Comment by zeta0134 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zeta0134 | Hacker News Reader

Oh, okay, I thought the study was going to be on the benefits of attempting to use the laptop itself for classroom purposes, not for social media distractions. This would be more accurately titled, "Students Are Better Off Without Distractions in the Classroom." Though I suppose, it wouldn't make a very catchy headline.

I found my laptop to be very beneficial in my classroom learning during college, but only when I made it so. My secret was to avoid even connecting to the internet. I opened up a word processor, focused my eyes on the professor's slides or visual aids, and typed everything I saw, adding notes and annotations based on the professor's lecture.

This had the opposite effect of what this article describes: my focusing my distracted efforts on formatting the article and making my notes more coherent, I kept myself focused, and could much more easily engage with the class. Something about the menial task of taking the notes (which I found I rarely needed to review) prevented me from losing focus and wandering off to perform some unrelated activity.

I realize my experience is anecdotal, but then again, isn't everyone's? I think each student should evaluate their own style of learning, and decide how to best use the tools available to them. If the laptop is a distraction? Remove it! Goodness though, you're paying several hundred (/thousand) dollars per credit hour, best try to do everything you can to make that investment pay off.

> I realize my experience is anecdotal

FWIW I'm not totally convinced that the paper isn't also anecdotal. They selected for people who would agree to have their internet activity spied on in exchange for extra credit, and then from that group selected only for people using the internet -- not their computers, but the internet! -- in more than half the lectures. And did all of this in a large enrollment undergraduate gen ed intro course with lectures that lasted two hours.

is there really any reason to expect the students who didn't take free points in exchange for privacy to outperform the observed group?

Sure, the results pertain more to excluding the internet from the classroom, but really that's just splitting hairs imo

That could depend on a two part hypothesis that I just came up with off the top of my head:

1) people who are more informed care more about privacy

2) you become more informed by being the type of person who seeks out and successfully obtains information and not being distracted

If 2) and 1) hold, your methodology will be biased to those liable to undertake distracting activities or be distracted. Furthermore, perhaps some would not even partake in the study because it's a distraction relative to why they're in the class in the first place.

Not saying that is demonstrable or true. Don't downvote the hypothetical messenger and all :p

Is there any reason we should be guessing at this when the experimenters could've chosen some other incentive (or none at all)?

And yes, I'd expect weaker students to be the more likely to spend their time / privacy on extra points.

The paper is entirely anecdotal. It's a small, self-selected group who also selected when they would be tracked. I do believe that the group's worse performance was related to their laptop usage, though. So a third variable, perhaps a quality of the students, caused them to do the observed behavior (have a laptop, sign up, log into the process and then) and do worse in their courses.

Finally, doing slightly worse on two hour gen eds is also not the same thing as doing worse in general. Those classes are ones students are forced to take, often with professors who are forced to teach them. I know my gen eds were lower quality classes, with more people, less participation, worse teaching, and worse assignments.

These processes are called a self-selection bias and a sampling bias. Please don't use the word "anecdotal" in such contexts.

Please don't tell someone what words they are allowed to use in what contexts.

1. "Please don't" is hardly offensive or authoritative. 2. If you disagree, you were laughably hypocritical in your post.

Please don't define what phrases are "offensive" or "authoritative" in a conversation, especially after those phrases have been used. Context will have already defined them for you.

The use of "anecdotal" here is a rhetorical device, mirroring parent's language to emphasize that strongly biased data isn't necessarily any more valuable than mere anecdote. This is a conversation, not a peer review.

>I opened up a word processor, focused my eyes on the professor's slides or visual aids, and typed everything I saw

There are studies that show that verbatim computer note taking is actually inferior to remembering the lecture content:

A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...

I'd really like to see a comparison of written notes on a laptop vs paper. Many schools are moving towards tablet PC devices to enable handwritten notes on the computer.

I did this study! In med school I did a survey of my class. I asked them to estimate how many hours they spent engaged in various study behaviors, and asked as one question, what quintile of the class they thought they stood in. Allowing for the Duning-Kruger effect, taking notes by hand was one of the top three things you could do (out of about 30), taking no notes had no effect, and taking notes with a laptop was the single worst idea you could have. N = 84 of 150.

