According to a research study, laptop and tablet users tended to transcribe the lectures rather than absorb key points.

Nancy Pearcey, Professor & Scholar in Residence at Houston Christian University told her X followers earlier this week,

I’ve banned laptops and tablets from my classroom.

Studies show that you learn better when you take notes by hand instead of using your laptop:

“Students who used longhand remembered more and had a deeper understanding of the material.”

Nancy Pearcey, December 4, 2024

In the last line, Pearcey is referring to an article by Cindi May in Scientific American which advises,

New research by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer demonstrates that students who write out their notes on paper actually learn more. Across three experiments, Mueller and Oppenheimer had students take notes in a classroom setting and then tested students on their memory for factual detail, their conceptual understanding of the material, and their ability to synthesize and generalize the information. Half of the students were instructed to take notes with a laptop, and the other half were instructed to write the notes out by hand. As in other studies, students who used laptops took more notes. In each study, however, those who wrote out their notes by hand had a stronger conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material than those who used took notes with their laptops.

“A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop,” June 3, 2014

The paper is here. From the Abstract: “We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning.”

Perhaps some people hope that chatbots will rescue them by summarizing, which they could do themselves if they just listened for key points instead of transcribing.

Pearcey is the author of Total Truth, Love Thy Body, and The Toxic War on Masculinity.