Dunedin student Stacey Fletcher weighs the pros and cons of laptops versus pen and paper in examinations.
It is hard to find a student at university today who does not have a laptop. When you scan a lecture theatre you could probably count on one hand the number of people using pen and paper to record their notes, while everyone else smashes away on their keyboard, terrified of missing even a few words of the lecturer's 50-minute session.
The widespread use of technology among not only students but also society in general begs the question of whether students should be allowed to type their university exams rather than handwrite them.
At least twice a year, exam time comes around, and all of the semester's work is stored away on the hard drive of a laptop. You study with the notes you have typed up and then, eventually, it comes to the exam and you feel like it's been an eternity since you last had to hold a pen for longer than it takes to sign your name. You are, however, expected to write non-stop for three hours for each exam.
There is much debate on whether students should be able to complete exams on laptops, and many see it as unnecessary. Personally, I would agree, and find it much easier to get thoughts into words when using pen and paper, but I dare say the majority of laptop users are just as able to string together a decent typed sentence as a written one, and would appreciate the speed at which they could do it if given a keyboard over a pen.
Edinburgh University officials have mentioned in one article they believe it is unfair for students to be required to use pen and paper for exams when most of their course work has been done using a keyboard. As a result, some students are able to opt for a typed exam instead of handwritten one. This method has been credited with accommodating the changing times, and acknowledging the need to make room for technology in a society that so heavily depends on it.
There are obvious advantages of writing on a laptop, the main one being typing speed, therefore getting more information down in the allocated time. Also, typing is much easier on your wrist than handwriting, and you don't have to practise your handwriting to make sure it is legible at the speed you need to write. Typed exams are also said to be faster to mark, as they are far tidier, and are simply collected on a USB stick at the end of the exam.
Then there are the disadvantages. For one, computers can be unreliable, and it is possible that they will crash, or that your work might somehow be deleted and impossible to retrieve. Exams are often worth most of the percentage make-up of a paper, so students are unlikely to want to risk something like that happening.
Also, many subjects would be difficult, if not impossible, to complete because they require diagrams and sketches that are simply more suitable for pen and paper.
It has also been mentioned that handwriting is an important characteristic of each person, and the loss of these skills if laptops became too widely used would be detrimental to society - not only to those who lack handwriting skills, but also to work involved with handwriting analysis such as for police work.
While the same cannot be said for many children today, as the demands for pupils to be equipped with laptops are more and more frequent, personally - if there is a choice - I am fairly certain I would choose to handwrite my exams. I have far more faith in my pen than I do in my keyboard.
