Sophia Vinci-Booher, assistant professor of educational neuroscience at Vanderbilt University, says that when you write by hand, the brain’s visual motor system, which supports reading, becomes more active. Vinci Booher also found that handwriting improves character recognition compared to typing.
In general, Vinci-Booher says, when note-taking and testing modes match, students are likely to perform better than when the modes don’t match. For example, if an exam requires handwritten answers, students who also handwrite their notes are more likely to do well on the exam than those same students who type their answers.
This year, Mr. Coupe learned that the vast majority of his students had never taken a handwritten exam in college. When students took out their blue books for the first exam in the 2024-25 academic year, they had to give detailed instructions about the standards of the blue books, such as where to write their names.
Coupet immediately noticed a difference in the test results.
Students who did not come to class often showed a lack of preparation in their exam answers, and Mr. Coupe noticed that these students’ answers varied widely. Students who are unprepared for the exam also struggle to apply reasoning to their answers, which is an important skill for future policy makers to master, he said. Previously, these difficulties were masked by the use of technology, masking what students didn’t actually know.
For now, he’s going to stick with the Blue Book exam since Coupe fits his teaching style.
Scoring in Blue Book
Alexandra Garrett, assistant professor of history at St. Michael’s College, didn’t know anything different. She joined the St. Michael’s faculty in the 2022-2023 academic year and has taught only in-person classes. All three exams in her course on early American history are given in blue books.
Ms. Garrett finds many spelling errors on written exams, but does not factor the grammatical inconsistencies into students’ final scores. She expects students to provide thorough and content-oriented exam answers.
While some educators may have doubts about reading handwriting, Garrett has never had to ask students to read their answers aloud because of illegible handwriting throughout his career. He said he only requested it twice.
However, conducting the Blue Book exam does not seem to be a very popular option these days. Garrett said several experienced professors at her university expressed surprise when she said she was discontinuing digital exams. But persistent plagiarism in student essays and fraudulent use of ChatGPT have turned Garrett away from digital exams, and he doesn’t think he’ll be leaving Bluebook anytime soon.
“I have never not read the blue book for an exam, and I have no incentive to change that,” Garrett said.