What I meant was taking notes "by hand" on a computer using a stylus.

Sounds like a neat study - would you be willing to share your write-up?

Maybe they aren't as effective as hand written notes. but in my case Neatly typed, well organized notes using OneNote 2003 were more effective than hastily hand written mostly illegible notes.

The reason hand written notes are more effective is that it helps towards better learning just by writing the thing down and slowing it to a pace where your mind can make memories. Even if afterwards the notes are completely illegible, I would argue it's more effective than typed notes.

Wouldn't that only be effective insofar as initial recall goes? If the handwriting is illegible and you don't remember something, then you've missed out on everything that you can't remember. Digital notes may make you miss more on the first pass, but at least you'll have material to study.

75% of the value of notes is it helps me keep focused. My mind wants to wander away ("that reminds me of...") - 10 minutes latter I realize I've been daydreaming about some camping trip years ago and I have no idea what the lecture is about anymore. Taking notes helps me focus by giving me a goal: what about the lecture is important enough that I want to write it down. Sometimes I review my notes latter, but generally I find it isn't worth the time.

Slowing down to a pace comfortable for you means, at least in my classes, that you'll miss the next thing in the presentation. Notes are not for immediate learning, they're for assisting in learning later on. As an physics engineering student, I take notes with a combination of LaTeX and OneNote on my Surface 3.

Additional benefits by using a laptop to take notes is that they are searchable, archived and accessible for however long you like, and sharable between classmates. Hand written notes can obviously be shared and archived as well, but nowhere near as easily.

>> Slowing down to a pace comfortable for you means, at least in my classes, that you'll miss the next thing in the presentation.

That's exactly the point: you get a free exercise in divided attention, plus you are forced to digest your notes to only essentials, not full transcript of the lecture. That process is what makes handwritten notes superior - it forces you to focus and think, not just mindlessly type.

And for things that you didn't have time to note you still have a textbook. Handwritten notes are just outline, a basis to build upon.

Can you really write LaTeX equations fast enough to keep up with the lecture? I'm impressed.

When I was in school I was often hard pressed to keep up with simple paper and pencil.

Seems like an exaggeration. I really doubt there's anyone taking realtime notes in LaTeX.

It's totally doable. I type fast and know my LaTeX. Only time I feel like I'm at a significant disadvantage is when new symbols are introduced that I have to look up.

Only math is done in LaTeX, for clarification. They're rendered as images and imported into OneNote (via EqualX, if anyone's looking to do the same).

I don't see the point in making notes that fancy. Writing them down (or typing them) is primarily just an aid to remember the content.

If you're at a computer looking for a reference then there are better sources available than hastily typed notes.

You're only supposed to write 20% of the time (so, like 5% of the material) when you hand-write notes.

This doesn't work well in certain classes (e.g. math classes where you have to copy every word of a proof and analyze it later).

Being a human photocopier in maths/physics lectures was the worst thing about university, when you're 6 blackboards behind. That was in 1999, hopefully it's changed now.

> I take notes with a combination of LaTeX and OneNote on my Surface 3

I wonder how you do that - I can't imagine I would be able to make notes in LaTeX in real-time. To me, paper is just faster than any computer solution. Also sometimes you need to draw a diagram or arrow in the notes.

> Slowing down to a pace comfortable for you means, at least in my classes, that you'll miss the next thing in the presentation.

I was thinking about this recently. I teach (assembly programming) in our company using slideshow. But most teachers at my university used blackboard (for math). I am beginning to think that using blackboard is better, despite more effort, because it also forces the teacher to slow down.

One of my favorite electrical engineering professors gave incredibly well-planned lectures via overhead transparencies. He was quick to adjust the pace of an individual lecture to the audience, but also provided his presentations as PDF downloads. His presentations were supplemental to the textbooks, but served as amazing base notes. In his classes, I found myself writing prompts for further review and stray observations, rather than attempting to summarize as the lecture progressed.

Having worked on online learning applications since then, I still think that his was the best system for transferring complex knowledge in a classroom setting.

An example PDF that I found through a quick Google search: http://www.ittc.ku.edu/~jstiles/312/handouts/312_Introductio...

I've always wondered about this.

