Teaching of Psychology, Ahead of Print.
Background:Many students use laptops in the classroom to take notes; however, even when laptops are used for the sole purpose of taking notes they can negatively impact academic performance.Objective:The current study examined state-dependent effects, and the potential for a match in note taking and quiz taking methods to improve quiz performance.Method:Participants were placed into a congruent (take notes by hand and complete the quiz by hand or take notes using a laptop and complete an online quiz) or an incongruent condition (take notes by hand and take an online quiz or take notes using a laptop and complete the quiz by hand).Results:The results revealed that participants who took notes by hand performed better on the quiz overall, and better on conceptual questions, then students who took notes using a laptop. We failed to find evidence for state-dependent effects.Conclusions:The current study suggests that taking notes by hand may improve how students encode material, and result in higher quality external storage used by students when studying for quizzes.Teaching Implications:Reinforcing the notion that taking notes by hand may benefit quiz performance for lecture-style information and could improve student performance in class.