Camp Cursive Returns to UIUC

UIUC’s Rare Book Room, and Janet LeRoy, are teaming up again to offer Camp Cursive to area grade-schoolers. This idea is more than a quaint nostalgia for pre-keyboarding writing experience. Recent research shows that students retain information in more detail when they hand write notes compared to keyboarding. See Mueller, Pam (2014). "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking". Psychological Science, here.

The research shows: Taking notes on laptops rather than in longhand is increasingly common. Many researchers have suggested that laptop note taking is less effective than longhand note taking for learning. Prior studies have primarily focused on students’ capacity for multitasking and distraction when using laptops. The present research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and re-framing it in their own words is detrimental to learning.