What makes handwriting different from typing in terms of memory recall, other than the fact that most, if not everyone, have written with pen and paper for far longer than typing?

There have been studies done with children that come to the same conclusion. For some reason, writing with pen and paper is better for recall. I don't know why, though.

Greater number of variables employed in creation. Any one of which could be a hook to remember by (location on page, made a particularly nice letter, where my pencil broke, after the smudge, before/after my hand started to cramp).

Typing vs handwriting is like finding the right door in an unnumbered hotel vs a picturesque medieval town

>Any one of which could be a hook to remember by (location on page, made a particularly nice letter, where my pencil broke, after the smudge, before/after my hand started to cramp).

I still don't get how that'd be any different. Location on a page corresponds with which notebook and section I may have taken notes down in OneNote, especially since you can also position notes all over the page.

All kinds of factors fit both of the media, IMO.

In my experience it's everything--the scratchy pencil sensation dragging across the paper, cedar wood smell, that little curve at the end of letter e, ease of annotations anywhere on the paper, drawing arrows to connect pages because it doesn't fit in one page...

A good compromise imo is to type them out in class and hand write them later.

I don't disagree that there are pros to hand writing notes. However There are other ways to build those connections in your mind.

I spent my first year and a half of college at a community college. They arent exactly known for their academic rigor. However first semester I took World History 1. There were only like 3 tests and 5 Quizzes that made up our grade. The tests were not multiple choice or fill in the blank like some professors might do. They were several short essay questions and a long form essay. You would have a choice of like 6 short essay questions which you had to pick 3 to answer. and then had a choice of 3 long essay topics from which we had to pick one.

The Professor about 2 weeks prior to the exams gave us a handout of 12 short essay questions and 6 long essay questions. He randomized the questions that were on the test so that while we knew what questions were possibly going to be on the test we did not know which ones would. He also expected us to know both the facts such as people, places, dates and events. but also the concepts. If you only got the concepts but did not know the factual material you were in trouble and vice versa.

I took all my notes in that class on a laptop using OneNote 2003 (It came out right at the start of my first semester in college.)

As the semester went on I got into the habit of skimming over my previous notes for that class and adding annotations about connections to other concepts and facts in the class. I also would review my notes at the end of the day while it was still fresh in my mind, but had taken some time to digest the material to add things that I missed or make my notes more clear.

When it came time to start preparing for the tests the first thing I did was take my notes, create a new section in my notebook just for that test. I took all my notes for that test and instead of organizing them by lecture, i condensed them into a more concise and coherent form that linked all the different concepts and facts together. I also outlined my strategy for each question. Then I printed it out and put it in a ring binder, as I refined my notes, I printed out new copies for the binder. I probably printed about 200 pages for each test.

Maybe Writing them out would have been more effective for memorization in most cases. But to me there was simply too much information to memorize in one pass. and Wrot memorization was not going to cut in this class. I also think the fact that I was constantly working with those notes and synthesizing new material from them, replaced alot of the feedback loop of writing it all out by hand.

I learned a lot of history in that class. But more importantly I learned how to interpret requirements, sift through large amounts of information, making connections between that information and developing strategies to accomplish a goal.

IMO it's important to distinguish between two kinds of note-taking.

The first kind are notes that you take because the process helps memorize in that moment. The writing is a tool to help you manipulate and focus the idea in your head. The output is much less important than the experience. These are the records that -- in practice -- you will seldom go back to read.

The second kind are notes you take because you can't memorize them right now and plan to review or reuse them later in some way. When taking notes this way, you mentally avoid thinking too hard about what the note means, in order to copy it faithfully.

Personally, I think handwriting works better for the write-only notes, while typing (and copy-pasting, and links, etc.) are great for notes that are going to be reused later.

>There are studies that show that verbatim computer note taking is actually inferior to remembering the lecture content:

I think people should be careful when looking at such things. 'There are studies' is not really the same as 'there is scientific consensus with demonstrated repeatability'. Ultimately though, you can't tell someone they're doing it wrong when they're successful, so YMMV.

Also a generalized statistical result doesn't really apply to an individual. Maybe verbatim note taking is inferior for 98% of people. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it if it works for you.

It's almost as if people can live their own lives and figure out if note taking on a computer works or doesn't for them?

