Should you take notes on paper or a laptop?
"Write your notes by hand – it's better for your brain." You've probably heard it. The claim comes from a well-known study, but the full story is more interesting than the headline.
The famous study
In 2014, Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer had students watch lectures and take notes, either by hand or on a laptop. Laptop users wrote more words and copied more of the lecture word for word. On conceptual questions afterwards – the kind that ask you to understand rather than repeat – handwriting students did better in their experiments.
Their explanation: because typing is fast, laptop users tend to transcribe without thinking. Handwriting is slower, so you're forced to summarise and choose what matters – and that processing helps you learn.
The replication
In 2019, Kayla Morehead, John Dunlosky and Katherine Rawson repeated the study and extended it. Their results were less clear-cut: the differences between handwritten and laptop notes were small and not reliable. They urged caution before telling students to switch to handwriting on the basis of this research.
That doesn't mean the original idea is wrong. It means the tool probably matters less than many people think.
What matters more than the tool
- Write in your own words. Copying the lecture word for word – on paper or a screen – is less useful than summarising.
- Leave space for questions. Write down what you didn't understand so you can ask about it.
- Avoid distractions. A laptop with notifications, chats and other tabs open is a real problem, whatever the research says about typing itself.
- Use your notes later. The biggest benefit comes when you go back to them – ideally by testing yourself rather than re-reading. Turn headings into questions and answer them. Why testing yourself works.
A simple method
- During the lesson, write short points in your own words.
- Afterwards, add a few questions in the margin – one for each main idea.
- A day later, cover the notes and answer the questions.
- A few days later, do it again.
Paper or laptop: pick the one that keeps you focused and thinking – then use your notes to quiz yourself.
The studies
- Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25(6).
- Morehead, K., Dunlosky, J., & Rawson, K. A. (2019). How much mightier is the pen than the keyboard for note-taking? A replication and extension of Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014). Educational Psychology Review, 31(3).