With finals season right around the corner, many students tend to go on far too many all-nighters with far too little sleep and way too much caffeine. However, is there really a study method that works the best compared to the rest?
As an avid technology user myself, I can't help but recognize that writing things down somehow always works the best. And while I still use an iPad to write everything down, I've gone as far as getting a "paper-like" screen protector, so my screen mimics a notebook page. So, does writing it down really work?
During this research, it was really interesting to see that a majority of researchers are recommending that people write things down in order to really retain what they are learning. A study by Andrea Beesley and Helen Apthorp for the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL), showed that students who took notes while listening to lectures was strongly correlated to higher achievement in the class. Another study ran an actual test with two groups of students: one group was assigned with the task of taking notes while listening to a lecture while the second simply listened to the lecture. After, they were asked to write an essay about the lecture. The first group scored much higher than the second,
But why does writing it down work? Another study focused on pre-literate children who were learning their letters. There were 3 different groups: those who wrote it, those who typed it, and those who traced it. The group who wrote it while being told what it was, had much higher brain activity than the other two groups. This was because visual and motor skills were seen to work together even after the child was told and shown what to write. However, the children who were just shown and given the task to type or trace it, did not have the same brain activity as the children in the first group. They also did not seem to activate the same parts of the brain.
So in conclusion, many times it is better to just write it down. Is it more work? Maybe. But at the end of the day, while writing it down, you are actively learning by activating the parts of the brain that are associated with both your visual and motors skills.
References:
Beesley, A. D., & Apthorp, H. S. (2010). Classroom instruction that works, second edition: Research report. Denver, CO: Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning.
Beeson, S. A. (1996). The effect of writing after reading on college nursing students' factual knowledge and synthesis of knowledge. Journal of Nursing Education, 35(6), 258–263.
Berninger, V. W., Abbot, R. D., Augsburger, A., & Garcia, N. (2009). Comparison of pen and keyboard transcription modes in children with and without learning disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 32(3), 123–141.
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