[logifail]

> I had a specific teacher who'd assume I was not paying attention, and ask me to answer often. Much to his surprise, I was fully engaged and able to respond

In school I spent many (un)happy hours gazing out of the windows of the class due to sheer boredom.

Q: Are you able to comment on how the pace of learning is for you? Too slow / just right / too fast?

Once I got to University my learning style quickly evolved into "take notes on everything the lecturer said", with pen and paper. Hard to tune out of a lecture when you are literally writing everything down, at speed.

For me at least it was definitely a most effective way of learning (and then revising). Writing stuff out, over and over and over again.

[icepat]

> Hard to tune out of a lecture when you are literally writing everything down, at speed.

The issue here is what I mentioned above: illegible handwriting. The more pressure I am under, the higher my stress levels, the harder is becomes to take clear notes. In these situations I would end up with incomplete, illegible, useless, scrawl on pages.

> Are you able to comment on how the pace of learning is for you? Too slow / just right / too fast?

All over the map, really. The lack of consistent tempo in most lectures was the issue. If the class was too slow: zoning out, forgetting to take down critical parts. If the class was too quick: overwhelmed, unable to take clear usable notes. The duration of a class was always too long as well, but that's not just a me issue. Empirically, there's a infinite amount of time that someone can stay actively engaged. I don't recall exactly how long, but I do remember all university lectures lasted very generously longer than that.

My highest scores in class were always courses where there was an excellent textbook (or where I had found a supplemental textbook), or where I could effectively teach myself the material. IE: philosophy courses where, instead of attending, I could just read the selected writer's works. One of my highest marks was in a class I never once attended.

[blitzar]

> Hard to tune out of a lecture when you are literally writing everything down, at speed.

Hard to actually consume the contents of a lecture when you are frantically trying to reproduce a powerpoint slide and transcript of what someone is saying in real time.

[logifail]

> Hard to actually consume the contents of a lecture when you are frantically trying to reproduce a powerpoint slide and transcript of what someone is saying in real time

I would postulate that for the majority of people, in the majority of learning situations, writing out notes could (should?) be an integral part of consuming the contents of a lecture.

There's a 2021 paper from the University of Tokyo entitled "Paper Notebooks vs. Mobile Devices: Brain Activation Differences During Memory Retrieval"[0] which is worth reading.

NB: this obviously won't (can't) work for everyone.

[0] https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.634158

[blitzar]

I would postulate that for the majority of people, in the majority of learning situations, listening, consciously should be an integral part of consuming the contents of a lecture.

Making a hand written transcript of every word said - like a court stenographer is not necessarily listening or consuming the things said, especially when they are new or challenging concepts that require the student to apply some critical thinking or form connections with other knowledge.

[icepat]

I think an important addendum here is that the environment of a lab, and the environment of an uncontrolled classroom are different. So it's entirely possible that the actual real-world effects might be even more different than what we see here. While I agree that the effect of writing is well documented, I still find that the external factors around the act of writing get in the way of properly tapping into that added benefit.