Why I take notes on my laptop

I'm not sure why I felt inspired to write about this now that I'm NOT in class, but I did.

So, note-taking in class. There are many schools of thought about this - use a laptop; write your notes by hand; take notes before class, print them out, and hand write notes on the printout; write your outline before going to class and add class notes to that; etc. etc. I've even met a (successful) law school grad who never took notes AT ALL - they said their lack of note-taking completely freaked out their classmates, and I have to admit, if I were sitting next to someone who didn't take ANY notes, it would freak me out, too. (Although now that I think of it, that is kind of what a lot of the surfing-during-class types are doing... they just look busier!)

So far, I've taken notes on my laptop. The criticisms of using your laptop are multiple: that laptop users distract themselves by going online during class (and yes, I have done this... I do usually have my e-mail open so I can see what comes in, a bad habit I got into while waiting for responses to job applications the spring of 1L year; I don't generally surf, as in reading actual websites, but I will sometimes Google stuff that comes up in class if I'm confused or just want to know a little more). That laptops create a barrier between the professor and students (it's a weird dynamic to have all your students staring intently at a screen and not really looking at you, although the good professors I've had hold people's attention). And that laptop users tend to transcribe what's said rather than processing it, so they end up with reams of undifferentiated information they haven't really digested.

I do agree that laptops provide access to that evil source of distraction, the internet, and understand (maybe even approve of) the impulse to cut wireless to classrooms. While I like being able to Google something that confuses me, I don't do it enough for it really to justify having internet connectivity. And while I also agree that students manage to distract themselves without the internet, I think the level of distraction of doodling or writing a to-do list or the like can never rise to the level of reading sports scores or Facebooking and the like. (And if you don't have online connectivity on your laptop, you never run into the problem of clicking over to CNN to check the sport scores and having the website soundtrack roar into very loud life in the middle of class. Which has never happened to me, but did happen to someone I was in Torts with. And I'm quite sure almost all the rest of us responded by surreptitiously checking the volume on our own machines...)

The barrier thing also makes sense to me. I think it must be quite difficult for the professor to maintain as strong a sense of connection or engagement with their students when everyone's sitting staring intently at their computer screens. In fact, I don't use my laptop to take notes in seminars (15 students or less), because I feel like I should really be part of the conversation and participating in a way that's tough with a computer screen in front of me (and seminars at my school don't have final exams, so I don't need to use my notes to study at the end of the semester - more on this below). 

But I don't buy the "transcription" argument, mostly because I've ALWAYS basically transcribed what I hear when taking notes, even when I was taking notes by hand. A friend of mine I TAed with in grad school always laughed because I took 2 pages of notes for every 1 page she took (and my handwriting is quite a bit smaller than hers). This is, for me, the way that notes work. It's not just about going back and being able to find things; I process the material by writing it, and if I write it ALL down, then I process ALL of it better. (I know people talk about this as part of the kinesthetic process of writing by hand, but for me, it seems to work with typing almost as well. I mean, I have had periods where I've been typing so much, that when I go to bed at night I think by mentally typing out words and phrases.)

Even if you do buy the transcription argument, though, for me, typing is still worth it, and here's the real reason why: I'm lazy. I can't take notes effectively on my reading before class (except in the margins of the book), because it takes soooooo daaaaaaaaammmmmmmn looooooooooooong. I just don't have the patience to do it. Plus, my "transcription" habit means that if I take notes as I do the reading, I just write down everything, and in that context, I find doing so incredibly unhelpful. While I probably should do the reading, then stop and take notes, I never seem to leave myself enough time to do so, and when I do, they never seem to be very helpful. So rather than getting the material written down before class, I use class time to get down what I should know.

Finally, I find writing down everything in class is a huge help for when I need to study at the end of the semester. The traditional law-school wisdom is that one must make an outline of the whole semester's notes in order to prepare for exams. But when I try to make out outline of my notes, I spend more time rearranging stuff and making it LOOK like an outline than actually learning what the notes say. And time, at the end of the semester, is precious. I end up wasting a lot of time and not learning stuff. What has worked better for me this year has been to take detailed notes, and try very hard to outline as I'm taking them - to organize them carefully under main principle, sub-principles, examples of sub-principles, and so on. And then at the end of the semester, I just print everything out and study from that.

