The Student Room Group

Do you prefer to type or handwrite revision notes?

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:angry:
Original post by Ultimate_Geek
Hand-write. It seems to sink-in better as it takes much longer to do. There's more time to think about what you're writing.



Me too! You can think about the information that is actually useful that way.
Reply 21
Original post by NGC773
I type them up first. Get them perfect then handwrite them


Perfect? Why would they need to be perfect? They're notes, not a dissertation.
Handwrite everytime, sinks in much better.
Reply 23
Original post by py0alb
Sure sure. I think its worth taking a moment to consider whether the time you spend getting out your highlighter is time well spent


FYI. It helped me out a lot... :smile:
What helps you to retain important notes might not work for me and vice versa.

Original post by py0alb
I never understood the point of flash cards, they're so small you can hardly fit anything useful on them, and they can easily get muddled up. What's wrong with a normal A4 notebook?


Flashcards come in various sizes. you have big one as well as small ones.

Original post by py0alb
Half the time people spend "revising" they are just wasting their time. Notes don't need to be pretty, they just need to be functional.


I don't make my notes pretty, I only make very important points more visible.
I'm visually impaired to some extent.

I disagree. when I "revise", I am truly revising...I'm not wasting my time if I want a good grade.:s-smilie:
Reply 24
Original post by JunePlum

I disagree. when I "revise", I am truly revising...I'm not wasting my time if I want a good grade.:s-smilie:


Well no-one thinks they're wasting their time, obviously. But lots of people do.

For example: when I was revising for my fourth year exams, my housemate was on the same course as me, and he would spend roughly twice as long revising per day than I did (10 hours compared to 5 hours). Every night, we would discuss what we had done, and he would always be mystified and frustrated at how I had achieved so much more than him in half the amount of time. Clearly, he had been wasting his time without knowing it.

It can make a big difference: I got 85%, he got 60%. I have to admit, his typed up, carefully highlighted notes were a lot neater than my pages and pages of handwritten monochrome scrawl.
Reply 25
I only handwrite notes as I'm really slow at typing. I'll make comprehensive notes, then condense several times
Reply 26
Original post by py0alb
Well no-one thinks they're wasting their time, obviously. But lots of people do.

For example: when I was revising for my fourth year exams, my housemate was on the same course as me, and he would spend roughly twice as long revising per day than I did (10 hours compared to 5 hours). Every night, we would discuss what we had done, and he would always be mystified and frustrated at how I had achieved so much more than him in half the amount of time. Clearly, he had been wasting his time without knowing it.

It can make a big difference: I got 85%, he got 60%. I have to admit, his typed up, carefully highlighted notes were a lot neater than my pages and pages of handwritten monochrome scrawl.


You're such an arrogant **** in almost all of your posts. Seriously, in almost every single thread you always seem to state that your method/opinion/other extremely subjective thing is head and shoulders above everything anyone else has to say, it gets pretty irksome.

The OP was asking what people prefer to do revising, not what is the best way of revising for everyone which is what you seem to be trying to force down everyones throats, revision hitler.
Reply 27
Original post by Nichrome
You're such an arrogant **** in almost all of your posts. Seriously, in almost every single thread you always seem to state that your method/opinion/other extremely subjective thing is head and shoulders above everything anyone else has to say, it gets pretty irksome.

The OP was asking what people prefer to do revising, not what is the best way of revising for everyone which is what you seem to be trying to force down everyones throats, revision hitler.



If you had an intelligent response to make I assume you would have made it, so I can only conclude you don't. So stop spamming. We were having a reasonably interesting discussion as to the best revision methods but your post has added nothing worthwhile to the debate.

As I have said many times before, ad hominems and accusations of arrogance are the characteristic cry of the intellectually inferior. So I will take your post as a complement, thanks :biggrin:.
Reply 28
Original post by py0alb
Well no-one thinks they're wasting their time, obviously. But lots of people do.

Every night, we would discuss what we had done, and he would always be mystified and frustrated at how I had achieved so much more than him in half the amount of time. Clearly, he had been wasting his time without knowing it.

