The vast majority of students rely on laptops – and increasingly AI – to help with their university work. But a small number are going analogue and eschewing tech almost entirely in a bid to re-engage their brains
The vast majority of students rely on laptops – and increasingly AI – to help with their university work. But a small number are going analogue and eschewing tech almost entirely in a bid to re-engage their brains
That’s only true if you don’t refer to your notes. Reviewing notes has a much stronger correlation to remembering than how those notes are generated.
I had a math teacher in highschool that allowed us make a “cheat sheet” during tests – it had to be hand written on an index card. I discovered that if I actually made a “cheat sheet” I rarely needed to look at it. It’s the same for hand-written lists when I’m shopping.
For a lot of people there’s something about actually writing information down (by hand) the makes it “stick” better in memory.
And there are studies about just that. However, when you review your notes, it matters a lot less what method you used to create the notes.
If you’re unlikely to actually study your notes, handwriting is better. If you’re likely to study them, use whatever is most convenient for studying.
Yeah, and just handwriting notes in class and expecting to not have to study and remember everything is only going to work for classes that aren’t information dense. Expecting to do that for classes like physiology or anatomy isn’t going to work unless someone has amazing memory.
Not many people who would be able to list all the proper nerve and muscle locations and body mechanisms just because they sat and handwrote their notes or whatever. At a certain point few remember and it comes heavily down to studying outside of classes, and having good notes that can be referenced to make study material off of is what makes the difference.
For rote memorization, sure.
I’m more talking about conceptual things, say, in math. You don’t need to memorize it, but you do need to remember how it works. For that, I find the textbook to be the most helpful, and class time is to help understand the textbook. For that type of thing, I don’t need to reference my notes in the future, I mostly need to pay attention in class and revisit the material again later to make sure I got it. Handwriting can help with that type of retention.
Math I put more on the side of not having to even need notes, but just understand the formula and it involves practice by doing different problems over and over so you can solve problems on exams. You can just skip class completely and solve problems from the textbook and be good to go. Math is more similar to like learning to do a jump shot and mastering it. Practice is the way to go.
So I don’t put in the same category of classes that are less problem solving or less abstract concepts like philosophy.
Ones that are specific things that need to be recalled with little room for reinterpretation are ones where handwriting things isn’t enough, since the answer is either right or wrong. So memorization outside of class is heavy requirement. There’s just no shortcut to those type of classes and too much info to retain unless someone has a naturally great memory.