Digital Smarts - Laptop or Longhand?

A paper entitled How Much Mightier Is the Pen Than the Keyboard for Note-Taking? A Replication and Extension of Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014), discussed in the The Chronicle of Higher Education shows that students who take notes by hand score better on factual questions compared to those taking notes on laptops. Researchers say their conclusions do not favor one method over the other and instead say note-taking methods are different and should be left up to student discretion. The  original study referenced was conducted in 2014 and showed students who took notes on a laptop may have taken more notes but had less retention of material. If this a topic of discussion at your school, you might want to see what the new research has to say.