Since his arrival at Ball State University in 2004, biology Instructor Mark Walker has required his students to handwrite their papers instead of typing them.
Many of Walker's classes are education classes, and he believes future teachers need to have skills to help their kids learn, he said.
"This means that the pre-service teachers should have a mastery of technology, grammar, spelling, punctuation and penmanship so that they can teach these skills to their kids," he said.
When students complete their work using a computer, they do not need to know about writing because computers automatically correct spelling and grammatical mistakes, Walker said. Handwritten assignments allow Walker to see the strengths and weaknesses of each student, he said. "Here I can make corrections and suggestions for how someone might improve," he said. "All of us are imperfect in our writing and in our basic skills, but all of us need to strive for perfection in every area of our education."
Walker decided to have his students handwrite all of their assignments because of his experience teaching in Michigan, he said. He noticed recently graduated teachers were weak in important areas, he said.
"Many parents actually complained that notes sent home and written announcements were very poorly completed," he said. "It was unacceptable in the educational environment."
Several of the teachers who had been at the school for a while became mentors to the new teachers, he said.
"All of us agreed after working with them that they could spell, punctuate and construct sentences beautifully when allowed to do so with the little green and red lines of the computer," he said. "When asked to express the same thoughts by hand, the results were embarrassing."
After he began teaching at Ball State, Walker said he experimented with handwritten assignments and found students had problems with basic skills. He then researched the topic. Based on what he found, he said computers allowed future professionals to get by without having to know how to perform written communication.
Walker requires handwritten assignments in varying degrees in his classes, he said. For his elementary education students, he requires them to do all of their work by hand because they are teaching the youngest kids to read and write, he said. He requires secondary education majors to do most of their work by hand, but not all, he said. Finally, he requires his biology students to do some of their work in this format so that they can at least see that these skills are important in their professions as well, he said.
Junior Carinne Sitler, one of Walker's students, is fine with having to write out her assignments, she said.
"I understand the reason behind it," she said. "We're so used to having the computer spell-check everything for us because we rely on the computer so much. Now we have to use our own abilities."
Many of Walker's students do not have a problem with having to handwrite all of their assignments, he said.
"Those truly wanting to be their best in every area respond well and welcome the constructive comments, while other do complain, at least initially," he said.
Some of Walker's former students stayed in contact with him through e-mail, and they told him that they appreciate his expectations of them, he said.
On the other hand, Walker's policy does receive some complaints each semester during the evaluation process, he said.
"This indicates that some students have been taken out of their comfort zone," he said.
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