Abstract
Background:
Many students use laptops in the classroom to take notes; however, even when laptops are used for the sole purpose of taking notes they can negatively impact academic performance.
Objective:
The current study examined state-dependent effects, and the potential for a match in note taking and quiz taking methods to improve quiz performance.
Method:
Participants were placed into a congruent (take notes by hand and complete the quiz by hand or take notes using a laptop and complete an online quiz) or an incongruent condition (take notes by hand and take an online quiz or take notes using a laptop and complete the quiz by hand).
Results:
The results revealed that participants who took notes by hand performed better on the quiz overall, and better on conceptual questions, then students who took notes using a laptop. We failed to find evidence for state-dependent effects.
Conclusions:
The current study suggests that taking notes by hand may improve how students encode material, and result in higher quality external storage used by students when studying for quizzes.
Teaching Implications:
Reinforcing the notion that taking notes by hand may benefit quiz performance for lecture-style information and could improve student performance in class.
Recent studies have found that 72% (Patterson & Patterson, 2017) to 79% (Carter et al., 2017) of students report using laptops in the classroom. Although some studies have described the benefits of incorporating this technology in the classroom (e.g., Bui et al., 2013; Gulek & Demirtas, 2005), such as taking more organized and comprehensive notes, other work has highlighted the negative impact that laptop use has on academic performance (e.g., Fried, 2007; Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014; Patterson & Patterson, 2017). For example, Patterson and Patterson (2017) examined laptop use at a private liberal arts college in which teachers required laptops for class, allowed laptops in class, or prohibited laptops in class. Computer use in the classroom was associated with poor academic performance, such as lower course grades and a lower grade point average (GPA). Similarly, Fried (2007) found that laptop use is distracting resulting in reduced attention during class and an increase in confusion regarding the material. The current study will focus on the relationship between using a laptop for note-taking purposes and quiz performance.
Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) compared the effectiveness of taking notes on a computer to that of taking notes by hand. In order to assess this relationship, participants watched one of five 15 minute TED talks and took notes either by hand or on a computer. Participants then completed an assessment of factual and conceptual questions. Prior research has described factual questions as inquiries that could be answered by taking information directly from the TED talk, while conceptual questions ask one to apply lessons from the video to prior knowledge or a new situation (Kornmann et al., 2016; O’Connor & Klein, 2004). Individuals who took notes by hand were found to perform better on conceptual questions than individuals who took notes on a computer, but performance on factual questions did not significantly differ between these two groups (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014).
Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) also explored the impact of word count and verbatim content overlap on these results. In this way, those who took notes by hand were determined to have recorded fewer words but also take notes that contained less verbatim overlap. Similarly, the researchers found that note quantity was directly related to one’s score, while verbatim overlap between one’s notes and the video was inversely related to performance. In Experiment 2, when participants were asked not to take verbatim notes on the computer in an intervention condition, their scores did not significantly differ from those of individuals who took notes on a computer without the verbal intervention. On the other hand, those who took notes by hand continued to perform significantly better on conceptual questions than individuals in both of the computer groups. The intervention was also found to be ineffective at reducing the amount of verbatim overlap that occurred in participant notes. In Experiment 3, participants listened to a 7 minute prose passage while taking notes by hand or on a computer. One week later, some individuals were given the opportunity to study their notes for 10 minutes, while others immediately completed an assessment of factual and conceptual questions. Individuals who took notes by hand and studied outperformed those who took notes on a computer and studied. Moreover, there was no significant difference in performance between the two groups that did not study, and studying was consistently associated with better performance (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014). A corrigendum to the original Muller and Oppenheimer (2014) article was published in 2018 (Muller & Oppenheimer, 2018); however, the original findings did not change. Aspects of this methodology were replicated in the current study. For instance, TED talks of approximately 15 minutes were presented, and participants were given 10 minutes to study their notes prior to completing an assessment of factual and conceptual questions.
