Studies that show reading from a device and taking notes using a device have been quite influential among educators wanting learners to rely on traditional written materials and traditional handwritten notes. I have always wondered if these studies would replicate especially once learners with daily experience using technology began to move through the educational system.
A soon to be published study of using laptops to take notes will be published this summer in Psychological Science replicating a 2014 study by Mueller and Oppenheimer arguing students would be better off taking notes with paper and pencil rather than using a laptop. As summarized in the following paragraph quoted from this study, this is not what the authors found in their replication study.
“Our direct replication of Mueller and Oppenheimer’s (2014) Study 1 showed that,relative to longhand note-taking, laptop note-taking boosted word count and verbatim overlap with lecture content, but it did not reduce knowledge of the lecture material after a brief delay with no opportunity to study. Results, thus, did not support the idea that longhand note-taking improves performance via better encoding of information.” [manuscript can be found online]
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