The world-renowned Cambridge University is considering abolishing handwritten exams 800 years. University officials may ask students to type their exam answers a computer rather than use a pen. The move follows complaints examination markers who say they are finding test papers increasingly illegible due to poor handwriting. Academics say today's students primarily use laptops lectures and tutorials instead pens. Students are losing the ability to write hand. One academic said asking students to hand-write exams actually causes them physical difficulties. The muscles their hand are not used to writing extensively prolonged periods two three hours.
A Cambridge University lecturer, Dr Sarah Pearsall, told Britain's 'Daily Telegraph' newspaper that handwriting was becoming a "lost art". She said: "Twenty years ago, students routinely [wrote] hand several hours a day, but now they write virtually nothing hand, except exams." She added: "We have been concerned years the declining handwriting problem. There has definitely been a downward trend. It is difficult both the students and the examiners as it is harder and harder to read these [exam] scripts." Dr Pearsall says some students' handwriting is so illegible that they had to return to the university the summer to read their answers loud examiners who could not read their writing.
