Writing out exams vs using ExamSoft. Forum

[SwollenMonkey]

I desperately want to hand-write my exams because I have crappy typing. My hand-writing is fairly neat, and with the value of finals, I can surely guarantee that I will write neatly and legibly.
I'm used to writing everything out and taking a law school exam on a laptop is really foreign to me.

Can any of you list some benefits to taking an exam on a laptop?

[270910]

Law school exams are very time pressured. You get points by writing correct legal analysis. However the time pressure is applied, it will be rare for you to not walk out of an exam thinking there is more you could have said. Hand writing is slow. All classes are curved.

The answer is: learn how to type properly and accurately. Get used to it. You will be at a very real disadvantage otherwise. You CAN succeed with short answers no doubt, but why FORCE yourself to succeed with short answers?

[SwollenMonkey]

Law school exams are very time pressured. You get points by writing correct legal analysis. However the time pressure is applied, it will be rare for you to not walk out of an exam thinking there is more you could have said. Hand writing is slow. All classes are curved.

The answer is: learn how to type properly and accurately. Get used to it. You will be at a very real disadvantage otherwise. You CAN succeed with short answers no doubt, but why FORCE yourself to succeed with short answers?

Alright. This has scared me more than I already am. I will strive to improve my typing to the range of 60 wpm. Thank you, disco_barred.

[Cavalier]

I agree with disco_barred. Writing your exams by hand would be idiotic.

[270910]

Law school exams are very time pressured. You get points by writing correct legal analysis. However the time pressure is applied, it will be rare for you to not walk out of an exam thinking there is more you could have said. Hand writing is slow. All classes are curved.

The answer is: learn how to type properly and accurately. Get used to it. You will be at a very real disadvantage otherwise. You CAN succeed with short answers no doubt, but why FORCE yourself to succeed with short answers?

Alright. This has scared me more than I already am. I will strive to improve my typing to the range of 60 wpm. Thank you, disco_barred.

Should be enough. Don't get freaked by people who puke out thousands of words per hour. Some do well no doubt, but some do poorly. I've seen exams get the same grade where one was literally twice as long. You don't want to /handicap/ yourself by handwriting, but if you can actually type in the 50-60+ wpm range then it won't be a liability. Thinking speed is much more important, and that often gets neglected when this topic comes up on this forum.

[Geist13]

I used to use four fingers to type. I've taught myself to touch type over the six weeks and have worked up to 55-60 wpm from 35-40wpm. I'm shooting for another 10 more wmp (although I seem to have hit a wall). It really is not that difficult so long as you stick with it. Make sure when you g-chat, facebook, or whatever that you stick to touch typing and don't revert back to your old style. Think about it this way: Say you are typing for 2 hours of your exam. If you can increase your speed by 15wpm, that's an increase of 1800 total words, which is quite substantial. I also can't imagine the hand cramps involved with printing that much for that long.

I use this program to "teach" me to type (the full program cost, I think, 25 bucks): http://www.tenthumbstypingtutor.com/

and use this to practice all the time: http://play.typeracer.com/

[Jordan77]

Learn proper form to typing (how fingers align up on the keyboard), then force yourself to take your law school notes by laptop for ALL your classes, I guarantee you will improve your typing dramatically by the time law school exams come. I used to be able to type fast as a hunter/pecker, but then I forced myself to learn the proper method to typing in law school, by the end of first semester I was able to type quicker and without looking at the keyboard.

You can also start now with a fun game, http://www.typeracer.com

[Jordan77]

I used to use four fingers to type. I've taught myself to touch type over the six weeks and have worked up to 55-60 wpm from 35-40wpm. I'm shooting for another 10 more wmp (although I seem to have hit a wall). It really is not that difficult so long as you stick with it. Make sure when you g-chat, facebook, or whatever that you stick to touch typing and don't revert back to your old style. Think about it this way: Say you are typing for 2 hours of your exam. If you can increase your speed by 15wpm, that's an increase of 1800 total words, which is quite substantial. I also can't imagine the hand cramps involved with printing that much for that long.

I use this program to "teach" me to type (the full program cost, I think, 25 bucks): http://www.tenthumbstypingtutor.com/

and use this to practice all the time: http://play.typeracer.com/

Lol - you basically said the same thing as me, but I didn't read posts beforehand, go me! But I think you nailed it right on the head.

[Niddar]

kinda off topic but that typing game is really fun.

[almostfamous]

or if you enjoy the thrill of almost getting destroyed by piranhas while learning to type, this one is really fun too!

Yahoo Typer Shark:
--LinkRemoved--

[xyzbca]

FWIW, I had a professor tell me that students that wrote their exams usually did better because they were forced to be more organized and efficient on their exams. He felt that typers were tempted to just get everything they could on their answer. That said I don't have the guts to break away from exam soft.

[BaronDetroit]

Interesting, at my school most people hand write the exam. Are there any people here who believe in hand writing instead of typing?

[beef wellington]

Interesting, at my school most people hand write the exam. Are there any people here who believe in hand writing instead of typing?

I know my brother does them long-hand. He says the professors at his school will give a handicap. He did pretty well 1L.

[Black-Blue]

I can't imagine not typing out exams. On the keyboard, I can type 100+ wpm, but with handwriting, I can only go about 10 wpm or else it's not legible. I wouldn't ever finish exams handwritten.

