"… Now there is an answer, thanks to a big, new experiment from economists at West Point, who randomly banned computers from some sections of a popular economics course this past year at the military academy. One-third of the sections could use laptops or tablets to take notes during lecture; one-third could use tablets, but only to look at class materials; and one-third were prohibited from using any technology.
Unsurprisingly, the students who were allowed to use laptops — and 80 percent of them did — scored worse on the final exam. What’s interesting is that the smartest students seemed to be harmed the most." …
Just showed this to my son who is headed to Brown this fall. I wasn’t surprised at the data, but wondered if he was. He’s in an IB program and says he’s never used his laptop to take notes in class. Uses it to work on projects if time allows. Glad to hear he isn’t in the habit of being online during class.
I’m a PhD student and still use my laptops to take notes. There are very, very few classes where I ever used hand notes. I was way more likely to be distracted by doodling…
These types of sweeping statements bore me. Figure out your best method of taking notes and do that. By the time you’re in college, you should really know your best methods for studying IMO. (Yes, I realize some people breeze through high school and never learn how to take notes. You still need to do something before college to figure out how you study best or you’re not going to succeed with or without the laptop.)
Results that are pretty much statistically insignificant in a very limited study (one class, one professor, one specific set of conditions, questionable effect of bias of experimental setup). Nothing to see here, move along.
First off, this article immediately reminded me of John Oliver’s recent piece (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw) [Warning: bad language!] on how the media reports “studies” that are pretty much meaningless (or worse).
Second it REALLY bugs me that students are called “smarter” because they had higher ACT scores. The ACT is not an intelligence test. It is an achievement test intended to measure college readiness. And the same thing goes for GPA’s – a higher GPA is not a measure of intelligence.
Such a badly written article that I consider anything in it meaningless.