Hello, I need some quick feedback and some references if anyone has any . My daughter took a final for a dl course and it had to be handwritten. Her actual handwriting is horrible. Her grade was dismal and she questioned if the handwriting had an impact. The school is letting her defend her final essays. Ideas? Hille (I previously posted this in off topic)
I sympathise with your daughter. My handwriting is horrible and the university I am with refuses to mark examinations if the handwriting is poor. I spent most of my time in exams worrying if the handwriting can be read and, under pressure, it does not improve.I thought using a heavy pen would make it better but it had the reverse effect. I find that a lighter biro is better for me. It sounds like the university she is with is reasonable and sympathetic to her predicament. I do not think many would be like her university. I have no real solutions and I will watch this post with interest.
Hille-- Here is one paper I found on the topic: http://corax.cwrl.utexas.edu/cac/archives/v2/2_4_html/2_4_04_Mcallister.html I once had a professor claim that when identical typewritten and handwriiten exams were submitted to the same grader (with enough time to "forget" between submissions), the typewritten papers received 5 to 10 more points out of 100 than the handwritten essays. Alas, he did not cite a reference. One of my law professors said he strongly suggests typing the bar exam essays, because an essay that "looks better" and is "easy to grade" will score higher. I don't know if any of this is true, although in my teaching days, I much preferred typewritten papers. I would like to believe that this did not affect the grades, but never formally studied the relationship. Christopher
Oregon just had a lawsuit on this issue. It said that handwritten exams are biased towards learning disabled students. It said there is no beearing on the subject matter, so there should always be the option to type, if this is possible. Look up the findings on any law website, or a search on learning disability and Oregon. It is very recent.
Thank you. Hello and thanks for the leads. I will suggest she reference them when she receives her graded paper. She currently is going to type the essays exactly as she wrote them and then defend her ideas. All ideas sent our way are greatly appreciated. Hille
I don't see how handwritten exams would benefit learning disabled students. It's been my personal experience (not emipirically validated) that there is no advantage to doing an essay type of exam in handwriting (I did so on 30 June 2003, and trust me, it was not a benefit in the least!) A computer-based essay exam might provide benefits to students if the word processor or other program that was used to administer the exam had spell checking and grammar checking features enabled.
I might have said this differently than the intent. Many learning disabled students have a hard time with hand written exams, though thtat might not be a part of the exam. Some thing that if an exam is in history, it should be given via a word processor, to make it even between all students, since the exam is based on the knowledge of history, not handwritting. Hope I said this right, sorry for the confusion.
