To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand - The Atlantic

To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand - The Atlantic

And while researchers have found that laptop use during class-time tends to be distracting—not only do laptop-using students not perform as well academically [memorizing, reproduction], but also they’re less happy with their education—Mueller and Oppenheimer’s research seems to be the first quantitative attempt to compare laptops disconnected from the Internet with plain-old pencil and paper.
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“The people who were taking notes on the laptops don’t have to be judicious in what they write down.”
She thinks this might be the key to their findings: Take notes by hand, and you have to process information as well as write it down. That initial selectivity leads to long-term comprehension.
“I don’t think we’re gonna get more people to go back to notebooks necessarily,” Mueller said. “Tablets might be the best of both worlds—you have to choose what to write down, but then you have the electronic copy.”

Incidentally, the two researchers might look at tablet use next...

Why students using laptops learn less in class even when they really are taking notes - washingtonpost.com

In fact, the study adds to a ton of evidence that for learning, writing is better and that the hand has a “unique relationship with the brain when it comes to composing thoughts and ideas.”
That’s been supported by studies involving brain scans as well. Writing by hand activates the brain in ways that typing doesn’t to improve learning.