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Note-taking is a practical way to acquire and retain information while saving time and effort. However, with the advancement in modern technology, note-taking is changing, and for many, it brings up the question over which medium to use to take notes.

Using Pen and Paper, Not Laptops, Boosts Memory: Writing notes helps recall concepts, ability to understand.

Over a decade, faculty at Integral have observed that those who hand-write notes claim that it provides flexibility and control, with the ability to include various formats and annotations often limited by word processing formats. However, typing eliminates the possibility of losing the notes and handouts while providing organization and clear legibility.

“Taking notes with a pen and paper, rather than a laptop, leads to higher quality learning”, points out Prof. Syed Zaheer Hasan Abidi, Dean, Humanities& Social Sciences. He explicated that writing is a better strategy to store and internalize ideas in the long haul.

Writing by hand allows the brain to receive feedback from a person’s motor actions, and this specific feedback is different than those received when touching and typing on a keyboard. According to Dr. Mohd. Zafar Idrees, Dean, Integral Institute of Medical Sciences and Research , “the movements involved when handwriting leaves a motor memory in the sensor motor part of the brain, which helps the person recognize letters and establish a connection between reading and writing”. Dr. Idrees points out that writing by hand strengthens the learning process, while typing may impair it. The researchers believe since writing by hand takes longer than typing on a keyboard, the temporal aspect may influence the learning process. The old fashioned note taking method of pen and paper boosts memory and the ability to understand concepts and facts too.

Integral professors contemplates that the students who handwrote their notes generally learned better than those who typed them into a laptop.

So the Formula is quite simple “Write to Learn”.