I think it depends on how neat one’s handwriting is. I have (or rather, had) fairly neat handwriting, so it was no problem for me to take notes by hand. However, my brother, whose handwriting is considerably worse than mine, prefers to take notes on his laptop and annotate documents on his iPad. Similarly, I had a friend who had hand tremors get a specific note from the university’s disability office to allow him to bring his laptop into courses where the professor banned them for most students simply because his handwriting was completely illegible, due to no fault of his own.
Taking notes serves no purpose if they’re illegible scribbles that you can’t make heads or tails of at the end of the class.
Fair enough—the problem is for me neatness isn’t a constant but a function of writing speed. I can write very neatly but then I also end up writing very slowly.
That’s how it is for everyone. It’s just that severity of degradation varies from person to person, so some people can write quite quickly without their handwriting turning into mush, while others can barely go above 15 wpm while retaining legibility.
The other quibble I have with the handwriting vs. typing studies is that they don’t include the control group of not taking notes at all. Maybe the best option is just to review the literature ahead of time and just sit in class and pay attention.
I think it depends on how neat one’s handwriting is. I have (or rather, had) fairly neat handwriting, so it was no problem for me to take notes by hand. However, my brother, whose handwriting is considerably worse than mine, prefers to take notes on his laptop and annotate documents on his iPad. Similarly, I had a friend who had hand tremors get a specific note from the university’s disability office to allow him to bring his laptop into courses where the professor banned them for most students simply because his handwriting was completely illegible, due to no fault of his own.
Taking notes serves no purpose if they’re illegible scribbles that you can’t make heads or tails of at the end of the class.
Fair enough—the problem is for me neatness isn’t a constant but a function of writing speed. I can write very neatly but then I also end up writing very slowly.
That’s how it is for everyone. It’s just that severity of degradation varies from person to person, so some people can write quite quickly without their handwriting turning into mush, while others can barely go above 15 wpm while retaining legibility.
The other quibble I have with the handwriting vs. typing studies is that they don’t include the control group of not taking notes at all. Maybe the best option is just to review the literature ahead of time and just sit in class and pay attention.