BACK TO SCHOOL! Learning squared – the physical and digital combined

Back to school is an enormous event all over Europe, and at Stora Enso we experience this every year: The demand of paper for school work is strong, and relatively stable. Paper clearly still is a fundamental tool in the learning process.

80 percent of our school related paper is supplied from December to July in readiness for the back to school season in September. This goes especially for Central European countries where notebooks are not provided by state but by parents. In some other countries, in the UK or Finland for example, the back to school effect is not as marked, since notebooks and such are provided by the state, and schools are ordering them throughout the year, depending on school terms and budget year.

So, we can see that the paper and pen combination is going strong, and the need hasn't gone away even if digitalisation has taken big steps everywhere in our societies, including schools. The research on learning methods is speaking the same language: paper and pen have a very important role in learning, and there are many areas where they can't be replaced by new technologies.

Brain loves the handwriting process

Research says that writing by hand improves your retention of information. For example, tests have been done in a classroom where half of the class used paper for making notes and half used laptops. What they discovered was that handwriting platform worked much better for absorbing the information, retaining it and recalling it. This is somehow due to how our brain works, even if the science can't at least yet explain why.

My wife is a teacher in primary school and she uses a lot of digital teaching tools, but textbooks and notepads are still in paper form, so she comes often back home with stack of workbooks, and the feedback to kids is handwritten on them. Later on, in the school life and when kids go to university, learning gets more complex and the use of laptops and digital books in learning increases. But even there digital can't fully replace handwriting. The main difficulty to replace paper is this effect that the writing has on the brain in terms of how information is being processed and recalled. Physical writing makes us think harder than digital.

Digitalisation brings advantages and concerns

Paper and pen are powerful, but at the same time it's obvious that new technologies and digitalisation give huge advantages to learning processes and content distribution via self-publishing, eBooks, eLearning, video etc. Digital tools are ideal for sharing content. Content is also more interactive and can be presented in many new and interesting ways that can make the subject come to life, which can motivate students and support their learning.

One issue with digital content is that because it’s so easy to create and distribute by anyone, it doesn’t have the editorial oversight that traditional resources have, and therefore can suffer from problems with credibility. The content might also be selected for the reader by algorithm rather than by an idea that it would challenge students to learn. Another problem is the students' ability to copy and paste digital content so easily. That doesn't challenge students to do their own thinking.

The trick is to combine

In the future, I think we will see digital and physical co-existing and we might see further integration of these two. Between digital and physical it's a bit like a "video killed the radio star" type of thing, which never happened. Radio and TV still exist, but they're used differently now.

I see paper in the learning environment in the same way. I believe in a coexistence and co-operation: I don't believe that digital will ever "kill" paper and pen, but we must adapt to the changing landscape and take the best from both.

Mr. Jonathan Bakewell, VP Office Papers, Stora Enso