| Yeah it makes no sense that it would. It's probably measuring secondary effects like effort put in to take the notes and tools proficiency. Most peoples, even "digital natives" are much worse at inputting freeform information on a computer in the first place. The hardware/software to make this possible has only been recently available. Basically before tablet proliferation, free form input was a major waste of time at best ; so it has only been 10 years (barely) that you could argue the tools were sufficient. And even then it only works if you buy a sufficiently expensive tool that is sufficiently fast and precise (started making sense at first iPad Air era). So of course, they are comparing people using a skill they had decade(s) to hone versus a skill that can only have been acquired very recently. And I think it doesn't make sense to have pure typing vs pure handwriting, it often all the little things around the written language that help tremendously learning and recalling. The way the information is architected with various levels of "call to attention", small drawings, schemas, etc... A handwritten wall of notes is way more useless than a typed wall of notes because at least in the second case, it's gonna be easier to restructure it and make it much more "parseable". Then again, having to re-write it would increase the time/effort spent on it and translate as a "better learning". If you matched the time/effort on the typing part I doubt you would see a difference. But the reality is that the guy who typed stuff did it for efficiency in the first place so it's more likely than he won't spend as much time re-reading the notes which of course will translate in worse learning whatever that means. In the end all of this goes back to nonsense that learning things "by heart" is useful and a useful way to grade/rank peoples competence/capacity for comprehension. Handwriting like learning by heart is something that favors women (they are much more applied and they generally have much better handwriting) and it is not even surprising that this is pushed as truth. |