Mueller & Oppenheimer (2014)

What was the aim of the study?

• to investigate whether taking notes on a laptop is longer than writing longhand

• to investigate whether taking notes on a laptop versus writing longhand affects academic performance

• to investigate whether taking notes on a laptop takes less time than writing longhand

• to investigate whether taking notes on a laptop is more detailed than writing longhand

What was the sample in the study?

• 67 students (33 male, 33 female, 1 unknown) from the Princeton University

• 87 students (43 male, 43 female, 1 unknown) from the Princeton University

• 47 students (23 male, 23 female, 1 unknown) from the Princeton University

• 27 students (13 male, 13 female, 1 unknown) from the Princeton University

What were the 'lectures' used for note taking in the study?

• 5 Psychology lectures (about 15 min) on each of the Approaches used by Psychologists

• 10 TED Talks (slightly over 10 min) on topics that would be interesting but not common knowledge

• 5 TED Talks (slightly over 15 min) on topics that would be interesting but not common knowledge

• 5 lectures at Princeton on interesting but not common subjects to the students participating

What were the participants told about the research?

• The experimenters were interested in how bored students got using either laptops or exercise books for note taking.

• The experimenters were interested in how much was recorded in class lectures.

• The experimenters were interested in how long in took to record information in class lectures.

• The experimenters were interested in how information was actually recorded in class lectures.

What was the first part of the procedure?

• Participants were allocated a lecture to attend and asked to use their normal classroom note-taking strategy

• Participants attended a lecture with a friend on a different course and asked to use their normal classroom note-taking strategy.

• Lectures were projected onto a screen at the front and participants were instructed to use their normal classroom note-taking strategy,

• Participants watched a video from Khan Academy and were instructed to use their normal classroom note-taking strategy.

What was the second part of the procedure?

• Participants completed 3 distractor tasks for approx. 30 min after the end of the lecture

• Participants were interviewed about the content of the lecture heard.

• Participants answered some online questions about themselves and what they remembered from the lecture

• Participants were quizzed about their note-taking techniques

What was the third part of the procedure? Click on ALL correct options.

• Participants responded to factual-recall (information based) questions about the lecture

• Participants responded to conceptual-application questions (understanding/analysis based) questions about the lecture

• Participants completed a questionnaire capturing their demographics

• Participants were thanked and debriefed

What were the results? Click on all that apply.

• On factual-recall questions, participants performed equally well across conditions

• On factual-recall questions, laptop participants performed significantly better than longhand participants

• On conceptual-application questions, laptop participants performed significantly worse than longhand participants

• On conceptual-application questions, laptop participants performed significantly better than longhand participants

Identify other results from the experiment

• participants who took longhand notes wrote significantly fewer words

• participants who took more notes performed better,

• participants whose notes had less verbatim overlap (copying exactly what the lecturer said) with the lecture also performed better

• particpants who used longhand note taking also had less verbatim overlap, (copying exactly what the lecturer said) than the laptop users

What did the researchers conclude about the use of laptops?

• laptops can boost academic performance when used as intended

• laptops may harm academic performance as participants couldn't type as fast as they can write.

• laptops may harm academic performance as there are too many distractions

• laptops may harm academic performance even when used as intended