Handwriting Notes VS Typing Notes

I am interested in conducting a research on how different ways college students taking notes, by hand or by typing, will affect their memory of the lectures. My hypothesis is that taking notes by hand will have a much better effect on students’ memory of the lecture and therefore, they have more chance to perform better in the exam. The variables in this experiment are obviously taking note by hand and by typing into computers. If my hypothesis is proved correct, this study will provide students a better way to study and take note in class.

An Experimental design will best suit my topic since we are sure that students can get a better grade by taking good notes for review. What I want to know here, is what kind of note taking method will perform better in improving our grades. I would use a lab experiment. My independent variables are the two ways of taking note, by hand or by typing. And my dependent variable will be the memory level of a lecture. In a group of 30 college students, I would randomly assign them into two groups. One of them will be asked to keep notes with a pen and paper for a lecture and the other group will be asked to keep notes by typing into computers for the same lecture at the same time. After the class, I would provide a pop quiz, which is not notified to them before. The pop quiz tests the key points that are mentioned in the lecture in order for me to compare the average grades of the two groups.

The biggest challenge I faced during the process of designing this experiment is to find the psychological experiment idea. As college students, our biggest problem is to find a way to help up study efficiently. That is when I come up with this idea of note taking techniques. Once I decided my topic, the rest of the design is actually less difficult than I expected. In short, I answered the list of questions that were required in the post and arranged them when I wrote the post. During this process, I reread Chapter Two about the concepts of various research methods to find the one that fits the best in my experiment. It is also necessary to know the two characteristics of conducting an experimental study.