Neither mode comes close to real-life conditions. Students were instructed to write in cursive without lifting the pen from the screen. And they were only allowed to write with their right index finger.
Critics also question whether increased brain activity is evidence of better learning. Increased brain activity can also be interpreted as a sign that handwriting is slower and more demanding than typing. we don’t know
I contacted Audrey van der Meer, one of the co-authors of the Norwegian study, who leads a neuroscience laboratory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. She pointed out that her critics promote the use of keyboards in education and therefore may not be impartial. But she acknowledged that her study didn’t test whether the students learned anything.
Van der Meer is conducting a new experiment that involves actual training with 140 teenagers. She had high school students watch a recorded lecture. Half of them were randomly assigned to take notes by hand using a digital pen and touch screen, and the other half typed their notes. Then they all took the same exam, graded by the school’s teachers.
So far, she has noticed clear differences in note-taking styles. Those who wrote their notes wrote significantly more words, often transcribing parts of the lecture verbatim. They didn’t make any drawings. Those who used a digital pen mainly wrote key words and short sentences and made two drawings on average.
According to van der Meer, students who use the keyboard write down everything the teacher says “because they can.” But, she said in an email, “information seems to enter through the ears and, without any form of processing, exit through the fingertips.” She added that when you take notes by hand, “it’s impossible to write everything down, so students have to process the incoming information, summarize it and connect it to the knowledge they already have.” This helps “new information stick better, leading to better retention.”
Van der Meer said he could not share the exam results with me yet as he was still analyzing them. She explained that there were “many confounding variables” that made it difficult to tell whether those who used handwritten notes performed better on the exam.
Even pro-typist scholars admit that handwriting is important. Previous research showed that writing letters by hand, compared to typing them, helps young children are learning their letters much better. A 2015 study found that adults were better able to recall words in a memory game when they first wrote them by hand rather than typing them. and a 2010 book chapter documents positive associations between writing words and being able to read them.
While there is fairly strong evidence that handwriting can help children learn their letters and new words, there is less evidence that handwriting helps us absorb new information and ideas. This does not mean that the Norwegian neurologists are wrong. But we still need proof.
I would also add that not all learning is created equal. Learning to write is different from learning Spanish vocabulary. There may be times when writing is the perfect way to learn something, and other times when handwriting is the perfect way. Also, learning something involves a lot more than writing or handwriting, and the method we use to take notes may end up being of little consequence compared to how we study our notes afterwards.
Meanwhile, where did I put my notebook?
This story about handwriting vs. writing was written by Jill Barshey and produced by The Hechinger Reportan independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up forEvidence points and others Hechinger Bulletins.
