The ongoing “placing”of the notes is then another work process that takes time; but also an activity thatgoes beyond the sheer monotony of reading and, as it were, incidentally trains thememory.

Interesting. I suspect it depends on how you use it. Students with a high level of metacognitive capacity could use this to their advantage. Teaching (particularly the Whole-Part-Whole Reteaching technique) is a very useful technique for active recall (don't forget expanding gap spacing and interleaving); it forces you to use all aspects of your cognitive schemas to provide a clear and understandable explanation of what you know to have others understand it. When you struggle to explain it to others or they ask questions and you cannot answer it (or explain it in different ways) you have identified knowledge gaps.These recall techniques serve not only to strengthen the neural connections between concepts in the cognitive schemata (Hebbian plasticity; re-encoding benefits) but, perhaps more importantly, also to identify knowledge gaps making you know what to focus on when improving your knowledge mastery (maybe even what information to drill, depending on the information type).