Neither mode comes close to real conditions. Students had to write in cursive without removing the pen from the screen. And they were only allowed to type with their right index finger.
Critics also question whether high brain activity is evidence of better learning. Increased brain activity could also be interpreted as a sign that handwriting is slower and more taxing than typing. We don’t know.
I contacted Audrey van der Meer, one of the co-authors of the Norwegian study who runs a neuroscience lab 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 admitted that her study didn’t test whether the students learned anything.
Van der Meer is leading a new experiment which involves real learning with 140 adolescents. She had the high school students watch a recorded lecture. Half of them were randomly assigned to take notes by hand, using a digital pen and touchscreen, while the other half typed their notes. Then they all took the same exam marked by the school’s teachers.
So far, she’s noticed clear differences in note-taking styles. Those who typed their notes wrote many 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 produced an average of two drawings.
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 go in through the ears and, without any form of processing, out through the fingertips.” She added that when taking notes by hand, “it is impossible to write everything down, so students have to process the information received, summarize it and relate it to the knowledge they already have.” This helps “new information stick better, leading to better retention.”
Van der Meer said she could not yet share the results of the exam with me because she was still analyzing them. She explained that there are “many confounding variables” that make it difficult to determine whether those who used handwritten notes performed better on the exam.
Even typing scientists admit that handwriting is important. Previous research has shown that writing letters by hand, rather than typing them, helps young children learn their letters better. A 2015 study found that adults were better able to remember words in a memory game when they first wrote them by hand instead of typing them. And a 2010 book chapter documented positive associations between writing words and the ability to read them.
While there is some pretty compelling 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 is not to say that Norwegian neuroscientists are wrong. But we still need proof.
I would also add that not all learning is the same. Learning to write is different from learning Spanish vocabulary. There may be times when typing is the ideal way to learn something and other times when handwriting is. Furthermore, learning something involves much more than just typing or writing by hand, and the method we use to take notes might ultimately be of little importance compared to how we study our notes by hand. following.
In the meantime, where have I stored my notebook?
This story about handwriting or typing was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger reportan independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Register forProof points and others Hechinger Newsletters.