I do kind of suspect I might absorb things somewhat better along the way if I had the discipline to write all my notes by hand. But I find hand-written notes extremely cumbersome when trying to study at the end of the semester - they're longer (just in terms of taking up space) than printed notes, they're messier because it's harder to edit and rearrange stuff, and I find it harder to read my own handwriting quickly (for instance, during an exam) than I do to read the printed word quickly. And while typing up hand-written notes would probably be a great way of reviewing and learning the material, I know myself, and I know that I wouldn't have/make the time to type up everything. (For perspective, my typed notes for classes often run around 100-120 pages. Hand-written notes might be shorter, but that's a lot of transcription.) I'm better off spending all my time learning the notes that I do have in the form I have them, than spending time getting the format perfect before I can sit down to learn the material.

Mind you, this is only what works for me. I'm not advocating this as "the" method for law school study, or even "a" method. I'm sure there are lots of problems with what I do, and also lots of reasons why it wouldn't work for other people. But since there tends to be quite a lot of debate about what law students need to do to succeed, and what role laptops should play, I thought I'd throw this out there.

Comments

[dance]

I also transcribe even when hand-taking notes. Far more useful to do it on a laptop. And I have keyboard shortcuts set up to apply a basic outline as I go, so I am processing it a bit. (I'm literally a compulsive notetaker. It is *really* difficult for me to attend even an unrelated talk without pen and paper. Sometimes I can even do it mentally---eg, someone says "where was I going with that?" and I recite back the last 6 topics of conversation.)

I'm real tempted to hack a netbook to run OS X because of the barrier thing (or, you know, justify an iPad that way). Although, taking notes doesn't actually mean I'm staring at my screen--I'm pretty engaged in meetings even taking notes. But it is TOUGH for me to notetake on what I myself said.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

I would LOVE a hacked netbook. I haven't done enough hacking to trust my ability to do it myself, although I've seen really the clear directions around the web and it's tempting.

And I have the exact same problem with notetaking myself! Especially in law school, because if profs call on you to present a case (as opposed to when you're volunteering an answer/comment on something), you're on the hook for a while, and I'm often looking at material in my book to make sure I know what I'm talking about. So there are always great big gaps in my notes where I was the one on-call for a case.

[Janice]

I'm weird but I don't see the big problem with laptops in the classroom. Maybe it's because of creeping disabilities of my own make it difficult to transcribe by hand for long while typing is quite easy. And, as a prof, I've always found it easy to prowl up and down the aisles, checking on screens, of most larger classrooms and still be heard (there are only two lecture halls at the university that confound me, one because of acoustics and one because the professor's pit is nigh inaccessible to the rest of the classroom).

I'm also perfectly willing to sit and wait them out if I ask a question and nobody responds. Even a "you there, with the Mac!" can get the laptoppers to look up and realize they ought to be learning. Before they could distract themselves with laptop, though, they brought Sudoku. And before Sudoku, there were other games and distractions.

The important thing is that the professor makes sure that no student behaviour disrupts the learning process. I don't think you have to ban laptops to make this happen! And I don't think you have to take notes in a certain way to succeed (or even that you have to take notes, at all).

[Notorious Ph.D.]

Can I ask a question inspired by this post? You've been on both sides of that laptop screen. And even as the good student that I know you are, you admit that the temptation to surf the web is near-unsurmountable. So, from your unique perspective, how would you recommend that a professor address the laptop=distraction issue, when they're nearly ubiquitous in the classroom these days? I think we've gone beyond the point where I can reasonably ban their use in my classroom, but I can't/don't want to become the Facebook police.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

I actually think it's perfectly reasonable to ban laptops in the classroom (there are professors at my school who do, one at least who is acknowledged as one of the best profs there). To address students' concerns about having typed notes, one option is to have one student type notes each day (a different student each time) and post them to a class website. Admittedly, you (the student) may not get the kind of notes you find the most helpful, but everyone's equally disadvantaged in that way (this is especially important for law school since we're graded on a curve - if we can't get we want, that's okay as long as no one else can either!).

