Study: Students who take notes by hand outperform students who type
It would be nice to see a comparison against students who don't take notes.  I never took notes in any of my classes, and my father (a senior Chemistry professor) is a firm believer in this approach -- while he doesn't <i>prohibit</i> students from taking notes, he has provided lecture notes for two decades and encourages his students to pay attention instead of transcribing.<p>Of course, there's always the inherent problem of observational studies: Is the note-taking style affecting student performance, or does student aptitude determine note-taking style?  The students who already have a reasonable grasp of course material are likely to be manage with the limited bandwidth of handwritten notes, whereas students who don't understand anything and are consequentially unable to identify which parts are important may be predisposed to prefer a higher-bandwidth note-taking system.