueness and complexity to it that somehow stays with us better. Compare that to typing where you’re literally just doing the same action over and over again, you’re just pushing buttons down. You might be able to focus more on what the professor is saying, but you’re more just passively taking it in and your mind isn’t as engaged in your note-taking.
Makes sense.
Writing things down does really help with remembering them. A good chunk of my biology class in high-school was spent copying notes in silence then the teacher reading them out loud. It was pretty effective to have to read, write, and hear the same thing.