With the exam season fast approaching many students will be using laptops for note-taking and revision.
But a new study by two US academics has found that even though taking notes on a laptop is faster and more legible, taking notes the old-fashioned way is a more effective way of processing, understanding and memorising information.
Dr Pam Mueller of Princeton University and Dr Daniel Oppenheimer of UCLA asked college students to listen to the same lectures, some using laptops to take notes and others writing in long-hand.
They discovered that although the students who used laptops took more copious notes than their peers, they tended to transcribe content “mindlessly”.
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