Cambridge University is considering axing compulsory written exams and allowing students to use laptops or iPads instead, after tutors complained that students' handwriting is becoming illegible.
Academics say that the move, which would bring an end to more than 800 years of tradition, has come about because students rely too heavily on laptops in lectures, and are losing the ability to write by hand.
Cambridge University has now launched a consultation on the topic as part of its "digital education strategy", having already piloted an exam typing scheme in the History and Classics faculties earlier this year.
In an online survey, students are asked whether they would like the option to type exams, and whether this would have a “significant positive impact” on their “well-being”.
Dr Sarah Pearsall, a senior lecturer at Cambridge’s History Faculty who was involved with the pilot earlier this year, said that handwriting is becoming a “lost art” among the current generation of students.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph she said: “Fifteen or twenty years ago students routinely have written by hand several hours a day - but now they write virtually nothing by hand except exams. As a faculty we have been concerned for years about the declining handwriting problem. There has definitely been a downward trend. It is difficult for both the students and the examiners as it is harder and harder to read these scripts.”
