The slow handwriting of undergraduate students constrains overall performance in exam essays

TLDR

Undergraduates must transcribe information quickly under time pressure, and capacity models suggest that automating this transcription frees cognitive resources for higher‑order writing. This study examined how low‑level handwriting processes affect undergraduate writing in both pressurized and unpressurized tasks. Participants completed a handwriting fluency assessment and provided writing samples from exam conditions and a formative class essay. Exam writing was limited by slow handwriting fluency, with students writing at speeds comparable to 11‑year‑olds, and handwriting fluency explained a large portion of variance in writing quality and tutor marks, indicating that lower‑level processes significantly constrain higher‑level performance and should inform exam design.

Abstract

Undergraduates producing handwritten essays in university exams need to transcribe information onto the page in a rapid and efficient manner under considerable time pressure. In fact, capacity models of the writing process predict that the more automated students can make the transcription process then the more resources will be available for higher order writing processes. This study examined the impact of low level handwriting processes on undergraduate writing in pressurised and unpressurised tasks. Students completed a measure of handwriting fluency and provided samples of writing from exam conditions and a formative class essay. The results indicated that, compared to a class essay, exam writing was constrained by the low level writing skill of handwriting fluency. Surprisingly, it was found that the undergraduates were very slow writers whose writing speed was equivalent to published fluency data on 11‐year‐old schoolchildren. The relationships between handwriting fluency and writing quality were also very similar to those of published data on 11‐year‐old children, with handwriting fluency accounting for large amounts of the variance in writing quality and tutor marks for exam answers. The results of the current study indicate that lower level processes constrain the higher level performance of undergraduate students to a significant extent. This limitation needs to be considered when undergraduate exams are designed and inferences drawn from exam performance.