Item No. 284 I do not understand about students

I share some large sections with another teacher. We use some online quizzes with multiple choice questions, mainly because I'm not quite insane enough to attempt to grade very many stacks of 160 of almost anything, and neither is she. On the other hand, on some assignments (like labs) we include one free-response question which we grade by hand. (Aren't we devoted teachers?)

On the last quiz, the free-response involved a lot of notation, including some equations with fractions and exponential functions, which are hard to type but easy to write. We explained that for this reason, rather than have them attempt to type an answer into the online quiz, we would have them write their answer by hand and turn it in. (Aren't we nice teachers?) We took these up in class the week before break, and I finished grading them over break.

Of course, as is the case every year, somewhere around 5-10 percent of the written responses I get from my students are typed in Word (usually with painful attempts at typesetting) and then printed, rather than handwritten.