In a study recently published in Science Express, researchers Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, and Daniel M. Wegner, studied how well people remember information when they expect it to be accessible from their computers.
The study results have interesting implications for pedagogy. One outcome of the study was that when subjects knew that information would be available later, they tended not to remember it. Subjects were given a set of trivia facts and asked to type them into a computer. Only half of the subjects were told that the information would be saved. Those who expected the information to be saved, remembered less. They did, however, tend to remember where the information was stored and how to access it.
Although the study examined information retention in the broad sense, what might the findings mean for students who take notes on their computers? Perhaps putting the information into computer memory means that students don’t put it into their own memories. Students who don’t learn and remember the information they receive while in class will have to learn it later, when and if they review their notes.
We might wonder if the “facts” are really so important. Perhaps we’d prefer that students look for the broad structures of knowledge and understand that there are facts to support it--facts that can be looked up at any time in their notes. If that is the case, then we as educators have to devise assessments to evaluate students understanding of broad structures, not an easy task using computer-scored multiple choice questions.
To access the study check DOI 10.1126/science.1207745. For more on the topic of memory in the information age, see Is Google Making Us Stupid? (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/) and check “transactive memory” an idea proposed by Daniel Wegner back in 1985.
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