A study in the journal Educational Psychology Review (abstract available here) returns to the issue of whether students learn more from taking notes by hand or on a laptop. The study attempted to replicate and in some ways expand a 2014 study that found that taking notes by hand to be superior. The results were not conclusive. “Some trends suggested longhand superiority; however, performance did not consistently differ between any groups,” the study found. Further, a meta-analysis of the research found “small (nonsignificant) effects favoring longhand.” Based on current results, the new study says, “concluding which method is superior for improving the functions of note-taking seems premature.”
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