It's a new semester, which means it's time to shill for the handwriting industrial complex.
In study after study, students who set aside devices learn better. The evidence has mounted even further since @dynarski's 2017 article
@natematias @dynarski The obvious problem is the continued use of large lecture hall formats for education. I think that we should refer this analysis back to the times of Socrates, who recognized that the act of writing things down interfered with face to face communication and the development of memory. We, of course, highly value great print libraries of accumulated knowledge. We now have more immediate access to even vaster online resources. These resources allow us to utilize way more accumulated knowledge than we retain in our memories at one time. Certainly students can use an in person expert guide, (the professor) and not simply be given access to the appropriate book, research documents or websites. Do laptops make for for more diversion than doodling on paper while supposedly taking notes? Maybe so, but I think that ought to be actually irrelevant. Large scale lecture halls were actually never the right answer.
@Gaythia Justin Reich's book "Failure to Disrupt" has been clarifying for me, as someone who was initially very optimistic about the power of technology and behavioral science to scale and personalize effective education
@natematias I agree that lack of needed financing for education is a huge impediment.
@Gaythia I agree it's a tough one. In the areas where I teach involving technology and AI, demand from students has outstripped the supply of university educators for a long time, given competition for PhDs from the tech industry and shrinking state budgets for higher ed. Given that attempts at personalized digital education haven't worked, the course lecture is one of the few elastic tools we have for inclusive education