The Scientific Case For Doodling While Taking Notes

By Rachel S. Smith

Two researchers at Princeton University and the University of California, Los Angeles have found that writing notes longhand is more effective for understanding and retention than typing notes on a computer. That’s true even though students who take notes on their computers tend to get a lot more down on the page than those who make handwritten notes. Students who took notes longhand did better when tested on conceptual understanding and recall of what they had learned, even when everyone was allowed to study from their notes before being tested.

Interestingly, the researchers found that the typed notes often repeated the professor’s lecture word-for-word, while the longhand notes included more of the students’ own phrasing. Since it isn’t possible to capture everything when writing longhand, students tend to listen, digest, and summarize. The researchers surmise that the act of choosing what to write, and then physically writing it out by hand, helps learners process and reframe the content, giving them an edge in conceptual understanding and recall.

Another study conducted at the University of Waterloo found that people who create simple, quick drawings are better able to remember a list of words than people who simply write words down, look at pictures of the words, or create a list of characteristics related to the words. Interestingly, the quality of the drawings was not important. Creating a four-second drawing was enough to help retention. This suggests that we needn’t consider ourselves artistic geniuses in order to benefit from drawing in class.

Visual note-taking blends these two approaches. By using a combination of words and quick images, the note-taker listens, digests, and captures on paper the essence of what has been heard. If you’re a teacher or a parent of a student who likes to doodle, try introducing them to visual note-taking and see what happens. This is not about learning styles—a controversial concept that may or may not have any factual basis. Visual note-taking is about how people generally listen, take notes, and recall information.

Note: Highlighted text is a key point!

Original article source: https://qz.com/676557/the-scientific-case-for-doodling-while-taking-notes/