The Pen Is Mightier than the Keyboard

My students tend to use their laptops in classes. I have forwarded this very interesting article by Mueller & Oppenheimer (2014) to them. It was published in one of the most influential journals in psychology and contains good arguments to stop this practice. First, the authors summarize existing research that finds that laptops serve as distractions. Students typically self-report a belief that laptops in class are beneficial. Even when they admit that laptops distract them, they believe the benefits outweigh the costs. Research finds that students using laptops are not on task, show lower academic performance, and are less satisfied with their education than students who do not use laptops. Second, the authors’ own results suggest that “even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing”. They found that “students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand”.

Mueller, P., & Oppenheimer, D. (2014). The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard. Psychological Science, 25 (6), 1159-1168 DOI: 10.1177/0956797614524581