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A comment on Students learn more effectively from print textbooks than screens, study says.

Re:Students learn more effectively from print textbooks than... by manmal on Thursday October 19, 2017 @04:08AM (#15506227)
My guess is that this is related to spatial memory. A lot of memorizing techniques somehow use space to anchor memories on; eg the old Greeks used to walk down the city’s main street while rehearsing speeches, and anchoring topics spatially onto the buildings.

A textbook is not exactly a street you are walking down, but it does have a certain physical place for every topic, and our brain can anchor it there, like „let me see, differential equations are in the last third.. ah there is this other topic, I know that diff equations come right after that“.

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Re:Students learn more effectively from print textbooks than... by spongeb00b on Thursday October 19, 2017 @04:58AM (#15506452)
You've conveyed the exact problem I have with ebooks for any kind of technical reference. I read novels in ebook formats and have no problem with there, but after trying several O'Reilly and other publishers works I just found somehow unable to take in the information I was reading. Quickly scanning through to look something up is just impossible and built-in search functions are just miserable.
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Re:Students learn more effectively from print textbooks than... by randomstudent on Thursday October 19, 2017 @06:19AM (#15506734)
This is a major problem for me when reading digital material, especially if not on something like a PC. On the comuter I can at least Ctrl+F for the part I'm after.
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Re:Students learn more effectively from print textbooks than... by js8 on Thursday October 19, 2017 @06:16AM (#15506721)
I have noticed a similar problem. Our company started to offer information in "wiki" format instead of traditional manuals, but I still prefer manuals and get confused quite quickly on the wiki. I think it's because the hyperlinked nature of the wiki makes it harder to remember where things are.
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