Time to Hand it Over to the Keyboard?

My 11-year-old cousin got a laptop on his first day of 6^th grade.  My initial reaction: why does a 6^th grader need a laptop?  I didn’t get my first netbook until I was 16 and traveling to the Middle East for the summer—my first full-sized laptop when I graduated high school and started college!  Why in the world did my aunt and uncle feel the need to indulge their only son with his own personal computer before he was even a teenager?

Apparently, I was not the only one surprised and somewhat offended by this seemingly premature purchase.  I overheard my grandmother on the phone asking, “What the hell does the boy need that for?  You’d better watch him closely!”  Defending her parenting decision, my aunt explained that my cousin’s middle school had updated its curriculums and facilities to all technology.  Chalkboards, once replaced by white boards, had again been replaced by Smart Board projectors.  Rather than individual desks in each classroom, there were lab tables with large computer monitors at which groups of students do their lessons.  Textbooks were no longer provided in hard-copies, rather the students were given codes to access them online or even download them for more permanent access.

Many adults today may argue that handwriting is the most effective means of memorizing, understanding, and retaining information; after all, that’s how they were taught and they’ve turned out just fine.  However, there has been a rapid shift in technology including writing and text technology.  Nowadays, students of all ages are encouraged by their school teachers to take notes, complete assignments, and even solve arithmetic equations using a screen and keyboard.  Though it cannot be denied that learning to access and express information through typing on a keyboard is crucial in today’s digital age, we have to wonder if this shift is benefiting students or acting as a detriment their education.

 

Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer conducted three studies which were published by Psychological Science last April.  Their goal was to prove that students perform better using handwritten note taking than they do with typing class notes on a laptop keyboard.

·         The first study required 67 students.  In shifts, the students were seated in classrooms with TED Talks lectures projected on a screen and told to take notes using their preferred method (either with pen and paper or on a laptop that had been disconnected from the internet).  Next they were taken to labs where they performed 2 distractor-tasks and a memory task.  Last, the students were asked factual questions related to the lectures they’d seen about 30-minutes before.  According to their scoring system, there was no significant interaction between lecture and note-taking medium.

·         The second study had students assigned to either hand-written note-taking or laptop note-taking.  They watched the same lecture.   The students using laptops were instructed not type information as they heard it, but rather in their own words.  Just like in study 1, they were given activities to complete to act as distractors.  Then they participated in the same test.  The final result for this study concluded that it was not the note-taking method that significantly affected the participants’ scores, but the amount of notes they had taken.  Those who wrote more notes received higher grades on the assessment.

·         The third and final study proceeded as follows: a graduate student gave a lecture to the participating students.  They were given either a laptop or pen and paper and were instructed to take notes on the lectures. They were told they would be returning the following week to be tested on the material. Each participant viewed all four lectures on individual monitors while wearing headphones.  When they returned, some students were given a 10-minute study opportunity while the others took the test immediately.  “There were no main effects of note-taking medium or opportunity to study. However, there was a significant interaction between…participants who took longhand notes and were able to study them performed significantly better than participants in any of the other conditions” (Mueller, Oppenheimer 6).

In their publication, Mueller and Oppenheimer acknowledge that just because notes are handwritten does not automatically improve students’ retention, and ultimately their grades.  They did, however, notice that students who took more notes performed better.  “Although more notes are beneficial, at least to a point, if the notes are taken indiscriminately or by mindlessly transcribing content, as is more likely the case on a laptop than when notes are taken longhand, the benefit disappears” (Mueller, Oppenheimer 8).

Mueller and Oppenheimer are not the only ones to question the benefits (or lack thereof) of computers in the classrooms.  College Professor John Fons eliminated paper from his course altogether.  In “A Year without Paper: Tablet Computers in the Classroom” he writes: “a few students commented that they were able to focus more on what was said rather than ‘frantically writing material down.’  A large majority of students must share that sentiment, as 80% agreed to the statement, ‘Having lecture notes broadcasted allowed me to pay greater attention to what was said.’  Two students indicated however that they ‘learned best while writing their own notes’ and took to copying lecture notes with paper and pencil toward the end of the semester.  Interestingly, those students also chose to continue receiving my lecture notes digitally” (Fons 482).

Whether or not typing is beneficial in a learning environment, it is an inescapable phenomenon in today’s digital era.  In general, the reliance on penmanship has decreased.  Children are not even being taught cursive in grade school.  People of all ages—parents, 6^th graders, and college students are faced with every-day tasks that are now performed using some sort of keyboard or typing mechanism.  Restaurants allow you to order food online, classes are found and scheduled using screens and keyboards, and even booking appointments are done through webpages.  Due to the reliance on typing and computer literacy as a whole, it is important that it be taught in schools.

 

Fons, John. "A Year Without Paper: Tablet Computers in the Classroom." The Physics Teacher 48 (2010): 481-83. Print.

Mueller, Pam A., and David M. Oppenheimer. "The Pen Is Mightier than the Keyboard: The Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking." Psychological Science 23 Apr. 2014: 1-10. Print.