The U of Chicago law school arranged to block wireless from their classrooms, so that in theory minimizes the computer distractions (though I read one blogger talking about categorizing her wedding photos in class since it was the only thing she could do to occupy herself!). That's also not really an option for individual professors, though.

I think it partly depends on what you want to do in your class and what you want your students to get out of it. I would especially have no qualms about banning laptop use in a small discussion-oriented class (in fact, I did ban laptops my last year of teaching. My classes were < 30 students). I always had a big spiel about how and why I valued students' participation in class, so I tied not using laptops into that. (A couple of times we did various activities in class where students asked me if they could use their laptops, where it made sense, so I let them, but generally, they had to keep the machines closed.)

If you have a participation grade, and you have a classroom in which you can walk around and see what students are doing with their computers (or at least can see when students are completely absorbed in something unrelated to class, which I suspect is kind of obvious), you can make it an explicit part of your syllabus that surfing the web will result in docking the participation grade. (I think if that's the case it might make sense to give the class or individual students feedback when you can see that they're surfing - like Janice's "You with the Mac!" comment, or just telling someone, "Josh, you need to get off Facebook while you're in class." I never had to do this, but as I've never minded telling people to, e.g. stop talking while someone else is talking, I think it would be much the same thing.) To some extent, I think having the professor make it clear that they know when a student is surfing and commenting on it might help reduce the practice, because I think most people surf because they think it's invisible.

None of my profs explicitly say "if you surf I will dock your grade," but I do have a couple of profs who explicitly say, "don't surf" in their syllabi. Sadly, I don't think it has the slightest effect, but it is in the syllabus to provide precedent if the prof needed to say/do something about excessive surfing. And most of my classes don't have participation grades in the same way as in undergrad, so it's a different kind of set up.

In some respects, if the class is large and designed such that it's not dependent on student participation, then I'm almost inclined to say that students who surf are mostly hurting themselves and to let the market (of grades) regulate the practice. Blatant surfing can be annoyingly distracting to the students around the offender (I'll admit to having read classmates' Gchat conversations), so some profs explicitly ask people who think they'll get online to sit in the back of the classroom so as not to distract others.

And I like Janice's point about walking up and down the aisles checking what students are doing (though if this isn't part of your normal teaching style it would be kind of annoying adjustment). I liken it to reading a newspaper in class - I never had any problem telling a student to put the newspaper away, I wouldn't have any problem telling them to get off Facebook. But this is dependent on classroom setup.

Another thing to do (this I think can work in big or small classes) is harness laptop use for good - throw out questions to students periodically and have them look up the answers, that kind of thing. Obviously this works better with some subjects than others.

The argument often made about not banning laptops is that if profs can't hold students' attention the students shouldn't have to be penalized - implying that going online is a function of the quality of the prof. I don't actually buy that myself (because honestly, it's awfully hard to compete with the internet). But I do think that engagement is important, and the more a class requires students to actively DO something, the less they'll get sucked online.

The evil part of me thinks, too, that if students are required to take turns leading class discussion, and they see how hard it is when everyone's buried in their laptop, they might try harder not to get sucked in themselves. But that may be overly optimistic - that just may be that when I had to lead class as a student, I realized how awful the silences were when you asked a question, and tried to help people out after that. Am not sure all students would have that reaction though!

[Historiann]

Laptops are not yet ubiquitous in my classrooms--one or two people on computers does not a distraction make. And, it's their choice to pay attention, or not.

I have always (and still always) take notes on my laptop. I like the fact that their searchable, whereas handwritten notes are not. (A handy feature, when you're reviewing notes or transcriptions made in some cases YEARS ago!)

[dance]

@Notorious PhD: With myself, say when working at cafes, I find that turning off the wi-fi really helps. For me to consciously say "I'm going to turn internet access back on" is more of a barrier than "I'm not going to launch Firefox." So I wonder if helping students live up to their good intentions (which many of them have) might be an approach. Eg, Starting class with a brief reminder to turn off wi-fi or quit their social networks along with silencing their cellphone. Educating them on distraction blocker apps like these:
http://www.economist.com/node/16295664?story_id=16295664
Etc. Emphasizing that it's only 50 minutes. The same sort of friendly reminders I do for students who are silent in class--I acknowledge that speaking up is hard but insist they need to do it anyway.