I never knew they went away. Nearly all of D’s college exams have utilized blue books since she started in 2023.
Probably unreadable because too many students want to become doctors.
Same here
The death of handwriting has been greatly exaggerated
IME, the vast majority of students printed anyway
I did not know they went away either @worriedmomucb. It does make sense as you can’t have AI write your exams in the same way as it can write your papers.
Blue books were a bit of a bane of my existence. I never wanted to be a doctor but my handwriting is basically unreadable (even to me). In my case, I skipped the grade where they taught cursive writing. I skipped because I was years ahead in math and vocabulary, not because I knew how write in cursive. However, in those days, it did not occur to the school or my parents that someone should teach me cursive. But every week, we had a dictation test and I got a D in penmanship for the year as I was trying to print very quickly. In HS, I took a year-long typing course (the football QB, me and about 30 young women most of whom were preparing to be secretaries). Fortunately, 60% of my courses were quantitative (math, statistics, physics, economics) and while the tests were in blue books, the work in proving theorems was not writing intensive. But for other courses, I’m sure my inability to write was painful to graders.
ShawSon is really dyslexic and has a bit of a speech delay. When they tried to teach him cursive, it gave him a massive headache (literally – knocked him out for 24 hours). So the teacher proposed to us that he skip cursive. I think he tends to dictate now but I suspect that his handwriting on a timed test would require work to read.
ShawD is getting a second masters (maybe a certificate) in a hybrid course that is largely online. I think she takes finals online and submits papers online. So they have clearly done away with blue books. The schools guideline is that you can’t use AI to write the paper but you can use it to suggest an organization and prepare an outline. This seems a bit backwards as this seems to say it is OK for AI to do the thinking but not convert it into an essay.
Same for me. Worse still, I hold my pencil/pen incorrectly. I just learned incorrectly I guess and was never able to correct it once the habit had set in. When I was younger, it didn’t pose a huge problem - it was just a bit awkward. But as I got older, it has led to a kind of death grip on my pencil/pen which, after an hour or so of writing as many final exams require, causes terrible cramps in my hand and after a point I must stop, at least for a while to massage my hand. I loved when things moved to computer. I can type for hours in a way that I physically can’t write with my hand. But I still had to deal with the dreaded blue books at the end of every semester….
I’ve actually wondered about students getting small word processors that print. I used one way back in the stone-age of the late 80s/early 90s. Maybe let students get semi-low tech? But then again, another device to buy, I suppose. Also, I recall the one I used in school was pretty loud, so maybe that doesn’t work after all.
My kids had never handwritten a long answer (more than a very short paragraph) to anything until this year (HS class of 2025/2027). They typed essays starting very young.
Handwriting a long paragraph or essay is a very different skill from typing, which professors (who know how to do both) also don’t seem to understand. I don’t mean penmanship either.
I like this idea a lot.
learning to handwrite essays, in particular, is kind of a specific skill not really needed in the real world of any sort that I can think of. Let them type!
Handwriting is actually better for the thinking process. When you handwrite, your brain has to think in whole words and has to select what you write, whereas when you type your brain processes a series of letters, which allows you to go faster but doesn’t allow you to process content/meaning and doesn’t force your brain to highlight and synthesize.
Generally speaking though you’d need to prepare a handwritten outline before you handwrite or type.
I didn’t say it wasn’t better, but ENTIRELY different, and doing it for first time on an EXAM is crazy and an entirely NEW process when one has never done it before.
Most professors grew up doing it. Asking a (nearly) fully formed brain to start doing it now is wild to me, at a high-stakes time. I think it is unfair.
I also do not think it replicates the real world. I have worked in many offices. We collaborate on drafts on everything, including academic papers. Handwriting has little place, for better or worse.
AND if we want college students to start down this path, they need to be TAUGHT how to write this way. from scratch. This may sound dumb, but in my kids’ case, they have zero experience writing a paper on paper. NONE. Academic skills centers need programs on it or something.
Oh, I agree - it’s something that needs to be learned and thus taught - one shouldn’t expect students to magically be able to do it all of a sudden when they’ve never done it (professors may not know students have never done it. I thought HS teste and AP exams were written by hand as well as many in-class college exams…)
Wow, I don’t think my D22 has any problem at all with this. She’s a great writer. Her handwriting is easy to read. She can write an essay like nobody’s business. I’m surprised that so many of your kids would have trouble with this. She has an exam tomorrow for a Shakespeare class that consists of writing two essays in the classroom. I just assumed she would be writing by hand but I’ll confirm that when I talk to her next. She’s also a great typist, of course, but she has fine handwriting too.
To be clear, her handwriting is not beautiful, but perfectly legible, and she can make it more beautiful if she is doing an art project or something.
Asked my D22 and yes the exam essays were handwritten in class.
She did a lot of handwritten stuff in high school too, though not all because she was part of the online school COVID co-hort.
I really don’t see the problem.
At one point in high school or early college my two kids (now 24 and 22) told me that not only could they not write cursive — they couldn’t read it either!
Older kid has since addressed that and now has beautiful cursive hand writing and also transcribes historical documents — often in very archaic handwriting fonts — for the library of congress.
We had to teach our D to write and read cursive at home as her school stopped teaching it when she was in the third grade (she graduated HS in '18).
The vast majority of her exams in HS and early college were hand written in class but it shifted after Covid and then everything was done on the computer.
My favorite exams were bluebook exams – I actually kept some of them.
So if they left for a bit, I’m glad (or would be, were I a student) that they’re back.
Also:
Yes, in case anyone was wondering, I am alive. hehe