Effect of Digitized Note Rearrangement on Remembrance

Note taking is a fundamental activity for learning, and many software tools which enable students to take digitized notes have been proposed. Digitized notes are advantageous because they can be easily edited, rearranged, and shared. Although many note-taking tools have been proposed, there has been little research to examine the effect of note rearrangement with a digitized tool in terms of knowledge acquisition. Therefore, we have investigated the effect of note rearrangement on how well lecture content is remembered. By rearrangement, we mean adding, moving, and deleting handwritten notes and typed text. We developed a simple note-taking application and evaluated it through a laboratory experiment with eight participants. The results show that note rearrangement significantly improved how well the participants remembered lecture content. Thus, the effect of rearrangement on remembrance was confirmed with respect to digitized notes.