That's a pretty unrealistic experiment, though.

The full study is paywalled, but based on the SA article it had students take notes two ways, then tested them on retention and synthesis later - without any secondary study. That's not necessarily a good mirror for actual long-running courses.

I used both approaches in college. Longhand note-taking was vastly better for my retention of material, I don't dispute that. But computer transcription let me get everything, and sometimes that mattered more. I had to study more outside class when I typed, but I was aware of that and it was a worthwhile tradeoff for completeness.

Professors are not necessarily good, or even tolerable, at supporting effective learning strategies. They can click through dense Powerpoint slides faster than I can type or write. And they can refuse to release those slides, then test on material from them not available elsewhere. If writing means I get 60% and retain it, while typing means I get 90% and have to study further, typing wins without question.

More broadly, my take would be: many real classrooms are vastly less student-friendly than your average study environment. That changes what works.

I took a two pass approach: hand written notes (I can write equations faster than I can LaTeX them) and then follow up by writing a LaTeX document for each lecture. I had a rule that I wasn't allowed to continue typing up until I understood how each step in the derivation was made. If it was non-obvious, I'd write textbook-style comments around things to explain how to get from line to the next.

Worked pretty well for most courses and meant I had explanations of everything come revise time. The only problem is it took about 4 years to really nail down the routine and by the time I had it perfect (I really wish I'd done it in first year), it was time to leave. Such is life.

You typeset all your lecture notes? I'm not sure this would benefit a student. Something I wish I did when I was in school is download the solutions manuals and work problems. I considered that cheating when I was in school but now I think it is just being time effective.

Horses for courses, as it were. I both wrote (in lecture) and typeset (at home). I spent a lot of time trying to optimise the revision process. All I can say is that it worked for me and I got a good grade.

Typesetting gave me a set of digital, neat lectures notes (goodbye folders of paper). I also understood everything better because I'd read through it twice. Most importantly it was good bargaining material for skipping lectures and getting notes from other people.

I also flash-carded all my lectures in 3rd/4th year which undoubtedly bumped my grade up. The key was timing it so your peak recall was at the exam, given the volume of information. It was useless for long term memory though.

"You typeset all your lecture notes? I'm not sure this would benefit a student."

The poster is doing this in addition to actually writing the notes - I've done something similar. Sometimes I take the initial notes on a computer. Later I hand-write them once or twice. Once immediately and once later on to narrow focus down on things I was having more trouble remembering.

The biggest benefit is that such a system gives some repetition. For me, this repetition is superior to only reading notes because I wind up working with the information physically as it changes form. I do get better results in some subjects if I work plenty of problems in addition to this - for example, foreign/second language and maths.

The only times I've found this sort of thing generally unhelpful is with things like music, art, and physical education/sports. These rely on a lot of muscle memory, and it is hard to get by writing.

The common thread in all of these is practice and review. The main difference is in the way they are carried out.

Agreed on the repetition. I tried using my Powerbook G3 in class, and there was no way to keep up. I would carry a colored folder for each subject, each with its own yellow note pad, for quickly taking down lectures. I never went digital, but would meticulously transfer the notes into those green, gridded, National 33-209 spiral notebooks :) A few years ago I bought a couple 33-209s on Amazon and was really disappointed to find the quality had taken a nose dive. Those were a darn good spiral notebook!

Apparently writing in cursive is superior to non-cursive when it comes to remembering what you wrote down too. That being said I take notes on my laptop all the time just because I like having everything stored in one place, backed up, organized, etc..

I believe that is true, but it is also faster to type than write so if you type twice as fast but remember 50% less it's a wash.

> not for social media distractions

But that is the main issue, isn't it? The social media machine with its hunger for "eyeballs" and its myriad of notifications and popups. Shallow entertainment in the form of Youtube videos, always just one click away. Heck, even hypertext with its going-off-on-a-tangent links to external documents.

If you really want to do a focused, deep study of something, turn off the Internet.

Or just log out of any social media. No need to turn off the internet.

Or simply exercise some self-control, and do not visit social media while you are working, studying, or otherwise occupied.

If you hate what you're doing so much, that you have to do something so unhealthy as locking yourself in isolation to perform the task, you probably shouldn't do it. Listen to yourself, and go do what you want to do instead.

