How do todays uni students take notes in lectures?

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ds is starting uni this year and is starting to think about what he will need. He will be commuting from home (free buses for under 22s in Scotland) and applying for the min maintenance loan to live off, so all that side has pretty much sorted itself as quite straight forward for him.

When lockdown/homeschooling started we bought him an 8GB, 15.6" laptop and an external monitor which should hopefully be ok for at least his first year at uni. We will probably need to buy him Microsoft Office as he is currently using the free download from school. Unless the uni provide this too?

For those who know a student at uni now or very recently, what do todays students use to take notes in lectures and organise notes? Is still mostly pen, paper, lots of folders and type up later/carry it all around with them or do they use tablets and a stylus and keep everything electronically?

He is doing engineering, which I guess would have very different needs from an essay based subject.

I'm a mature student and I don't really take a lot of notes in lectures because the lectures are all recorded and the slides are available online. I find if I am busy writing/typing I miss stuff. I do make a few written notes or occasionally if it's something I am likely to have to write an essay on, will print the slides off and annotate those.

When it comes to revision/essay writing I find reviewing the slides and doing the reading recommended is enough to remind me of what was said in the lecture. Or the key points anyway. One lecturer helpfully makes all his lecture notes available and I wish other lecturers would as well.

@QuebecBagnet

I’m a lecturer and I’d say most students have laptops or those small laptops…..notebooks? I don’t see anyone with paper and pen. A few have iPads. Just consider how far and for how long he will need to carry it, a 15” laptop is fairly heavy. Dd is at uni and leaves the laptop at home and takes an iPad to uni.

The uni should provide Office.

I'm 40 and graduated in 2006 and it all seems so crazy to me. I remember taking notes in pen, writing political essays in pen, and even to me now that seems impossible. I can't even write legibly anymore. The technological advancement is insane! I even did law exams in pen and paper! How?!

@crispmidnightpeace. I know what you mean. I graduated in the mid 90s and it seems crazy that we could hand in handwritten essays. My housemate was fancy because she had an electric typewriter. We had no internet when I was at uni and the lecturers if they had email addresses didn’t tell us them.

I started my second degree in 2005 and even then if you wanted to ask a lecturer something you had to find their office and hope they were in, and go back day after day until they were. Hence I only ever asked about three things in three years.

Now I get 50 emails a day from students with all sorts of stuff which really is not important. Plus the little dears have somehow got my mobile number, personal mobile and have taken to ringing me.

I started my second degree in 2005 and even then if you wanted to ask a lecturer something you had to find their office and hope they were in

Where was this? It seems to have been at least ten years behind other academic institutions and industry too.

@etulosba I was think that too...I finished my first degree in 2005 and I could definitely email my lecturers.

I tutored a post grad law course a couple of years ago (maybe 5). All I saw was the back of laptop screens as they all sat behind them furiously touch typing everything I said verbatim (even though I asked them not too as this class was about them thinking through the problems for themselves!)

@etulosba

I started my second degree in 2005 and even then if you wanted to ask a lecturer something you had to find their office and hope they were in

Where was this? It seems to have been at least ten years behind other academic institutions and industry too.

University of Nottingham.

Reading with interest. I might need to ask what Ds1 wants.

Current mature student - it started off about 30/70 in terms of laptops versus printing out slides and writing on them in pen... as time's gone on and printer allowances have used up, it's moved much more and now it's probably around 50% laptops, 20% iPads and pencils and the rest using pen and paper.

The rise in iPads coincided with Apple doing a nice unidays offer with a free set of AirPods if you bought iPad Air + Pencil - lots of people's kids got AirPods for Christmas as a result.

We get MS Office free with our student email IDs for the time we're there (but I have a subscription anyway cos the family all use it).

I found a 15inch laptop far too big and heavy to lug around to uni on trains to be honest - I ended up downsizing and now use a combination of a MacBook and an iPad + pencil. I'm finishing up speech and language therapy and so being able to write phonetic transcription is absolutely handy cos typing IPA is a fucking pain in the arse.

People tend to use a mix of software - lots just add to the notes section of powerpoint. The iPad users all tend to use either Goodnotes or Apple Notes. I tend to use Agenda for typed notes (can access across iPad or my Mac) because I like the date linking, but I use Goodnotes for Apple Pencil stuff - and also because I've set things like blank anatomy diagrams I might need repeatedly as "elements" I can drag and drop in as required and scrawl over. I also have a lot of textbooks illicitly obtained and saved on my iPad.

Mine uses a laptop (though not word. I'm not sure what she uses). She never did at school - was always pen and paper - but she says it's easier to use a laptop now so she doesn't have to write up her notes later.

@spilltheteaplease

I used a mac for lecture notes but this was a total pain with office. Our uni didn't give us Office but I got a 4 year student deal so it was cheap.

considering a mac air for dd - why is a mac a pain?