Morehead et al. (2019a) attempted to replicate Muller and Oppenheimer’s (2014) first two studies, using the same lectures and test questions with a few minor adjustments: (1) only a subset of the lectures were used in Experiment 2 and (2) a few more questions were added to the test to equate the number of points that could be earned for each test. They also extended Muller and Oppenheimer’s (2014) work by incorporating eWriters for students to take notes, examined immediate and delayed test performance, and computed analyses examining individual differences in note-taking.
In Experiment 1, participants who took notes by hand obtained a higher score on both the factual and conceptual questions; however, the difference was only significant for the factual questions. This effect is in the opposite direction of the results reported by Muller and Oppenheimer (2014). Consistent with Muller and Oppenheimer (2014), participants who used a laptop to take notes produced more words and had greater verbatim overlap with the lecture. There was no difference in word count and verbatim overlap for those who took notes by hand compared to those who used an eWriter (Morehead et al., 2019a). The results for Experiment 2 failed to replicate Muller and Oppenheimer (2014). There was no difference in factual test performance and conceptual test performance between the longhand groups (notes by hand or eWriter) and the laptop group when tested immediately after viewing the lecture (Morehead et al., 2019a). In addition, an added control group who did not take notes performed as well as the note-taking groups, suggesting that taking notes may not benefit the encoding stage, or how information is processed. For the delayed test condition, test performance did not differ between the groups taking notes using pen and paper, an eWriter, or a laptop (Morehead et al., 2019a).
Morehead et al. (2019a) suggest that the results of Muller and Oppenheimer should be interpreted using some caution. Morehead et al. (2019a) did find that taking notes longhand improved performance on an immediate test, but only for factual questions, not conceptual questions. The opposite pattern of results was reported by Muller and Oppenheimer (2014). In addition, the effect sizes for such differences were small. As will be discussed below, there is also evidence that taking notes using a computer may result in better performance than taking notes by hand (see Bui et al., 2013).
Duran and Frederick (2013) examined the difference in comprehension ability between students who typed notes and students who wrote their notes by hand. If the participants had a laptop on them, they were asked to type their notes, but everyone else was asked to take notes by hand while they watched a documentary together. Each participant submitted their notes and took a multiple choice test on the material. Results indicated that participants not only preferred to take notes by hand, but they also scored better on the test compared to those who typed their notes on a laptop.
Bui et al. (2013) examined whether taking notes on a computer resulted in better test performance, and whether taking organized lecture notes or transcribing notes influenced test scores. Participants either took notes by hand or on a computer. In addition, they were encouraged to take organized lecture notes or to transcribe the lecture. This created four groups. Everyone was taught how to take notes in the specific way that was assigned to them (e.g., handwritten, organized lecture notes) and informed that they would be tested on the lecture material. The participants completed a reading span task to test the size of their working memory span, and a lexical decision task in order to test processing speed. Participants listened to an audible lecture and then took free recall and short answer tests on the information they had just learned. Participants who transcribed notes on the computer performed better on the free recall questions than people who took organized notes on the computer. This was not the case for the handwritten conditions, most likely because transcribing is easier on a computer since typing is faster than writing by hand. Participants who took notes on a computer performed better on the short answer questions than those who took notes by hand. In the computer note taking conditions, participants who took transcribed notes performed better than those who took organized notes. The researchers believe that people performed better when taking notes on a computer because typing allows people to take more notes and get more information down compared to the slow process of writing where not as much information can be recorded.
The results of Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) in which longhand notes improved performance, conflict with the findings of Bui et al. (2013) during which those who took notes on a computer recalled more information than those who took notes by hand. According to the encoding specificity principle, the context of encoding (e.g. environmental cues or words in the surrounding area) is stored alongside learned information in a way that enables this environmental material to later serve as a retrieval cue (Bloch & Vakil, 2017; Tulving & Thomson, 1973). As a result, individuals who complete an assessment under conditions that match the initial learning environment recall more information than those who complete learning and testing under differing conditions (Tulving & Thomson, 1973). Therefore, if one’s mode of note taking (i.e. by hand or on a computer) is among the contextual information that is stored at the time of learning, then completing the test in the same way may lead to better performance. This idea is consistent with the results of Bui et al. (2013) because the assessments were completed on computers, and individuals who took notes on a computer demonstrated better performance than those who took notes by hand. This concept was further explored by Barrett et al. (2014).
