Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning

> “A recent study in Frontiers in Psychology monitored brain activity in students taking notes and found that those writing by hand had higher levels of electrical activity across a wide range of interconnected brain regions responsible for movement, vision, sensory processing and memory. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that has many experts speaking up about the importance of teaching children to handwrite words and draw pictures.”

If this "recent study" is the one posted a few weeks ago here, then the methodology was shoddy at best. They compared handwriting to typing but constrained to "one finger typing". Monitoring brain activity on that task is surely flawed. No idea why they did it like that, but I'd wait till better tests are done.

This immediately reminded me of my experience in school. At that time, the teacher encouraged us to take notes in class, and I would desperately copy down what the teacher said, especially the “key points” written on the blackboard, for fear of missing them. But the interesting thing is that I was not “listening” at all at that time. My attention was all on copying, and as a result, I didn't remember what was actually said. After class, I almost never looked at these notes again, they just became a pile of papers in my schoolbag that made me feel guilty. Later I found that this way of learning was not suitable for me. Instead, I can remember content that has stories, pictures, and emotional resonance, rather than copying word for word. So I think that even if “handwriting” is helpful to some people, it does not mean that it is equally effective for everyone. The real challenge may be to help us find a learning method that suits us, rather than forcing a “optimal solution”.

Thinking back to when I was in school, taking notes during class didn’t do anything for me. I would never read them, and the focus on trying to get it all down meant that I wasn’t really listening, simply transcribing.

That said, I didn’t really know how to study. This was fine in high school, I didn’t need to, but in college this hit me hard. I found that if I went through the book and hand wrote a cheat sheet, even for classes that didn’t allow them, the act of making that sheet meant I remembered nearly all of it, so that turned into my study method. Though I’d only spent about 1-2 hours doing this the day before an exam, so I’m not the model of good study habits. I still don’t really know how to study, but writing helped, just not in the context of a classroom during a lecture. I did much better by simply listening. That’s all I did in high school, no notes or home studying. My grades weren’t as good as yours, but decent enough where it wasn’t a problem.

That’s quite impressive, care to share what does work for you?

I was the same. Notes all through year 1 and 2 of university.. Less in year 3, I paid attention, and took part in class. I also recorded the lecture. My grades shot up. In year 4, I took minimal notes, and had my best year.

It's like the paper straw, or learning style stuff. Bad science lead to bad policy.

How is your learning harmed? How have you been disallowed from discovering what works best for you?

It's mostly because learning happens kinda all over the brain. Concepts don't get stored into a specific region. I suspect that by engaging more areas of the brain the concepts have more surface area available to be integrated into.

Well-done on learning how you best learn. A book I recommend to any/all college students is "What Smart Students Know" https://a.co/d/iB8LNNW . It still has, sadly, a very click-baity title and marketing, but it has enormous practical study advice for different subjects.

Wow. I kid you not, we never were offered any extra credit aside from the occasional lab follow-ups.

I found my Humanities classes usually not worth attending due to the large lecture hall environment and so much route-memorization. It was far more time-efficient to speed-listen through the lectures on audio recordings and "attend my class of 1" while taking notes.

I found office hours very hit-or-miss depending on the professor. My electronics professor was a horrid lecturer, but awesome 1-on-1. His office hours ended up being "my class". The exact opposite of my physics professor who was a real showman with whiteboard diagrams and connecting desperate topics during lecture, but an absolute ass in person.

I ended up applying "selective neglect" to a two junior year courses as they weren't in my major, didn't stack, and the entire grade was based on only 3 exams. I just crammed for each exam. It suuucked at the time and was super-stressful, but looking-back it really ended up being the best use of my limited resources.

I do wholeheartedly concur with physically writing down lecture notes and doing as much work as possible "on paper". It helps with both retention and concept synthesis.

I never went to office hours because I felt I had not worked hard enough to bother the professor yet. Just fell further and further behind. Big mistake that haunts me to today, learn from this point!

I’m more skeptical of write “everything” down — depends on how feasible that is (is slides vs chalk board - you can probably copy everything if they are writing on a board which is slower than pen and paper. )

"Writing down everything that goes on the board" only works if you can write and listen at the same time. I cannot. I had to balance having the lesson from class available in my notes and actively hearing and digesting what they were saying. It was not easy. But ultimately having notes was a better strategy for getting homework done, so that's what I prioritized.

> - Give me an app to scan my (mostly neatly-written) notes into text, maybe with hooks so I can train it on my own quirks of notation. Then I can review my notes more easily - even on the go - during the semester, and rearrange & reformat & refactor them.

Some tablets have apps for your first request. If I write by hand so that I can read myself later, my Supernote Nomad can transcript and export to text file. It's not perfect, but with the fast feedback, I can rewrite a word more cleanly when I see that a letter was not recognized.

A few years ago, there were discussions about popular font creations inspired by handwriting. I don't remember them, but a quick search got me these.

https://www.handwrittner.com/

https://www.calligraphr.com/

Apple released a video showing their notes app doing all of the above.

I don’t know if it’s part of their failed ai launch though?

Taking a photo of my handwritten notes and passing it to ChatGPT works 95% of the time. Once in a while it gets a character or two wrong, but for the most part its magic for me.

There's tons of research that connects fine motor control with cognitive development.

Org mode, especially org-roam is for stuff you need to forget, not remember. Org-roam's structured and interlinked information format allows them to be retrieved quickly on demand. A knowledge-base in essence. That frees up your memory for more important stuff.

So, what is the alternative now?