Writing for Learning – How Written Assignments Facilitate Learning!

While technology dawns upon us and power point presentations and excel sheets take over the traditional “chalk and duster” in the classrooms, a rising concern amongst the educators remains as to what effect this change in the way of imparting education will have on the learning and memory of the students. These days, it is a common phenomenon of using electronic mediums to teach students of all ages and in some cases, the documents used are shared with the students’ posts the lecture, allowing students to not take notes during the class. It is a good thing that the students are free to pay attention to what their teacher has to say, but does it affect their learning as well? Let's take a look:rnWhile the thought troubles psychologists and educators around the world, there have been multiple researches conducted to find out if not writing things down have any effects on the memory and learning process of the students. In almost all the experiments that were done to test the effect of writing on learning, students were divided in two groups. Both groups are given a similar assignment wherein they are made to hear an audio clip or given a lecture on a certain topic and then the students are asked to write down what they remembered. While one batch is asked to make notes during the lecture, the other group sits without writing anything down during the lecture.rnThe findings have been such that the batch that wrote things down while listening was able to remember better than those who did not write things down. Also, those students were able to remember more facts and important points than the other batch, thereby proving that writing things down helps us remember better and improves our learning as well.rnWriting things down triggers the process in our mind that connects the parts of our brains that are involved in thinking, memory, understanding and comprehension. This enables us to understand things better and remember them for a longer period of time.rnBased on the above experiments, the role of written assignments and project works gains more importance in our education and which is why, students at all stages are made to do written assignments as a compulsory part of each curriculum. The benefits of written assignments are as follows: - Better Understanding Of The SubjectrnWriting assignments allow the students to give extra attention and focus to the given topic and in their effort to make the assignment, students often research the related topics as well and with their own interest and motivation. When writing them down, students make sure they remember what they have learned and also gain better understanding of the topic and the subject as a whole. - Strengthening MemoryrnWriting down triggers the activity in our brains which enables the brain to process multiple actions at a time, including the memory. The more we exercise our memory, the sharper it gets. Hence, writing assignments will help us remember things better and for longer. - Help Us Think BetterrnWriting things down encourages students to think deeper and better and bring out new and creative thoughts from the depth of their hearts and brains. - Preserves Information for Future Written assignments mean that you have preserved what you have learnt for the future and at any point in time, if you ever need to look again, you will always have the required information, and only because you wrote it down.rnWhile it may seem like a boring and time consuming idea to take notes and write assignments , it is a very easy and certain way to facilitate learning and thinking. Asking students to write encourages their cognitive skills to be brought into play and preserves the information deep down in their thoughts for the future to take advantage of it. Writing- even a little bit will facilitate learning.