A Survey of Electronic Note-Taking Behavior of Graduate Students at University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science (November 2005)
by Joe · 8 things on Twos
- Conducted to evaluate the adoption of digital technology for note-taking in classrooms
- Previous work has demonstrated that note-taking is an effective tool for information processing
- Furthermore, digital tools could increase the utility of notes by allowing students to better organize information, retrieve information, and integrate external information sources.
- Results of the survey indicate that while students recognize digital notes as possessing positive attributes, adoption of digital note-taking is hampered by immature software and hardware tools.
- The ability to edit and organize notes during and after class was the second most frequently noted benefits of digital notes. Other factors mentioned were the ability to search notes (in particular text notes), the ability to annotate instructor-provided electronic materials (such as slides and class outlines), the ability to collect and merge figures and notes from different sources, the ability to keep multiple copies of notes, and the ease of sharing with other students.
- When asked what they did not like about digital notes students mentioned the difficulty in creating figures in electronic documents, difficult-to-transport laptops, fatigue from typing, eye strain, and lack of formatting options in many software applications.
- The most frequent request was the ability to input text and graphics with a pen or stylus. Students also mentioned extensive formatting options (font size, font weight, font color, highlighting, etc), common file formats to ease sharing and inclusion weight, font color, highlighting, etc), common file formats to ease sharing and inclusion of outside materials, and the ability to hyperlink documents and external resources. The ideal note-taking tool was described as portable and lightweight.
- Many based their preference on factors that are unique to digital notes. These include the ability to search notes, the ability to quickly edit and reorganize information within notes, permanence, and increased legibility