Pen and paper 'beats computers for retaining knowledge'

Just because people say that they work better one way or another does not mean that they actually do. People are notoriously mistaken about their performance on tasks such as typing versus handwriting and reading off a screen versus reading off of paper. Surveys in this area are virtually useless: you need to actually test if performance really is better one way or the other. Thirty years ago, people who wrote for a living could often be heard say such things as "Oh, I could never compose directly on a computer: I have to write it out longhand first and then type it up". The same people now routinely compose on computers. In tests of retention of information, any empirical study ought to take the long view. Retention in memory of facts needed for an examination coming up in a few weeks might well be better with handwritten notes, but if one wants those notes to be findable and useable several decades later, digital text is measurably better. Gabriel Egan

It's a few years since I wrote a paper around this subject but I believe the principles still apply that the act of handwriting notes improves the short term retention and understanding of the material. This then should be followed up by regular review of the material. The first stage of that review could be transcribing the handwritten notes into an electronic format. Here are some references I used previously. I'm sure there are other more recent ones. Brazeau, G.a., 2006. Handouts in the classroom: is note taking a lost skill? American journal of pharmaceutical education, 70(2), 38. Clerehan, R., 1995. Taking it down: Notetaking practices of L1 and L2 students. English for specific purposes, 14(2), 137–155. Dunkel, P.A., 1988. Academic Listening and Lecture Notetaking for Ll / L2 Students : The Need to Investigate the Utility of the Axioms of Good Notetaking. TESL Canada Journal, 6(1), 11-26. Kobayashi, K., 2005. What limits the encoding effect of note-taking? A meta-analytic examination. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 30(2), 242-262. Makany, T., Kemp, J. & Dror, I.E., 2009. Optimising the use of notetaking as an external cognitive aid for increasing learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40(4), 619-635.

It's all about habituation! Habituate on paper or print and your addiction to either trumps everything else. The corrolary is true of electronics . Neither has addictive properties intrinsic to it ..., just familiarity out of regularity and the hook is on !