The study doesn't show that writing on paper is necessarily more effective than typing notes on a laptop. The study shows that, when typing, students tends to t

The study doesn't show that writing on paper is necessarily more effective than typing notes on a laptop. The study shows that, when typing, students tends to transcribe verbatim, whereas when writing longhand they tend to paraphrase. This extra processing results in better understanding. This does not mean that you can't paraphrase while using a laptop, just that the students in this experimental setting tended to do that, presumably because they could type fast enough to transcribe verbatim and thus did so. So it's really just an issue of note taking style, not the medium.