Should you take notes by hand? What the research really found
In three studies with university students, Mueller and Oppenheimer found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. Laptop note-takers wrote significantly more words and their notes had more verbatim overlap with the lecture. The authors argue that laptop users' tendency to transcribe verbatim rather than reframe ideas in their own words is detrimental to learning.
That is an argument drawn from studies in which university students took notes on short recorded talks or passages, not proof that typing harms learning in general. Later replications did not reproduce the conceptual-question advantage.
The transcription trap
In Study 2 of the Mueller and Oppenheimer research, longhand note-takers wrote an average of 155.9 words, while laptop note-takers who received no instruction wrote 260.9 words.
That extra volume came with more verbatim recording. In Study 2, laptop users who received no instruction had a verbatim overlap of 12.11%, compared to 6.9% for longhand users. Telling laptop users not to take verbatim notes did not reduce their verbatim content.
The same pattern of more words and more verbatim overlap held in all three studies, which drew on students at Princeton University and the University of California, Los Angeles. Recording more of the lecture is not the same as reframing it in your own words.
The replication debate
The idea that handwriting is inherently superior for conceptual understanding is not a settled fact. Morehead, Dunlosky, and Rawson ran a direct replication and extension of the original work, adding groups who took notes on eWriters and groups who took no notes.
They reported that some trends suggested longhand superiority, but performance did not consistently differ between any groups, including the no-notes group. Group differences decreased further after students studied their notes. A meta-analysis combining direct replications found small, nonsignificant effects favouring longhand. The authors concluded that deciding which note-taking method is superior seems premature.
Urry and colleagues ran a preregistered direct replication of Mueller and Oppenheimer's Study 1, which used Princeton students, and found that laptop note-takers wrote more words and more verbatim content. However, the effect of the note-taking condition on conceptual-question performance was not statistically significant. In both the original and the replication, a higher word count was associated with better quiz performance. The authors concluded that the results do not support the idea that longhand note-taking improves immediate learning via better encoding of information.
The role of review
Several studies also looked at what happens once students review their notes. A 2024 meta-analysis of 24 studies across 21 articles on college students found that typing benefited note-taking volume, with a Hedges' g of 0.919.
However, taking and reviewing handwritten notes led to higher achievement, with a Hedges' g of 0.248. The authors concluded that handwritten notes are more useful for studying and committing to memory than typed notes. The 0.248 figure is an effect of about a quarter of a standard deviation, and it does not settle the disagreement with the replications above.
Review time also mattered in the original work. In Mueller and Oppenheimer's Study 3, where students were tested a week later, the longhand advantage appeared only among students who were given 10 minutes to study their notes before the test.
The cost of digital distraction
Off-task laptop use carries a separate cost. Sana, Weston, and Cepeda found in a simulated classroom that participants who multitasked on a laptop during a lecture scored lower on a test than those who did not multitask.
The impact was not limited to the multitaskers themselves. Participants who were in direct view of a multitasking peer also scored lower than those who were not. The authors concluded that laptop multitasking is a significant distraction to both users and fellow students and can be detrimental to comprehension of lecture content.
What this means for your notes
Mueller and Oppenheimer argue that transcribing verbatim rather than reframing ideas in your own words is detrimental to learning, and in their studies longhand notes had fewer words and less verbatim overlap with the lecture. The replications above did not confirm a longhand advantage, so treat handwriting as a reasonable habit rather than a proven rule.
A cautious two-part strategy still makes sense. First, during the lecture, try to put ideas into your own words rather than transcribing them, whether you write by hand or type. If you type, simply resolving to do this may not be enough: in Mueller and Oppenheimer's Study 2, telling laptop users not to take verbatim notes did not reduce their verbatim content.
Second, set aside specific time to review those notes before you are tested on them. Longer notes were not a warning sign in these studies: in both Mueller and Oppenheimer's original study and Urry and colleagues' replication, a higher word count was associated with better quiz performance. In the replication, though, that quiz came right after a short distraction, with no chance to study the notes, so it says nothing about later revision. Whatever their length, notes can only help your revision if you return to them.