Written Off: The Death of Pen and Paper

By Luella Coley

It was the first week of classes. I arrived on campus dreading four consecutive hours of introductory content I’d become painfully familiar with over my years at university. I expected the usual tour of Canvas, accompanied by an obligatory ‘plagiarism is bad’ speech. What came instead was a rather dramatic turn of events.

Among the usual content, my lecturer announced that we would be expected to rely exclusively on ‘handwritten note-taking’. Overlapping typing stopped. A gasp swept the room. Perplexed faces looked up from their screens to actually meet the eyes of the academic at the front. Handwritten? Like, on paper? Judging by the collective bewilderment, you’d be forgiven for thinking our lecturer had just announced we were expected to submit our assignments in hieroglyphics.

I suppose it was at that moment I realised how little I encounter pen and paper on the Queen’s campus. How many students actually carry a pen? I don’t recall ever consciously abandoning the humble notebook, but at some point, carrying an assortment of screens to campus became the default.

Now, I might be betraying my generation here, but I wholeheartedly agree with my lecturer’s stance – albeit from a position of considerable privilege. My £500 pen and paper, the trusty iPad and Apple Pencil combination, is my default note-taking method anyway. I won’t pretend I’m the only person to have discovered this handwriting loophole, but I was admittedly smug to be excluded from the waves of bewildered students closing their laptops.

Digital handwriting has been my preferred method since sixth form, having become convinced that I retain information better when I physically write it down. I simply couldn’t sacrifice the organisational convenience of storing my notes in neat digital folders, though.

But perhaps my smugness was misplaced. After all, I was hardly embracing traditional learning myself. I’d simply found that I was accommodating my lecturer’s expectations without having to change a thing.

And could I really blame my classmates? For years, we’ve been encouraged to organise practically every aspect of our academic lives digitally. Lecture slides, readings, assignments and feedback all exist online. We submit essays through Canvas, consult digital timetables and communicate with lecturers through email. Why, then, should students suddenly be expected to abandon their established systems for a single module?

I wouldn’t fancy returning exclusively to physical notebooks. My iPad allows me to annotate readings, organise entire modules and revisit notes without burdening my desk with stacks of rough notes. It’s the best of both worlds, but at several hundred pounds, it’s hardly an accessible compromise for everyone. For others, particularly students who rely on assistive technology, typing isn’t merely convenient but necessary.

Still, I sympathise with my lecturer. There’s something peculiar about speaking in front of a generation of university students who hide behind laptop screens, but perhaps we’ve become so accustomed to technological convenience that we’ve stopped questioning whether it actually helps us learn.

I don’t think the solution is to force students to abandon the habits they’ve spent years developing. But if universities are going to champion digital education, surely they must acknowledge the contradiction of asking students to put down their devices in the name of better learning. If universities have spent years teaching us to learn through screens, can they really be surprised when we’re reluctant to put them down?