Responding to free response examination questions: computer versus pen and paper

Background The widespread availability of the personal computer is leadin g to changes in the ways that students compose and submit written tasks. Increasing inumbers of students now are more comfortable in composing a written response direc.ly into a word processor rather than writing the response in longhand and getting it typed when finished. In some schools, many students have been using laptops to compose and edit their written responses throughout their entire stay at school. It is argued I hat they are comfortable working in this way and that to compose an essay in longhand now would be somewhat unnatural. In the US, Russell and Plati (2001) have argued t: at requiring students to generate responses to open-ended items by pen and paper under-estimates the achievement of students accustomed to writing using a computer. ]n Great Britain, Hartley (1993) refers to a student who was forbidden by the teacher to use a computer when writing essays, as the examinations required longhand. The present study took place