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I’m 40 and forcing students to do handwritten essays during tests has always been stupid. Typing is much faster, why bottleneck ideas by forcing handwriting?
by ant6n 4mo ago
I’m 40 and forcing students to do handwritten essays during tests has always been stupid. Typing is much faster, why bottleneck ideas by forcing handwriting?
- aetch 4mo agoBecause students aren’t AI and aren’t measured by tokens/s
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- dzink 4mo agoFill the room with typewriters.
- walrus01 4mo agoTypewriters are an expensive and niche item these days, due to no longer being manufactured, and the good ones being collected by weird nerds. Sort of like buying a 40-year-old vinyl turntable that is in good and usable condition.
- kalium-xyz 4mo agoYou cant type fast on them either
- robocat 4mo agoYou mean on mechanical typewriters? It would be hard to learn to press keys slowly and avoid rollover unless using single finger typing: key travel was a long way on old typewriters.
- redsocksfan45 4mo ago[dead]
- dzink 4mo agoIf I build you a custom device that receives questions from a central computer and lets the user plug in whatever keyboard they want via bluetooth or usb to only type and answer the questions (ability to edit the text and submit when ready). The central computer can receive all the questions submitted to any of these devices connected to it via wifi or cloud. How much would pay per device? Would you pay for a subscription?
- walrus01 4mo agoI think this can already be implemented through a fairly mundane thin client approach, such as Dell/Wyse type thin clients, citrix stuff, or an ordinary x86-64 desktop PC setup with an absolute barebones OS that connects a graphical desktop session to something centralized over a LAN.
- dzink 4mo agoOr you can do a much cheaper tiny esp32 typewriter with a basic display and a usb for a keyboard. But who wants cheap for education.
- fn-mote 4mo agoFrankly, the problem is finding someone with the knowledge to administer it. Initial cost is almost certainly not a factor; the components could be so old as to be free.
- hoppyhoppy2 4mo agoManual typewriters are no longer being manufactured. Several brands of electric and electronic typewriters are still are being made.
- cesarb 4mo ago> Fill the room with typewriters. Playing devil's advocate: one reason I'm good at typing on computers is that I learned on typewriters, which need much more force for each key press, especially the little fingers. Someone who learned on computer keyboards won't have trained the muscles on their fingers as much, and will have a hard time pressing the outer keys strongly enough (and if you press the keys too lightly, the mechanism won't hit the ink ribbon with enough force to transfer the ink to the paper).
- wtrwqyw 4mo agoElectric typewriters were pretty widespread by the 60-70s or so it’s just that they don’t have quite as much “retro” appeal these days ( eg like cassettes vs vinyl)
- cesarb 3mo agoI saw plenty of mechanical typewriters by the 80s/90s, when I learned typing at school. A relative of mine also taught a typewriter course, with several different mechanical typewriter models. Everyone I know who had a typewriter had a mechanical one. I don't think I've ever seen an electric typewriter in person; I've only read about them in the Internet. They don't seem to have been that widespread to me.
- forgetfreeman 4mo agoI'm 50. Optimizing testing for speed is goofy. The point of the exercise is to demonstrate the student's understanding of the material, not their WPM.
- xp84 4mo agoSure but given any length of time, which does tend to be finitely allocated for a test (if for no other reason than the prof or proctor does have other places to be eventually), having to hand write is slower and harder to revise, which means it's harder to get that full, understanding-demonstrating essay, done and polished.
- dwattttt 4mo agoIf your test is bottlenecked on the speed it takes to write it, you're testing writing skills. I also challenge that "hand writing is harder to revise"; again, why is the speed it takes to write it at all relevant?
- xp84 4mo ago> challenge "hand writing is harder to revise" What? Suppose you want to fix the opening of your essay. Best case it's pencil and you can erase some, but worst case you have a longer sentence you want to put in there so you can't do it without scribbling all over and making a mess of the page. Word processors let you edit. How is this controversial? > why is the speed it takes to write it at all relevant? Okay, so from first principles: 1. Time is finite, we will all perish 2. Unless you are doing open book, needs to be supervised (proctored / or prof/TA is there) 3. That person is paid for a shift 4. That shift must end 5. Therefore, anything that enables people to write faster is good for the students, who can get more paper written, or the paper better revised, during the finite time available for writing.
- 1123581321 4mo agoIt’s fine to erase or use scratch paper on an essay test. You don’t write the test to fill the 60 minute slot. You time it so students are able to finish early if they’re really good. Slow ones need the whole time but can still do well if they understand the material being tested.
- ThrowawayR2 4mo agoA lecture hall full of click-click-click isn't going to be conducive to concentrating on a test.
- kalium-xyz 4mo agoI had tons of exams like that. Its not an issue as the computers simply do not have loud mechanical keyboards connected
- rsanek 4mo agoIf you can't concentrate while people are working on computers near you, I don't think you'll do well in any workplace that is based around knowledge work.
- anigbrowl 4mo agoThis is why I prefer working alone at night and am massively more productive. In any case, what's being tested in an exam setting is one's understanding of the course material, not whether they are a good fit for your idea of a normal workplace.
- duskdozer 4mo agoWe're no longer limited by this and can avoid the productivity drag by universally permitting remote work.
- bjackman 4mo ago... Including a university. Literally everywhere you work as a student is serenaded by keyboard sounds.
- account42 3mo agoNot every company is an open office hellscape.
- eviks 4mo agoChange the keyboards to silent. Allow headphones. Still beats the collective waste of forcing to hand write
- yulker 4mo agobecause writing speed isn't the bottleneck for what is being tested
- z0ltan 4mo ago[dead]
- account42 3mo agoIf the writing part is anywhere close to being a bottleneck then the exam is just too easy.