The research of Barrett et al. (2014) assessed whether congruent note and test taking modes could improve test performance. This was examined by asking participants to watch a 15 minute lecture about writing term papers in APA style while taking notes either by hand or on a computer. After collecting these notes, all participants were given a test consisting of free-response questions based on the lecture material either on a computer or by hand. This resulted in two congruent conditions: (1) individuals who took their notes and test by hand and (2) individuals who completed their notes and assessment on a computer. Relatedly, there were two incongruent conditions: (1) taking notes by hand then completing the test on a computer and (2) recording notes on a computer then filling out the assessment by hand. Individuals in congruent conditions performed better on assessments than individuals in incongruent conditions, supporting the idea of note taking mode as contextual information that may be stored and later used to facilitate memory retrieval (Barrett et al., 2014).
The current study aimed to assess how test performance is impacted by congruency between mode of note taking and mode of test taking. We aimed to replicate and expand the work of Barrett et al. (2014) by testing whether their findings remain consistent when participants are tested following a delay and are provided the opportunity to study their notes. Furthermore, we implemented both factual and conceptual questions for a different type of lecture material. The findings of Barrett et al. (2014) demonstrated that individuals with congruent note taking and testing modes performed better on assessments than individuals who had incongruent note taking and testing modes. In addition, the findings of Bui et al. (2013) appear to reinforce this concept because participants completed their assessments on a computer, and those who took notes on a computer performed better than those who took notes by hand. As a result, it is hypothesized that note taking mode is stored as part of one’s learning environment and can thus be reinstated during the quiz resulting in better test performance. In this way, it is predicted that individuals who are in congruent conditions will score higher than individuals in incongruent conditions.
Method
Participants
Eighty undergraduate students from Rochester Institute of Technology consented to participate in the current study in exchange for research credit in their Psychology course. Participants included 44 females and 36 males. The age of participants ranged from 18 to 22 with a mean age of 19.14 (SD = 1.06). The participants were asked to report the main method they use to take notes in their classes. Forty-two participants (52.5%) reported taking notes by hand, 29 (36.25%) reported taking notes by hand in some classes and using a laptop in others, and nine participants (11.25%) reported using only a laptop to take notes. Participants were assigned to one of four conditions: (1) take notes by hand and complete the quiz by hand (congruent), (2) take notes by hand and complete the quiz using a laptop (incongruent), (3) take notes using a laptop and take the quiz using a laptop (congruent), or (4) take notes using a laptop and take the quiz by hand (incongruent).
Materials
Demographic sheet 1
On the first day, participants were presented with Demographic Sheet 1, which included open-ended inquiries of age, gender, ethnicity, and major. This form additionally included both multiple choice and open-ended questions regarding phone and online distractions that one experienced during the presentation (e.g., “Did you go on social media, email, or other unrelated websites during the presentation?”).
TED talk presentations
Four TED Talks of about 15 minutes in length were selected as learning materials for participants in this study. These TED Talks discussed psychological research and constructs that the participants were unlikely to have encountered previously. The topics included why we laugh, the relationship between frustration and creativity, stress and behavior, and the feeling of regret. As part of the first day, each group of one to three participants took notes on one of these videos as it was projected onto white boards located at the front and right side of the room.
Computers
Dell Latitude E5470 laptops with screen dimensions of 13.2″ × 9.1″ were used by participants in all computer conditions.
Memory assessments
During the second day, participants were given an assessment corresponding to the viewed TED Talk. These tests were formatted with the TED Talk title and link at the top of the page followed by 10 open ended questions. Of these questions, five were conceptual and five were factual as defined by Kornmann et al. (2016) as well as O’Connor and Klein (2004). During scoring, factual questions were marked as either right (1 point) or wrong (0 points), while conceptual questions were scored on a graded scale depending on the number of components answered correctly within the question.
