I think assignments are preferable on paper compared to digital assignments. What do you think?
Most people may prefer digital assignments due to their fast completion and auto corrections of grammar. This may seem convenient, but their advantages come at a cause a cost. People may think “why do assignments on paper instead of digital assignments, if paper assignments take more time?” Yes, typing can produce 38-40 words per minute and handwriting takes around 13-19 words per minute.
But hand written assignments can enhance your memory and also due to the slow speed of writing it helps to encode the information in your brain.
When completing an assignment digitally, it is significantly difficult to retain information compared to hand writing your work. Digital assignments can be useful in terms of speed but will be difficult to remember the information you wrote about.
Of course, writing assignments by hand can be time consuming which is pretty frustrating. For example, a five paragraph essay on paper may take about 2.5 to 4 hours to complete including research, planning and revising the essay. Digitally, the same essay takes about 2-3 hours of working. This can naturally lead people to prefer to work on assignments using a device.
Despite the benefits of fast completion and auto correcting your grammar, digital assignments are not a wise decision when in elementary, middle and high school.
Autocorrect features can also cause negative effects on writing. You may think, “Why not use auto correct if I am not good at spelling?” Instead, autocorrect can reduce your spelling ability. This may lead you to lower grades on assignments that include spelling, which can prevent your brain from learning the words that you have difficult time spelling.
Admittedly, hand writing assignments can be stressful since it is time consuming, there’s no back up, and it’s difficult to correct mistakes. Additionally, paper assignments have downsides of slow completion, they’re easy to lose, and it’s difficult to fix mistakes.
However, spelling and grammar are important parts of your education, and as you become an adult, you will need to know these skills. Being able to manage where you stored your paperwork is also an important life skill. Overall, I prefer to have extra work on paper assignments compared to on Canvas and Google docs as I develop my skills as a learner.