[SwollenMonkey]

Learn proper form to typing (how fingers align up on the keyboard), then force yourself to take your law school notes by laptop for ALL your classes, I guarantee you will improve your typing dramatically by the time law school exams come. I used to be able to type fast as a hunter/pecker, but then I forced myself to learn the proper method to typing in law school, by the end of first semester I was able to type quicker and without looking at the keyboard.

You can also start now with a fun game, http://www.typeracer.com

Typeracer appears too advanced for me at the moment as I need to learn the home keys and how to type with them. At the moment, I can type somewhat fast, but I type *incorrectly.

For now, I am learning the layout of the keyboard using this website http://www.sense-lang.org/typing/ .

I really need to learn where the keys are located.

[SwollenMonkey]

I can't imagine not typing out exams. On the keyboard, I can type 100+ wpm, but with handwriting, I can only go about 10 wpm or else it's not legible. I wouldn't ever finish exams handwritten.

I'm guessing your confidence in typing has something to do with this, lol. Since I'm not as confident in my typing and confident in my hand writing, I'm leaning to writing out the answers come exam time. However, I am improving my typing and slowly working on it to some day be at your level of confidence.

[MrKappus]

Typer Shark!!

[Black-Blue]

FWIW, I had a professor tell me that students that wrote their exams usually did better because they were forced to be more organized and efficient on their exams. He felt that typers were tempted to just get everything they could on their answer. That said I don't have the guts to break away from exam soft.

I think it depends on the type of question and the professor.

Issue spotters exams usually favor length over organization. In a really thorough issue spotter exam, there can be hundreds of issues that you need to spot and discuss. The professor just goes through a check list to see if you spot the issue and discussed it. In this case, he is grading up, so the more stuff you write, the more you spot. It doesn't matter whether what you wrote is organized, since he just goes through each sentence and matches what he has on the rubrick.

On the other hand, depth and policy questions might favor organization over length. These are more similar to traditional UG exam questions that you are supposed to write some kind of thesis statement and back it up.

As far as professors go, lazy professors who don't want to read much also tend to favor well organized responses. These professors also like to give policy questions because those can be graded just by the "general feel of the essay" (oftentimes not writing a single comment on your exam answer) rather than a huge checklist which takes much more time to develop and grade.

[Lucidity]

Everyone already knows about the words per minute advantage of typing an exam vs hand writing one, so i won't comment much more on that. But can you imagine editing an exam that's hand written? If you type your exam, you can cut, paste, delete, and reorganize entire paragraphs with very little difficulty. I can't fathom erasing more than a sentence or 2 of a hand written exam before your paper becomes an ineligible mess. Learn your home keys and start brushing up on your typing skills. It's not hard at all to raise your typing speed up to a respectable level. If you've taken up the challenge of law school in this economy, learning how to type certainly can't be all that daunting.

[Bankhead]

You'll get slaughtered hand writing. You'll be competing against people like me who type over 100 wpm. LEARN TO TYPE.

[Jarndyce]

Another thing to think about- each of my past two semesters, there has been at least one test where I have thought about an entire line of argument that I wanted to include after completing my essay. If I had handwritten, it would have had to go at the end of the essay, even if it didn't fit there. Typing, however, allows me to arrange my thoughts and have better organization.

[VandyTakingQuestions]

FWIW, two people who hand wrote exams booked classes last year. Hopefully you'll be doing a couple practice exams anyway, see which way feels more comfortable to you. If you can hand write everything and not feel like you're wasting time: go for it. On most exams I've had time to go back, check spelling a grammar, etc, so the time issue isn't always too bad. On the other hand, a couple exams there was so many issues the whole class was basically typing the whole time, no way would I have been able to get everything down by handwriting. Most professors will have model answers for you as well, so you can see how long the best exams are anyway. Protip: On average, it seems like the short, succinct, well analyzed essays beat out the long-winded "typing contest" ones, I was amazed out how short the model answers were.

[270910]

Protip: On average, it seems like the short, succinct, well analyzed essays beat out the long-winded "typing contest" ones, I was amazed out how short the model answers were.

Not my experience at all. Which isn't to say you're wrong, just throwing it out there as a point of contrast.

[yinz]

Protip: On average, it seems like the short, succinct, well analyzed essays beat out the long-winded "typing contest" ones, I was amazed out how short the model answers were.

Not my experience at all. Which isn't to say you're wrong, just throwing it out there as a point of contrast.

Two pieces of anecdotal advice on TLS that conflict? No way.

[rayiner]

Protip: On average, it seems like the short, succinct, well analyzed essays beat out the long-winded "typing contest" ones, I was amazed out how short the model answers were.

Not my experience at all. Which isn't to say you're wrong, just throwing it out there as a point of contrast.

Mine either. I think the model answers might be short because they hit on exactly what the professor wanted and nothing more, but I'd bet you that the bulk of the remaining 'A' exams were on the longer side.

Eg: if an exam has 10 possible points, 5 of which the professor is actually interested in, then an exam that covers exactly those 5 and nothing more will probably be chosen as the model, but longer answers that at least touch on 8-9 issues will hit most of the important points, while shorter answers that touch on 5-6 probably won't hit exactly the 5 the professor wants.