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I spent years trying to find the value others find in handwritten note taking. But it doesn’t work for me. For me, listening carefully and questioning the spea

I spent years trying to find the value others find in handwritten note taking. But it doesn’t work for me. For me, listening carefully and questioning the speaker internally and focusing intensely on the way they are speaking and visualizing the concepts works better. Handwriting interferes with that as I’m too busy rephrasing to fit into my writing rate. My memory is better than the paper at the nuances of the concepts IFF I am intently focused at a semantic level. I think, like many of these things, they speak to the average experience. That many people benefit from hand writing. But humanity so very varied, and there one size fits all analysis of learning style does really well at picking out the mode, but statistical analysis cuts off the tails and outliers as noise. But being the noise as an individual makes these sorts of statistical teaching methods painful and distracting. The day I pushed the paper and pen aside and learned the way I learn best was the day school went from being a chore of tedium, a true struggle, to being a delight. I turned around from a barely capable student to getting highest honors from one of the science and engineering universities in the world. Further by honing my ability to understand deeply with just my ears and mind I can carry that into every day life outside a classroom, such as casual conversations or other formats where note taking would be weird. I’ve never missed my handwritten notes, and I literally never take notes and never will again.

silcoon 3y ago
> But humanity so very varied I agree that the way of learning concepts is a personal preference and that humanity is varied, but this is not related of how our brain mechanisms work. If learning by writing is a human ability, it would work no matter of your personal preference. It would work for any student who tries to study with method and take notes of the lesson. Listening to lessons and learning is a romantic way of studying, but I'm not sure how practical it is when your test is at the end of a course of 4/6 months. Plus all the others course that you follow at the same time, with the labs exercises, it all make a good amount of material to put in your brain just by listening. In addition to that I would not be able to listen to professors explaining concepts for 6/7h and just learning them immediately. I would fall asleep in the middle of the lessons if I don't actively take notes. A lesson is not just a repetition of a book, but the connection of multiple concepts with linearity, done by a professional expert that knows the subject and usually add small details or new way of seeing things, that books don't do them. Notes help students take notes of this and re-use the concepts when studying for the tests, improving their visualization ability.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Yes, see, this is an example of varied humanity. I found notes didn’t help me understand, and my memory for spoken words and visualized concepts is exceptional. Reading the notes I took brought no understanding and while I could find rote concepts there I didn’t understand the material. Once I stopped taking notes and learning the way I learn best I remembered the concepts and details - to this very day decades later. What you list is what works for you - and if objectively didn’t work for me. That’s why the outliers like me get ground under. People say “clearly by my experience your experience can’t work, you must do things my way.” (Not saying you’re meaning this so directly but that’s how it gets applied at school) I would say it’s not a preference specifically but different humans have different facility with their innate abilities. Why would we consider learning by note taking to be an undifferentiated ability but athletic abilities are differentiated? The reality is some people learn better in different ways because our brains are differentiated in their ability. Yes I learn from note taking, but not as well as through different modes because my faculties in those modes are exceptional relative to the mean. But statistical analyses of learning say I must learn better by the statistical mode, despite the fact outlier can and do exist on all the dimensions of learning modalities. Obviously from a policy point of view they should try to teach everyone the most common ways of learning. But we also need to be able to teach to the outliers as well and how to identify who to differentiate. My daughter is different like me, so I send her to a private school that focuses on differentiated learning - and she thrives where she would have suffered like I did in public school. “No child left behind” means “no average child left behind, the outliers are ground down to be average”

silcoon 3y ago

> But humanity so very varied I agree that the way of learning concepts is a personal preference and that humanity is varied, but this is not related of how our brain mechanisms work. If learning by writing is a human ability, it would work no matter of your personal preference. It would work for any student who tries to study with method and take notes of the lesson. Listening to lessons and learning is a romantic way of studying, but I'm not sure how practical it is when your test is at the end of a course of 4/6 months. Plus all the others course that you follow at the same time, with the labs exercises, it all make a good amount of material to put in your brain just by listening. In addition to that I would not be able to listen to professors explaining concepts for 6/7h and just learning them immediately. I would fall asleep in the middle of the lessons if I don't actively take notes. A lesson is not just a repetition of a book, but the connection of multiple concepts with linearity, done by a professional expert that knows the subject and usually add small details or new way of seeing things, that books don't do them. Notes help students take notes of this and re-use the concepts when studying for the tests, improving their visualization ability.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Yes, see, this is an example of varied humanity. I found notes didn’t help me understand, and my memory for spoken words and visualized concepts is exceptional. Reading the notes I took brought no understanding and while I could find rote concepts there I didn’t understand the material. Once I stopped taking notes and learning the way I learn best I remembered the concepts and details - to this very day decades later. What you list is what works for you - and if objectively didn’t work for me. That’s why the outliers like me get ground under. People say “clearly by my experience your experience can’t work, you must do things my way.” (Not saying you’re meaning this so directly but that’s how it gets applied at school) I would say it’s not a preference specifically but different humans have different facility with their innate abilities. Why would we consider learning by note taking to be an undifferentiated ability but athletic abilities are differentiated? The reality is some people learn better in different ways because our brains are differentiated in their ability. Yes I learn from note taking, but not as well as through different modes because my faculties in those modes are exceptional relative to the mean. But statistical analyses of learning say I must learn better by the statistical mode, despite the fact outlier can and do exist on all the dimensions of learning modalities. Obviously from a policy point of view they should try to teach everyone the most common ways of learning. But we also need to be able to teach to the outliers as well and how to identify who to differentiate. My daughter is different like me, so I send her to a private school that focuses on differentiated learning - and she thrives where she would have suffered like I did in public school. “No child left behind” means “no average child left behind, the outliers are ground down to be average”