When less is not more: High school student text production and its significance for university studies

When Aotearoa New Zealand shifted from in-class to online learning in 2020 because of COVID-19 mitigation measures, 319 of our incoming university students ended up taking the same test in two different ways: pen/paper first and then keyboard/screen second. Five years later, we have correlated those students’ text-production capabilities at point of entry to university with their final cumulative GPA. Our data demonstrate that roughly one-third of recent school leavers in Aotearoa New Zealand will produce more text with pen and paper than they do with keyboards in a timed test situation. Most importantly, while the change of mode between handwriting and typing has a neutral effect for most students, there is a cohort who noticeably struggles to produce when keyboarding and this struggle affects their entire academic career.