English Analysis Essay

The Benefits of No-Tech Note Taking

I picked the article "The Benefits of No-Tech Note Taking" By Carol E.

Holstead. This article was published March 4, 2015. I picked this one,
because it over lapped with another article and this one seemed shorter then
the other article.
A Professor Carol, at the University of Kansas, got tired of coming to his
visual-communication class and trying to get their attention from social
media while trying to teach. This story takes place in the year 2013. So he
wanted to eliminate that distraction by going to taking notes on paper. He
used the research done by Helene Hembrook and Geri Gay. This was called
"The Laptop and the Lecture: The effects of Multitasking in the Learning
Environment" and for a journal in the year of 2003. Yes, this article was a
study of college kids and multitasking in a classroom and it is appropriate
and backs up what he was seeing in his classroom.
He knew that part, but Carol's theory was the students would process
the lecture more effectively if they took them on paper and he based this off
of his own experience. He notices that the students that he was teaching
were trying to get every word he was saying and not looking up.
He also talks about how some of the students were going for
journalism and they would need to take notes on paper anyway, so why not
give them practice of listening and getting the main points.

Then he finds a study that backs up that theory. In 2012 that was
published in Psychological Science, by the researchers Mueller and Danelle
Oppenhiemer. Carol, summarizes their research and what they did and what
they found. They found the ones how hand wrote the notes by hand had to
be selective, because they couldn't keep up if they tried to write every word
like they do as they type. As a results of hand writing they retained more
information and understood it better.
He also did a survey on his own to find what they think about the note
taking by hand when he learned that a third already took notes by hand that
results surprised him. He also said his class grades went up. The ones who
learned how to take notes by hand liked it and the ones who would try and
get every word by hand didn't like it, because they were trying to keep up. I
think that means his survey adds up to what he found in the study and what
his own theory by experience were.