Demographic sheet 2
Another demographic sheet was completed on the second day. This survey involved multiple choice questions regarding participant note taking and testing conditions (i.e. by hand or computer) as well as their preferred note taking method and most frequently used note taking method (e.g., “How do you prefer to take notes?”). These items were followed by short answer questions of time spent distracted by technology during the study period (e.g., “How much time did you spend on social media, email, or other unrelated websites during the allotted study period?”).
Procedure
During the first day, participants entered a classroom and sat at desks that were arranged to resemble a traditional lecture course. On each participant’s desk, was an open laptop or a pen and paper, depending on whether they were in the laptop or hand note taking condition. All participants in a given trial period were assigned to the same note taking and test conditions.
After being seated, participants were asked to view one of four 15 minute TED Talks while taking notes in their assigned medium. Following the presentation, participants either submitted their online notes to an email made specifically for the purposes of this study, or they handed their notes directly to a researcher. Participants were then asked to complete Demographic Sheet 1.
Forty-eight hours after watching the TED talk and taking notes, participants arrived at the same classroom to take the quiz. At this time, participants sat at a desk with a computer if they had taken notes on a computer or at an empty desk if they had taken notes by hand. Notes were then passed back to participants who took notes by hand, and those who took notes online were asked to once again open their notes on the laptop. Following a 10 minute study period, participants were instructed to put away their notes. In incongruent testing conditions, participants either turned off their computers (i.e., notes on computer and test by hand condition) or were given a computer (i.e., notes by hand and test on computer condition). Those with a computer were asked to open the test online, and individuals taking the test by hand were provided with a printed assessment. Once these forms were collected, participants were given Demographic Sheet 2 to complete and submit.
Results
Four different TED talks were used in the current study. We ran a one-way ANOVA to determine if the information in each of the four videos was equally challenging. There were no significant differences based on video for the overall quiz score, F(3, 76) = 1.226, p > .05, score on the factual questions, F(3, 76) = 0.787, p > .05, or score on the conceptual questions, F(3, 76) = 2.418, p > .05.
A 2 (note-taking method: hand or laptop) × 2 (quiz method: hand or laptop) ANOVA was conducted to examine the overall quiz score. Results revealed a main effect of note-taking method, F(1, 76) = 8.659, p < .05,

Overall mean quiz score (out of 10) for the various note taking and quiz taking methods.
A 2 × 2 ANOVA was also computed for the factual questions and conceptual questions, separately. For the factual questions, students who took notes by hand (M = 4.15, SD = 0.83) performed the same as students who took notes using a laptop (M = 4.05, SD = 0.96), F(1, 76) = 0.250, p > .05. There was also no difference in score based on quiz method, F(1,76) = 1.56, p > .05, with the participants completing the quiz by hand (M = 4.23, SD = 0.82) scoring the same as participants completing the quiz using a laptop (M = 3.98, SD = 0.95). Finally, there was no interaction between the two variables, F(1, 76) = 0.56, p > .05 (see Figure 2). There was a difference on quiz performance for the conceptual questions. Participants who took notes by hand (M = 4.43, SD =0.88) outperformed students who took notes using a laptop (M = 3.59, SD = 1.31), F(1, 76) = 12.06, p < .05,

Mean quiz score for the factual questions (out of 5) for the various note taking and quiz taking methods.

Mean quiz score for the conceptual questions (out of 5) for the various note taking and quiz taking methods.
We also examined how many words participants included in their notes, when taking them by hand versus using a laptop. As expected, students who took notes by hand wrote down fewer words (M = 160.2, SD = 51.65) than those who used a laptop to take notes (M = 238.08, SD = 107.87), t(78) = 4.109, p < .05. To assess the verbatim overlap between the notes and the content of the videos, the number of words that matched verbatim in the participant’s notes, and the number of phrases with at least three words in a row that described a concept or idea from the video were coded. Results revealed that participants who took notes using a laptop included more words verbatim from the videos (M = 77.5, SD = 54.9) than those taking notes by hand (M = 47.8, SD = 24.3), t(78) = 3.10, p < .05. Participants taking notes using a laptop also included more verbatim phrases to describe various concepts (M = 13.1, SD = 7.90) than participants taking notes by hand (M = 7.03, SD = 3.24), t(78) = 4.38, p < .05.
