Taking notes in lectures- laptop or paper?

What do people prefer to use to take notes at uni? I'm doing my A Levels at the minute and want to study law at uni, and my parents said that if I'd prefer it to paper, they'd consider getting me a macbook for my 18th to take notes with.
How do most people take notes? Is it worth the money to get a smaller laptop like a macbook? Does anyone use a bigger laptop?

Thanks :smile:

Reply 1

GoingToBurst

16

I have a macbook, but I never use it for taking notes. I take all of my notes by paper and have done since halfway through the first semester of first year. Taking notes on your laptop is fine if you are doing something that doesn't involve numbers, but my degree has a lot of numbers and graphs etc, so paper notes are much quicker.

Reply 2

blossomx

20

I print out the lecture slides as handouts (around 6 slides per page) and then annotate them with anything important. I find when I'm making notes I'm not paying attention to what the lecturer is saying nor what I'm writing or typing.

I got a Macbook a month in to starting uni and I'm glad I did as I always found my Windows laptops would crash and freeze all the time. With a Macbook I can have loads of documents, powerpoints and internet tabs open and it runs smoothly. The only issue I've had is that my lab reports have to be in Word format

Reply 3

Nirgilis

14

Original post by Gingerbread101

What do people prefer to use to take notes at uni? I'm doing my A Levels at the minute and want to study law at uni, and my parents said that if I'd prefer it to paper, they'd consider getting me a macbook for my 18th to take notes with.
How do most people take notes? Is it worth the money to get a smaller laptop like a macbook? Does anyone use a bigger laptop?

Thanks :smile:

Depends completely on the subject. In the Sciences, I've noticed that people stick to the traditional note-taking since it's a hellova lot faster to draw structures and write out complicated equations. However, I have sat in on some business/economics lectures, where a good 50%+ use laptops. However, this has the downside of being incredibly distracting with Facebook available at a swipe of the mousepad when the lecture gets dull. However, some people can type a lot quicker than they can write, so :dontknow:

I personally prefer taking notes on paper. It counts then as extra revision when I transfer those paper notes to the computer at a later date :tongue:

Reply 4

WhiteyBread101

OP

21

Original post by Nirgilis

Depends completely on the subject. In the Sciences, I've noticed that people stick to the traditional note-taking since it's a hellova lot faster to draw structures and write out complicated equations. However, I have sat in on some business/economics lectures, where a good 50%+ use laptops. However, this has the downside of being incredibly distracting with Facebook available at a swipe of the mousepad when the lecture gets dull. However, some people can type a lot quicker than they can write, so :dontknow:

I personally prefer taking notes on paper. It counts then as extra revision when I transfer those paper notes to the computer at a later date :tongue:

I want to do law so I guess it would be a similar case to business/economics lectures? :smile:

Reply 5

Nirgilis

14

Original post by Gingerbread101

I want to do law so I guess it would be a similar case to business/economics lectures? :smile:

Most likely :yep:

. I'd still recommend sticking to pen and paper though, but I'm a traditionalist :tongue:

Reply 6

WhiteyBread101

OP

21

Original post by Nirgilis

Most likely :yep:

. I'd still recommend sticking to pen and paper though, but I'm a traditionalist :tongue:

I really like stationery and making notes look pretty, so I'm wary of using a laptop :giggle:

My only worry would be that I'd try to make everything look too neat and wouldn't get down all of the info... How fast do you find yourself having to write to get everything, and does it end up being messy?

Reply 7

hockham jaynsaw

1

Original post by Gingerbread101

I really like stationery and making notes look pretty, so I'm wary of using a laptop :giggle:

My only worry would be that I'd try to make everything look too neat and wouldn't get down all of the info... How fast do you find yourself having to write to get everything, and does it end up being messy?

Studies show that people who manually write notes during lectures, even if they never look at them again, retain more information than those who don't.

Reply 8

The Empire Odyssey

21

I personally prefer writing on paper. I do an English degree, so I know that if I were to not write in a single lecture for 11 weeks, I know when it comes to revision or even the exam, trying to write again will fall outside my nature and I bet my hand would hurt so much during the exam, and there's nothing worse than a sore hand during an exam cause it slows you down like you wouldn't believe!

I also find people tapping away very annoying and distracting, esp when the lecturer's microphone has broken. I also find it very annoying when people change tabs/swipe across cause human eyes are naturally drawn to things that move. So when that happens, I start to lose focus! And before you know it, I'm trying to look at someone's facebook page and then all of the sudden, I've missed about 5 slides!

Reply 9

ThatHealthyLife

8

Definitely prefer to annotate printed slides, but then my laptop frequently crashes and only has 4 hours of battery life so not that useful

Most people I know prefer paper, it's just easier when you're trying to scribble things down quickly, especially if those little red lines annoy you

Reply 10

WhiteyBread101

OP

21

Original post by The Empire Odyssey

I personally prefer writing on paper. I do an English degree, so I know that if I were to not write in a single lecture for 11 weeks, I know when it comes to revision or even the exam, trying to write again will fall outside my nature and I bet my hand would hurt so much during the exam, and there's nothing worse than a sore hand during an exam cause it slows you down like you wouldn't believe!

I also find people tapping away very annoying and distracting, esp when the lecturer's microphone has broken. I also find it very annoying when people change tabs/swipe across cause human eyes are naturally drawn to things that move. So when that happens, I start to lose focus! And before you know it, I'm trying to look at someone's facebook page and then all of the sudden, I've missed about 5 slides!

I'd never thought about the fact that I wouldn't be used to writing as much, that's a really good point! :smile:

Reply 11

claireestelle

22

i use a tiny laptop and onenote to do my notes and use a dictaphone to record the lecture, so my style of notetaking is bullet points or a kind of skeleton which i can easily add to later as onenote is so easy to format and i can have it anyway i want and i never have to worry about losing any notes as they automatically back themselves up :smile:

(but then i struggle with handwriting anyway and have a pc for exams so couldnt tell you the benefits of handwriting notes)

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 12

jonathanemptage

21

If you were doing Electronics or something the a pen and paper would be useful but then all the slides at my uni were put up on the net anyway in fact one of my lectures told us not to take notes just listen to the lecture and then print the notes and revise from them reading up on anything we didn't understand worked quite well really I'd say do get one because you can then follow the lecture live so to speak.

Reply 13

Kuroneko

5

Original post by LeaX

I print out the lecture slides as handouts (around 6 slides per page) and then annotate them with anything important. I find when I'm making notes I'm not paying attention to what the lecturer is saying nor what I'm writing or typing.

I got a Macbook a month in to starting uni and I'm glad I did as I always found my Windows laptops would crash and freeze all the time. With a Macbook I can have loads of documents, powerpoints and internet tabs open and it runs smoothly. The only issue I've had is that my lab reports have to be in Word format