Multimedia in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education Commentary: Handwriting in the digital age
Graham R. Parslow*
From the From the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
As much as I would like handwriting to remain pivotal to teaching university students I cannot be confident that the future will have more than a ceremonial place for it. Considerable evidence supports the incorporation of handwriting as valuable in learning and understanding subject matter, but much of this literature predates the digital age. Web searching shows that little has been written on this subject recently outside of elementary school teaching that remains firmly committed to writing. It was a matter of little surprise when I encountered Brandon Keim’s article The Science of Handwriting [1]. Keim wrote “As we jettison the pen and pencil in a digital world, we are changing the way our brain thinks about writing. Handwriting is becoming a marginal activity, in society and in my life. We type more than ever before, and it is not uncommon to meet people who have ceased writing by hand altogether, their scripts withering like vestigial limbs.” Keim is a freelance journalist aged in his 30s who has found that his creative output is more satisfying with a pen in his hand. However, future students are unlikely to share Keim’s preference. Because of neural plasticity our students’ brains really are different to children of the analogue age. In giving a recent guest lecture on contemporary biochemistry teaching, I was asked by another lecturer “Is it important to include written-answer questions in examination” and I answered in part that it was not, if you simply want to rank students. For exams that I have administered over many years I have been surprised by the near perfect correlation between the marks for multiple choice and written sections. A reasonable conclusion is that good students are good writers, but this can be turned around to assert that good writers are also more likely to be good students. The application of handwriting
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]. Received 3 September 2013; accepted 3 September 2013 DOI 10.1002/bmb.20740 Published online 8 November 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com)
450
as a component of active learning has long been a pillar of learning, but a new generation may be able to use keyboard and stylus activity to the same effect. Laboratory reports for undergraduate practicals have been a bastion of hand-written submissions and my visits to other universities show little diminution of pen and paper on many of the world’s benches. As an exception Gareth Denyer at The University of Sydney has radically changed his undergraduate laboratory teaching to require students to record their results, reflections, and bench-activities though an electronic lab notebook. His persuasive logic is that research labs have either moved, or need to move, to keyboard logging of experimental results for a range of reasons. Students who will use electronic reporting in their future work and study should acquire the skill as undergraduates. The medical students I teach generally exhibit great fluency in using a keyboard to annotate their lectures in real time (Fig. 1). When such acumen becomes the norm then handwriting may truly become obsolete and pass into the nostalgic realm of the horse-drawn carriage. Sic transit gloria mundi is a Latin phrase that translates as “thus passes the glory of this world.” The common use of the phrase is to assert that all things are transient and will pass away after a moment of glory. Handwriting arguably has a history as long as the record of humans leaving scratches on cave walls. I studied university courses by writing to actively learn and duly passed examinations by writing. I have taught much of my life using talk and writing in chalk. In the 1980s, I made the personally difficult transition from the well-practiced process of creating text on paper to creating text at a keyboard. For many years, I have delighted in seeing my characteristic handwriting on a page. That pride of creating a personal legacy in writing is passing from the world and we can only muse on the inevitable truth of the phrase sic transit gloria mundi.
Reference [1] B. Keim (2013) The Science of handwriting. Scientific American Mind and Brain September, Available at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/ article.cfm?id5the-science-of-handwriting.
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education
FIG 1
Parslow
The first-year medical class at the University of Melbourne, November 2012. One student in the foreground is seen taking notes with pen and paper. The majority of the class is using lap-top or tablet computers to follow the lecture by progressing through previously downloaded slides and making keyboard or stylus annotations on the slides. The facility of the students to take notes electronically is amazing to those who studied in a nondigital age.
451
Graham R. Parslow*
From the From the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
As much as I would like handwriting to remain pivotal to teaching university students I cannot be confident that the future will have more than a ceremonial place for it. Considerable evidence supports the incorporation of handwriting as valuable in learning and understanding subject matter, but much of this literature predates the digital age. Web searching shows that little has been written on this subject recently outside of elementary school teaching that remains firmly committed to writing. It was a matter of little surprise when I encountered Brandon Keim’s article The Science of Handwriting [1]. Keim wrote “As we jettison the pen and pencil in a digital world, we are changing the way our brain thinks about writing. Handwriting is becoming a marginal activity, in society and in my life. We type more than ever before, and it is not uncommon to meet people who have ceased writing by hand altogether, their scripts withering like vestigial limbs.” Keim is a freelance journalist aged in his 30s who has found that his creative output is more satisfying with a pen in his hand. However, future students are unlikely to share Keim’s preference. Because of neural plasticity our students’ brains really are different to children of the analogue age. In giving a recent guest lecture on contemporary biochemistry teaching, I was asked by another lecturer “Is it important to include written-answer questions in examination” and I answered in part that it was not, if you simply want to rank students. For exams that I have administered over many years I have been surprised by the near perfect correlation between the marks for multiple choice and written sections. A reasonable conclusion is that good students are good writers, but this can be turned around to assert that good writers are also more likely to be good students. The application of handwriting
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]. Received 3 September 2013; accepted 3 September 2013 DOI 10.1002/bmb.20740 Published online 8 November 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com)
450
as a component of active learning has long been a pillar of learning, but a new generation may be able to use keyboard and stylus activity to the same effect. Laboratory reports for undergraduate practicals have been a bastion of hand-written submissions and my visits to other universities show little diminution of pen and paper on many of the world’s benches. As an exception Gareth Denyer at The University of Sydney has radically changed his undergraduate laboratory teaching to require students to record their results, reflections, and bench-activities though an electronic lab notebook. His persuasive logic is that research labs have either moved, or need to move, to keyboard logging of experimental results for a range of reasons. Students who will use electronic reporting in their future work and study should acquire the skill as undergraduates. The medical students I teach generally exhibit great fluency in using a keyboard to annotate their lectures in real time (Fig. 1). When such acumen becomes the norm then handwriting may truly become obsolete and pass into the nostalgic realm of the horse-drawn carriage. Sic transit gloria mundi is a Latin phrase that translates as “thus passes the glory of this world.” The common use of the phrase is to assert that all things are transient and will pass away after a moment of glory. Handwriting arguably has a history as long as the record of humans leaving scratches on cave walls. I studied university courses by writing to actively learn and duly passed examinations by writing. I have taught much of my life using talk and writing in chalk. In the 1980s, I made the personally difficult transition from the well-practiced process of creating text on paper to creating text at a keyboard. For many years, I have delighted in seeing my characteristic handwriting on a page. That pride of creating a personal legacy in writing is passing from the world and we can only muse on the inevitable truth of the phrase sic transit gloria mundi.
Reference [1] B. Keim (2013) The Science of handwriting. Scientific American Mind and Brain September, Available at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/ article.cfm?id5the-science-of-handwriting.
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education
FIG 1
Parslow
The first-year medical class at the University of Melbourne, November 2012. One student in the foreground is seen taking notes with pen and paper. The majority of the class is using lap-top or tablet computers to follow the lecture by progressing through previously downloaded slides and making keyboard or stylus annotations on the slides. The facility of the students to take notes electronically is amazing to those who studied in a nondigital age.
451
