3 ms·

If 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,

If 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 ago
  It’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.
  - squibonpig 4mo ago
    I don't generally get why tests are designed to rush a student. Is speed a proxy for understanding?
    - sethammons 4mo ago
      Speed is part of fluency. Fluency and understanding feel related
    - 1123581321 4mo ago
      I meant to say they usually aren’t a rush for non-ace students, just a full hour. You have to work diligently, though. Competitive tests excepted, obviously.
    - kalenx 4mo ago
      Well, to some extent, yes. Of course the literal number of works you can write per minute is not, but: - someone with a good understanding will often come to a concise, clear answer while someone struggling will produce a convoluted paragraph. - the way to get to the result will vary depending on your understanding (e.g., are you blindly applying some method or understanding what's going on). For instance, "hey, this is a vector field, I don't need to evaluate this complex integral, I just need to compute the difference between the start and endpoint of the curve!". Both answers will be correct, but one denotes a much better actual understanding (and will take way less time).
    - xp84 4mo ago
      I literally explained this above. No one is trying to rush the students or punish the slowest writers. It's because time is finite and having tests sized so that it's impossible for the slowest test-taker to even feel rushed means that the test time period needs to be much longer. That means higher costs for paying the proctor and makes them much harder to schedule since you need enough very long non-overlapping test periods that every standard class scheduling slot has a corresponding exam period (and think of midterms -- those often have to fit in a standard class period, or else if someone takes longer, that might blow through another class).
- freehorse 4mo ago
  Re "hand writing is harder to revise", I never had an issue with erasing words or parts of the text and using asterisks, end footnotes, the margins and whatever free space available (with arrows or not) to do revisions in written exams. Nobody complained and afaik it was fairly standard to do where I studied, as long as your exam itself was actually legible. Granted, I refer to math-related exams not essays on literature or philosophy where form may have mattered more. On the other hand, I cannot imagine writing any math during an exam on a computer.
  - __d 4mo ago
    I would often do a bullet point summary/outline of my answer on the paper. That would have arrows and insertions and crossed-out stuff everywhere -- it was usually a mess. But then I'd use that to write the actual text answer, and consequently, it was mostly clean. I'd still have to cross stuff out or add a phrase between the lines every so often, but once the basic structure was done, that was mostly unnecessary. And if I was ever pressed for time, I'd usually get part marks for the outline anyway. Depending on the subject, I'd sometimes race through the questions doing just the outlines, and then come back to write the full text as a complete second pass. To be fair, this wasn't creative writing. I think it'd be harder when the expression is the content.
- dwattttt 4mo ago
  > 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. I think you're missing some logic in there somewhere. If a student fills in as many pages as they can, each with the number 1 written on it as large as possible, was this a good conclusion? The quantity of writing is not a good metric. EDIT: to give a closer to reality example, an essay that's 4 times longer than a competing essay does not make it better.
  - xp84 4mo ago
    Not sure why you're getting so hyperbolic. The point isn't to write as much as possible, it's to be able to get all of your points across. I'm not talking about where the "answer" is 10 words long, I was thinking of a general essay. Longer isn't better, however, half an essay may be pretty useless to get a good grade, and if you can write twice as fast, you have a much less chance of running out of time, for any quantity of "time" without having to allocate hours, wasting more proctor time and making exams harder to schedule. Because like someone else said, they don't impose a time limit to screw the slowest-writing students, they do it for practicality (my above comment was trying to explain that).

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 ago
It’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.
- squibonpig 4mo ago
  I don't generally get why tests are designed to rush a student. Is speed a proxy for understanding?
  - sethammons 4mo ago
    Speed is part of fluency. Fluency and understanding feel related
  - 1123581321 4mo ago
    I meant to say they usually aren’t a rush for non-ace students, just a full hour. You have to work diligently, though. Competitive tests excepted, obviously.
  - kalenx 4mo ago
    Well, to some extent, yes. Of course the literal number of works you can write per minute is not, but: - someone with a good understanding will often come to a concise, clear answer while someone struggling will produce a convoluted paragraph. - the way to get to the result will vary depending on your understanding (e.g., are you blindly applying some method or understanding what's going on). For instance, "hey, this is a vector field, I don't need to evaluate this complex integral, I just need to compute the difference between the start and endpoint of the curve!". Both answers will be correct, but one denotes a much better actual understanding (and will take way less time).
  - xp84 4mo ago
    I literally explained this above. No one is trying to rush the students or punish the slowest writers. It's because time is finite and having tests sized so that it's impossible for the slowest test-taker to even feel rushed means that the test time period needs to be much longer. That means higher costs for paying the proctor and makes them much harder to schedule since you need enough very long non-overlapping test periods that every standard class scheduling slot has a corresponding exam period (and think of midterms -- those often have to fit in a standard class period, or else if someone takes longer, that might blow through another class).
freehorse 4mo ago
Re "hand writing is harder to revise", I never had an issue with erasing words or parts of the text and using asterisks, end footnotes, the margins and whatever free space available (with arrows or not) to do revisions in written exams. Nobody complained and afaik it was fairly standard to do where I studied, as long as your exam itself was actually legible. Granted, I refer to math-related exams not essays on literature or philosophy where form may have mattered more. On the other hand, I cannot imagine writing any math during an exam on a computer.
- __d 4mo ago
  I would often do a bullet point summary/outline of my answer on the paper. That would have arrows and insertions and crossed-out stuff everywhere -- it was usually a mess. But then I'd use that to write the actual text answer, and consequently, it was mostly clean. I'd still have to cross stuff out or add a phrase between the lines every so often, but once the basic structure was done, that was mostly unnecessary. And if I was ever pressed for time, I'd usually get part marks for the outline anyway. Depending on the subject, I'd sometimes race through the questions doing just the outlines, and then come back to write the full text as a complete second pass. To be fair, this wasn't creative writing. I think it'd be harder when the expression is the content.
dwattttt 4mo ago
> 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. I think you're missing some logic in there somewhere. If a student fills in as many pages as they can, each with the number 1 written on it as large as possible, was this a good conclusion? The quantity of writing is not a good metric. EDIT: to give a closer to reality example, an essay that's 4 times longer than a competing essay does not make it better.
- xp84 4mo ago
  Not sure why you're getting so hyperbolic. The point isn't to write as much as possible, it's to be able to get all of your points across. I'm not talking about where the "answer" is 10 words long, I was thinking of a general essay. Longer isn't better, however, half an essay may be pretty useless to get a good grade, and if you can write twice as fast, you have a much less chance of running out of time, for any quantity of "time" without having to allocate hours, wasting more proctor time and making exams harder to schedule. Because like someone else said, they don't impose a time limit to screw the slowest-writing students, they do it for practicality (my above comment was trying to explain that).