THREAD ON LAPTOP USE IN HIGHER ED

So, not surprisingly to me -- as shared by @DTWillingham -- Mueller & Oppenheimer's oft-cited study indicating that laptops are inferior for note-taking compared to longhand has failed to replicate https://psyarxiv.com/vqyw6/download?format=pdf 1/12

In contrast to the original study, there was no advantage in quiz performance for those assigned to take notes by laptop. In fact, there was a small non-significant advantage in the other direction. 2/12

The authors speculate that the different findings could be due to the location (Tufts vs. Princeton), but I think the more likely difference is the year. The replication took place in 2017 vs. 2014, and in those 3 years laptop use grew quite a bit among teenagers 3/12

The authors also conducted a mini-meta-analysis confirming that there are no benefits to handwriting notes for quiz scores. 4/12

Importantly, there are many advantages to note-taking on laptops beyond possibly helping remember the information. It is also easier to share with other people, search the information, re-mix or use it, etc. 5/12

Plus remember we are talking about average affects. If the overall average affects are similar, laptop use is presumably more advantageous for certain people (and note-taking advantageous for others) 6/12

Among the people who find laptops advantageous are people with special needs that makes taking or reading handwritten notes more difficult difficult 7/12

Of course there are other potential problems with laptops in class, if they lead to students becoming totally distracted by social media, either for themselves or for others near them 8/12

For that reason, I may sometimes ask my students to put their phones down or close their laptops, for example, during a discussion with their classmates at their seat. 9/12

But I never ask them to do so while taking notes on lectures, as many of them may find taking notes on laptops more helpful 10/12

I believe that this is a general trend in ed tech research, in which people draw too-broad conclusions from a study without considering broader contexts and trends that may occur when, over time, hardware and software develop and people become more expert at using it 11/12

Another example is the work of Larry Cuban, who early on argued that laptops would never take hold in K-12 schools. In fact, our most recent work shows that laptops are broadly used in K-12 schools, with largely positive effects https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0034654316628645 12/12

Addendum. Congrats to the first author of this excellent study on laptop use in higher ed, @HeatherUrry, and her many collaborators and co-authors