It can make a big difference: I got 85%, he got 60%. I have to admit, his typed up, carefully highlighted notes were a lot neater than my pages and pages of handwritten monochrome scrawl.


You have to keep in mind that some persons are better at retaining information than others.

My friend has problems when it comes to remembering what she studied. Therefore, she spends more time revising in order to familiarise herself with the topic and making it more possible to remember the notes.
Reply 29
Original post by JunePlum
You have to keep in mind that some persons are better at retaining information than others.

My friend has problems when it comes to remembering what she studied. Therefore, she spends more time revising in order to familiarise herself with the topic and making it more possible to remember the notes.



That's true, certainly. I am only trying to make a comparison here - I know from past experience that his method didn't work for me, and it obviously didn't work particularly well for him either. Therefore I think its a flaw in the method rather than an innate difference in ability.

I think people (not necessarily you) sometimes get hung up on things like how long they spent revising or the quality and quantity of notes they made, whereas the only important thing is how well you understand the material. Making notes is just a means to an end ultimately.
Reply 30
A computer makes me ramble, so I hand-write - and there's not really any other option in lectures, you don't want to look like the briefcase ****er whipping out the Apple Mac bought on his parents' credit card.

I do however have vague designs on typing up all my notes onto the computer when I'm really, really bored in the summer or something, and cross-referencing them with the sources and each other and stuff.
Original post by py0alb
Sure sure. I think its worth taking a moment to consider whether the time you spend getting out your highlighter is time well spent, or whether you would be better advised to simply put a quick box around the important phrase with the pen already in your hand and move on to more important matters.

I never understood the point of flash cards, they're so small you can hardly fit anything useful on them, and they can easily get muddled up. What's wrong with a normal A4 notebook?

Half the time people spend "revising" they are just wasting their time. Notes don't need to be pretty, they just need to be functional. A big part of getting a good grade is learning which bits of the revision process are valuable and which are just a waste of time. Time spent colouring in or trying to reproduce diagrams on the computer that could be sketched by hand in 10 seconds is the latter in my book.


While this is something of an argy-bargy as it is, I do agree with this approach. Then again I never got the hang of revision in any form, so I can't say what approach is sensible.

Handwriting things does make information retention better - I can't remember whether a study on this looked at short-term or long-term effects, though. For this reason I suspect that focusing on visual effects is only limited - but again, that's my brain: I remember a few things visually but the real information processing happens behind that. I wonder if a lot of people might get carried away with the immediate efficacy of a few visual things and expect it to be an efficient system for more complicated things.

I'm better at handwriting posts than typing them :wink: Apologies for the fact that it's a mush. Essays flow better when I do at least part of a handwritten draft rather than try to type up ideas (too easy to just stop mid-flow).
Original post by JunePlum
This is debatable but you know what...
If that thought suits you...:yy:

Er, really?
Reply 33
Original post by JunePlum
This is debatable


really? :confused:
Reply 34
Original post by py0alb
really? :confused:


Sorry!! :colondollar:

I take that one back
Hand write- purely because if I start typing them I'll end up on here and won't actually get any revision done at all!
Reply 36
Write then scan them in so I have a digital backup - then put them in the cloud as a PDF or image file then I can access it whenever.
(edited 13 years ago)
Reply 37
I believe I'm one of the minority who secretly love using various coloured highlighters... :awesome:

Saying that, Law notes can be an absolute b**** to handwrite, so computer for those :biggrin:
For my A-levels I used to type them up, but looking back on it, all I was doing was typing and not learning. Now at uni, I make hand written revision notes from going through all my class and lecture notes and picking the most important. I don't really learn from notes though, I have to repeat them (actually speaking) over and over again and then it just clicks.
Original post by py0alb
Poll fail.

I handwrite my notes, because typing them is a complete waste of time, but highlighters are for 8 year old girls FFS.
Absolutely. I handwrite my notes but never highlight them nor do I colour coordinate them. :colonhash:
(edited 13 years ago)

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