Discussion
Taking notes by hand improved quiz performance in the current study. Participants performed better on both the conceptual questions, and the quiz overall when they took notes on the information by hand than when they used a laptop to take notes. These results replicate and extend the findings reported by Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) and Duran and Frederick (2013). Taking notes by hand benefited performance two days after recording the information when participants were allowed to study their notes for 10 minutes prior to the assessment. Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) found similar results when participants completed the assessment 30 minutes after taking notes (Experiment 1) and one week after taking notes, when given time to study (Experiment 3). Duran and Frederick (2013) also found a hand written advantage for a multiple choice test. Participants in the current study also performed better when taking the quiz by hand than when using a laptop. It could be that students have more practice at traditional pencil/pen and paper exams than online exams.
Surprisingly, we failed to find state-dependent effects in the current study. Barrett et al. (2014) reported better performance when the note-taking condition matched the quiz taking condition (hand-hand or laptop-laptop) than when the two conditions were incongruent (hand-laptop or laptop-hand). Reinstating the context at the time of the quiz did not improve performance for participants in the current study. Instead, we found better performance when students took notes by hand, regardless of the quiz condition. The discrepancy between the current work and Barret et al. (2014) may be a result several differences in the methodology between the two studies. First, the content of the lectures was different. Barrett et al. (2014) used a lecture focused on APA style and we used TED talks focusing on theoretical constructs. The type of lecture material, likely resulted in different types of questions for the assessment as well. Finally, Barrett et al. (2014) required participants to complete the quiz immediately after taking notes, while the quiz in the current study was given two days after learning the material, and after allowing students to study their notes for 10 minutes. Perhaps the contextual benefit from the match in the note taking and test taking conditions is only present immediately after learning, and not after a delay. Future work could investigate timing effects related to context reinstatement and assessing memory for course-related materials.
When students take notes by hand, they must place the information into their own words, rather than simply typing down the information in a verbatim manner. Consistent with this notion, participants in the taking notes by hand condition recorded fewer words than those in the laptop condition. They also showed less verbatim overlap than participants who took notes using a laptop. Thinking more carefully about the information to place it into your own words likely influences how the content for the lecture is encoded. Taking notes by hand is more likely to result in generative note taking, which involves summarizing and paraphrasing information, resulting in a deeper level of processing which benefits quiz performance (e.g., Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Kiewra, 1989). When students use a laptop to take notes, they tend to type the lecture verbatim, producing nongenerative notes, and this results in a shallower level of encoding, making it less likely to help students during the assessment phase (e.g., Craik & Lockhart, 1972). Participants in the current study who took notes using a laptop included more words verbatim, as well as verbatim phrases from the video in their notes.
Kiewra and colleagues (Kiewra et al., 1988, 1989) have examined how both the encoding function and storage function of note taking impact quiz performance. As in the current study, students who take notes during one session and review those same notes during another session, experience the benefits of both encoding and storage, known as the “encoding-plus-storage function” (Kiewra et al., 1989, p. 217). Kiewra et al. (1989) required students to take notes on one occasion and then review those notes prior to taking a quiz (encoding-plus-storage), take notes on both occasions prior to taking a quiz (encoding only), or borrow and review notes prior to taking the quiz (external-storage only). Kiewra et al. (1989) were also interested in investigating the impact of three different note taking formats: (1) conventional note taking, (2) taking notes using a skeletal outline, or (3) taking notes when given a two-dimensional table with the main topics in the vertical headings and the subtopics for in the horizontal headings (a matrix format). In Experiment 1, using a lecture format, the encoding-plus-storage group outperformed the encoding only and external-storage only groups on recall and factual recognition questions. There was no benefit for the encoding-plus-storage group for the more conceptual questions that required synthesis or application of the material. In addition, participants using the skeletal outline and matrix format used fewer words to record an idea, but students using all three note taking formats performed equally well on the quiz for the lecture material. In the current study, participants reviewed their own notes, so all participants should have benefited from both the encoding and storage function of note taking. The current results suggest that studying notes that are more generative in nature (as a result of taking notes by hand) benefits quiz performance. Future research could examine the two functions of note-taking using hand written and computer generated notes implementing methodology similar to Kiewra et al. (1989), as well as examine potential differences for the various note taking formats when taking notes by hand versus using a laptop.
Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) argued that using a laptop to take notes in class affects academic performance even when the laptop is used as intended, and this was confirmed in the present study. Participants in the current study were asked to report any distractions they experienced during the note taking session. All of the participants reported that they did not use social media while taking notes, and only one of the 80 participants reported using their phone (for 2 minutes) during the note taking phase of the study. Participants were not distracted during the TED talks, and were engaged in taking notes. This suggests that even when students are using laptops for the intended purpose of taking notes, they still perform more poorly on assessments of the lecture material. The inclusion of a congruent laptop note taking and quiz taking condition did not result in better performance, suggesting that the generative process of taking notes by hand results in superior encoding of the material and higher quality external storage which translates to higher scores on conceptual questions on assessments.
It is important to point out that the results of the current study should not be interpreted as a general endorsement of the superiority of taking notes by hand. As suggested by Morehead et al. (2019a) it is important to consider the “constraints of generality” of the research examining this issue. To this end, we acknowledge some limitations of the current work. First, we selected multiple TED Talks for the current study to be consistent with Muller and Oppenheimer (2014). We conducted post-hoc analyses to compare performance on the quizzes for the four different videos used; however, it is important to note that we did not pilot test these videos to ensure that they were equal in difficulty. Using four different videos focused on different psychological constructs could have introduced error variance into our analyses. Moving forward, it would be useful to test the material for the quizzes apriori.
Second, participants in the current study were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. We did not control for one’s typical modality of note-taking (e.g., by hand or using a laptop). If a participant was assigned to a modality that was unfamiliar to them, this could have negatively impacted their ability to take notes effectively, in turn reducing their score on the quiz. In the current study, only nine participants reported always using a laptop to take all of their class notes, six of these participants were assigned to the laptop note-taking condition and three were assigned to the hand-taking note condition. The note-taking preferences in the current study are similar to those reported by Morehead et al. (2019b). Morehead et al. (2019b) reported that 96% of students take notes for in-person classes, and that the majority of these students reported taking longhand notes using a notebook with fewer students using a laptop to take notes, or taking notes using both a notebook and a laptop. Future research should systematically assign participants to their preferred/typical or non-preferred/atypical note-taking style and examine how this factor impacts performance.
Morehead et al. (2019b) investigated students’ note-taking methods in both in-person classes and online courses. They found that most students took notes because they believe that this behavior is necessary to learn effectively. Students reported trying to actively organize their notes during lectures rather than simply copying them verbatim. Most importantly, students reported that they were flexible in their note-taking methods. Students used a combination of laptops and notebooks to take notes based on how quickly the instructor spoke and whether or not instructors provided Power Point Slides. These strategies suggest that in some circumstances using a laptop may be more beneficial than taking longhand notes.
The results of the current study suggest that taking notes by hand results in less verbatim overlap with the lecture material which likely impacts how the information was encoded. Students taking notes by hand performed better on a quiz given two days after learning the material when they were allowed to study their notes for 10 minutes. These results are consistent with previous research indicating that taking notes by hand benefits quiz performance (e.g., Duran & Frederick, 2013; Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014); however other factors such as question type and timing of the quiz impact performance as well (e.g., Barrett et al., 2014; Morehead et al., 2019a). It will be important for researchers to continue to investigate the efficacy of various note-taking methods in a variety of classroom situations, and to consider individual differences and methodological differences when interpreting the results.
Footnotes
Authors’ Note
The current work was presented at the 31st Association for Psychological Science (APS) Annual Convention in Washington, DC in May 2019.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
