Studying Online;Succeeding through Distance Learning at University

QUICK TIP: If you would rather type up notes instead of hand-
writing them, then use structured notes rather than linear notes 
as you will gain more from the structure. 

---

74 Studying online 
It is worth noting that other studies have found diferent fndings 
regarding digital notetaking. For example, a study conducted at 
Princeton University, USA, showed that when students typed 
notes, they had lower comprehension than students who used 
handwritten notes (Mueller and Oppenheimer, 2014). Taken to-
gether with the studies about recall from notes, studies suggest 
that you can remember more when you type up structured notes, 
but your understanding of that material is less than when you 
handwrite them. When you take notes on your computer, you can 
remember more but have less understanding of a topic than if you 
had handwritten them. Given that a degree is about understand-
ing, rather than remembering, it suggests you should not give up 
on handwritten notes just yet. 
 
INTEGRATING PAPER NOTES 
If you do take notes on paper, there is an added problem when 
studying online. Much of what you study will be in digital for-
mat. If you have notes on paper, it becomes more challenging 
to integrate your notes with your online study resources. In the 
days when all studying was face to face, and there were no dig-
ital materials, it was easy to integrate your notes. For example, 
you could photocopy relevant textbook pages and put them in a 
folder together with your handwritten lecture notes. Tat’s not 
easy these days if your textbook is an ebook and you have taken 
handwritten notes of a lecture that is connected with the topic of 
one of the book’s chapters. Tis is why so many students prefer 
to take notes on their laptops. It means they can integrate their 
lecture notes with the other digital materials more efciently. 
However, as you have seen already, there are problems with typed 
notes. Tey help you remember, but they can sometimes hamper 
understanding. Handwritten notes appear to be superior for de-
veloping understanding. 
A degree is about demonstrating your level of critical thinking. 
All university degrees are graded, showing the level of critical 

---