This is a naive and harmful view of self-control.

You can love something to pieces, yet still find yourself unable to do it, merely because the draw of the internet is too powerful. We are not optimized to deal with the stimulus of the internet. I have found that unfettered access to it is reducing life quality, and I'm not waiting for twenty double-blind peer-reviewed studies to show this obvious reality.

It is much healthier to admit that we have limits, that we are fallible in the face of such overwhelming pleasure, and accept the approach of physically distancing ourselves from the internet.

By this logic, all humans are incapable of performing any task due to the existence of the internet. Some yearn for a simpler time, when all humans were incapable of performing any task due to the existence of television, radio, books, friends, meteorology, the opposite sex, or beer.

But if you would rather be distracted by trees and bugs, remarkable vistas and epic adventures, feel free to continue using this narrative to get what you want.

Isn't that merely the slippery slope fallacy?

Firstly, the internet does not permanently and completely eliminate our agency, it reduces our agency due to the fallible nature of self-control.

Secondly, all of the other activities you listed do not reduce our agency to the extent that the internet does. Some things are more addictive than others. To claim that meteorology and the internet have the same risk to our agency is absolutely absurd.

Thirdly, establishing distance from the internet (e.g. not involving computers when they aren't necessary, using the computer at the library instead of keeping one at home, adding restrictions to a smartphone or using a dumbphone) is not the same as giving it up altogether.

> Isn't that merely the slippery slope fallacy?

You're correct, you did present a slippery slope.

> Firstly, the internet does not permanently and completely eliminate our agency...

> You can love something to pieces, yet still find yourself unable to do it, merely because the draw of the internet is too powerful.

Which is it? Is the draw of the internet simply too powerful to ignore? Or is it possible to partially ignore this distraction?

> Secondly, all of the other activities you listed do not reduce our agency to the extent that the internet does.

Internet access reduces your agency? Sorry to hear that. Internet access increases my agency.

> Thirdly, establishing distance from the internet (e.g. not involving computers when they aren't necessary, using the computer at the library instead of keeping one at home, adding restrictions to a smartphone or using a dumbphone) is not the same as giving it up altogether.

> We are not optimized to deal with the stimulus of the internet.

You're excusing convenience. If the internet is so harmful, why risk any contact? And are all parts of the internet equally harmful?

Back to the original point, if you don't want to use the internet, then don't. But if you don't want to use the internet, why are you using it to tell other people that you don't want to use it?

Self-control is cognitively expensive. Our short-term impulses rarely align with our long-term goals. There's a surprisingly small intersection between the set of things that feel good right now and the set of things that contribute to a happy and fulfilled life.

Which is why it's important to recognize those intersections, see them coming before they arrive, and act when the time is right. A time for everything, and everything in its own time.

Construct safe spaces for yourself, that always provide what feels good to you, but will only let you contribute to your own (and other people's) long life and prosperity.

On the other hand, it is cool when people who are not perfect and does not have iron super awesome self control get advice how to max life. The underlying idea that non perfect people should just forget it is wrong.

Moreover, school has also classes one hates and student need to finish those too. They don't cancel out entertaining classes.

If you don't want to use the internet, then don't. Feel free to use other tools to help yourself not use that tool.

Why not take notes on paper instead?

I took a class that basically covered a lot of papers. The lecturer spoke at a mile a minute and it was nigh impossible to write all the important info by hand and the really important parts are not on the slides. Typing on a computer allowed me to write all the juicy bits that made studying a breeze.

I thought the main benefit of taking notes on paper was that it forced you to think and to summarize instead of transcribe.

Exactly. Scientific American also highlighted a study of precisely that issue: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...

Speaking of inaccurate headlines: I know I was better off with a TI-85 in math class, so students don't necessarily have a problem with a computing device itself in a classroom environment as the headline would suggest.

You'd probably be better off with something like a casio fx-115es plus (non graphing scientific calculator). For example: You'd have to remember your integration tables better on not rely on the graphing functions to pull you out of the bog.

+1 I feel in the current education environment the value of memorization is undervalued. There's a reason top athletes practice their fundamental movements. Having muscle (brain?) memory of fundamentals allows for fluid, creative flow without interruption to look up things.

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