TAKING IMAGES OF NOTES BY SMARTPHONE (TIN-S): A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Abstract

It has been observed that rather than taking notes in a lecture traditionally (pen-andpaper method – longhand), university students tend to take a photo of the notes on thewhite/smart board. The purpose of this study is to investigate to what extent English forSpecific Purposes (ESP) university students prefer taking images of notes by smartphone (TINS) to traditional note-taking (TNT), what strategies they employ in using these notesacademically and whether the TIN-S has a positive effect on their test performance. The studyincludes two phases. In Phase 1, an exploratory qualitative approach was used, where tenparticipants were interviewed about their preferences, strategies and reasons for using theirnotes. In Phase 2, a quasi-experimental design was employed. The experimental group (N=21)used the TIN-S only while the control group (N=20) used the TNT only for a period of 4 weeks.The comparison of the test scores showed significant gains for the TIN-S group.