In 2023, where digital technology has become an integral part of our daily lives, the idea of using non-digital ways to learn in our education system might seem like a step backwards.
But the rapid digitalization of education is detrimental to learning because it is not as efficient as using pen and paper, and more importantly, it’s dangerously distracting.
Now before you start thinking that I’m advocating for us to completely go back to learning like cavemen, let me clarify myself. Yes, we live in 2023, which means that being proficient with digital technology is mandatory. But when it comes to education, we should still do the majority of the learning the old-fashioned way, through pen and paper.
According to a study conducted by Jane Vincent, a guest teacher and visiting fellow at the London School of Economics & Political Science, university students found it easier to retain information when using caveman tools such as books and handwritten notes as opposed to computers.
The clear advantages of taking handwritten notes in education are further supported by a study conducted by Daniel M. Oppenheimer of Carnegie Mellon University and Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University. The study showed that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand.
The findings of these studies are clear and simple. You retain more information when you take notes by hand as opposed to when you type on a computer. While many people might think that taking notes on a laptop is more efficient since they can type faster than they can write, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are learning more efficiently. Most students who use laptops aren’t taking notes. They are simply transcribing lectures without retaining anything.
Learning by taking handwritten notes forces students to process information and reframe it into their own words since they aren’t going as fast. This very act of writing a concept down has been shown to help with retention, according to multiple studies. If students write concepts by hand they are more likely to remember it than if they just mindlessly typed it in their notes app.
Furthermore, allowing laptops or tablets for learning makes it really convenient for students to get distracted easily when they don’t feel as engaged in class anymore. After all, why would students bother to sit through an agonizing lecture when they can quickly occupy their minds by going to other apps or websites.
Notebooks and paper, on the other hand, don’t provide access to Google or Instagram, forcing students to actually pay attention in class.
In a study published in the Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, nearly half of the 478 students and 36 instructors at the University of Waterloo who participated in the survey indicated they used technology for reasons not related to class.
It doesn’t take a study to realize that when students use technology, most will inevitably get distracted. When adding that to the fact that learning by using a laptop isn’t as efficient, it’s clear that the caveman ways of using pen and paper are here to stay.