Lecture notes, typed or handwritten?

evercloserunion

Just wondering how people here take notes in lectures, on their laptop or old skool paper and pen.

I know it's not that important an issue, but every year I find myself wondering which would be better for me. Generally I take notes by hand because my laptop battery life isn't great, and also because it's easier to draw in little arrows, diagrams or other visualisations as may be necessary. But typing is a lot faster and easier than writing, so when the lecturer is going very fast it would probably be easier to keep up with a laptop.

What say ye?

PurpleFistMixer

Depends a lot on your course. I always take them in hand because doing LaTeX on the fly for maths is very difficult, especially when there are diagrams and weird connecting arrows all over the place. That said, one of the guys in my class is trying to do realtime LaTeX notes during lectures this year...

I write pretty fast though so I rarely have difficulties keeping up with the lecturer (unless they're doing slides and forget that people are trying to take things down...).

mardybumbum

I have only really started taking notes this year (better late than never right?) and I find the pen and paper top be the best for the reasons you outlined in your post.
Handy for drawing little pictures and arrows, and lugging a laptop around is a pain in the hole.

Kwekubo

Depends a lot on your course & the lecturer, but for data-heavy lectures, I find it so much easier since I started using my laptop to take down notes. I type faster than I write. I use OneNote which lets you "write" and draw arrows on PDFs and powerpoints, and text-search through all your notes (including text within images).

AndrewJD

I've tended to find lecturers more or less expect you to have their slides pre-printed out, because it isn't humanly possible to even take basic notes on what they're saying before they move on. This is maybe just the course though. As a result, the best way for me is to print out the slides (usually 2 to a page) and scribble in the margins, draw in arrors, put in thoughts, analogies, summaries etc as the lecturer goes along. Takes more prep than I can really be bothered with though.

aine-maire

My laptop is way too clunky to be bringing around with me all of the time, so I just hand write my notes.
It's annoying because I can definitely type faster than I can write, but at the same time I don't have the temptation of the internet and as other people have said it's much easier to draw diagrams and things like that. (Though I do law )
Also, it's easier to doodle

evercloserunion

aine-maire wrote: »

My laptop is way too clunky to be bringing around with me all of the time, so I just hand write my notes.
It's annoying because I can definitely type faster than I can write, but at the same time I don't have the temptation of the internet and as other people have said it's much easier to draw diagrams and things like that. (Though I do law )
Also, it's easier to doodle

I also do law, diagrams and visualisations come in handy more than you'd expect, IMO anyway.

andrew

Maths lectures = Handwritten, other lectures = Typing. History of Political Thought with Eddie Hyland did wonders for my typing speed; no slides, just an hour of incomprehensible talking.

d93c2inhxfok4y

andrew wrote: »

Maths lectures = Handwritten, other lectures = Typing. History of Political Thought with Eddie Hyland did wonders for my typing speed; no slides, just an hour of incomprehensible talking.

Absolutely this. It was literally just a power hour of arhthritis enducing typing.

I'm a serious advocate of taking notes on the laptop though, pretty much because it's so, so handy when it comes to exam time. For most of my modules last year it was brilliant to go back through all the lecture notes I had saved, and chop and edit them into really useful study aids. Your notes just end up being so much more manageable and clear when you can edit them as freely as you can electronically.