At the height of the artificial intelligence in educationA small, quiet revolution is taking place in university classrooms: the return of typewriters. What might sound like a nostalgic whim has become a pedagogical tool to curb algorithm-generated papers and give students back the experience of writing without digital aids.
The initiative does not originate from a European university, but from Cornell University in the United States, yet it connects directly with debates already taking place in campuses throughout Europe and Spain on how to evaluate fairly in the era of ChatGPT and other generative models. Far from the romantic image of the bohemian writer, typewriters are used here as an analog firewall against digital copy-paste.
Typewriters in universities to slow down AI
The protagonist of this experience is Grit Matthias PhelpsA German professor at Cornell University decided to challenge the widespread use of AI tools and machine translation among her students. Frustrated by receiving essays that were "too perfect" to come from beginner students, she began to suspect that a large portion of the texts were generated or polished by software.
As he explained in various interviews collected by media outlets such as the Associated Press, the New York Post, and US networks, Phelps came to the conclusion that he was correcting work that his students They hadn't really writtenHe then wondered what the point was of evaluating grammatically impeccable texts if the thought and writing process was not his own.
Instead of simply pursuing fraud or installing AI detectors, the teacher opted for a radical shift: incorporating manual typewriters to his classes. He bought several dozen from second-hand stores and online marketplaces, including classic models from brands like Remington or Olivetti, and formally integrated them into the program under the name of "analog assignments".
These tasks consist of writing short essays, poems, or film reviews in class, without laptops, without mobile phones, without spell checkers, and of course, without automatic translators. Just paper, ink, and keysThe goal is to force students to confront writing without digital networks correcting or writing the text for them.
A generational clash with analog technology
For students, the first session with typewriters is almost like a mini-course in technological archaeology. Many admit to having only seen them in old movies or vintage shop windowsbut without ever having touched them. In fact, tasks as basic as feeding paper or understanding the carriage return mechanism are completely new to me.
Phelps has to dedicate part of the class to explaining, step by step, how to feed the typebar, how to strike the keys hard enough to register the letter without shifting the typebar, and what the bell that sounds at the end of each line means—a signal that the carriage return must be manually moved. For some students, the famous "return" key on the computer keyboard thus takes on a literal meaning.
Several young people quoted by US media admit that at first they felt disoriented and clumsyA first-year student, Catherine Mong, said she had no idea what was going on when she entered the classroom and found typewriters on every desk. She knew they existed, but no one had ever explained how to use them.
Beyond the initial bewilderment, the experience also reveals unforeseen physical limitations. Most participants discover that their Little fingers have no strength enough to activate all the keys for a sustained period. Many end up typing with their index fingers, at a slower and more selective pace, almost pecking at the keyboard.
In some cases, the difficulties multiply. Mong, for example, faced the test with a recently injured wrist and only one hand available, which turned the exercise into a double challenge: learning to handle an unfamiliar device and, at the same time, adapting to a physical limitation that makes the slowness of the process even more evident.
Write more slowly to think better
The essence of the method lies not only in the device itself, but in the change of pace it imposes. The use of typewriters forces students to think before you press each keyKnowing that there is no delete key that fixes everything or undo button that leaves it as it was.
This lack of instant correction transforms how students approach writing. Some explain that, when typing, they pause to plan the sentence in their head before typing it, instead of improvising and relying on the computer's spell checker. Mistakes become visible: they have to cross them out with an "X" or go back over the line, and the trace of the error remains on the page.
This tangible lack, far from being experienced as a tragedy, is integrated into the learning process. Phelps encourages his students to accept the imperfection of the result Some even keep the pages with scribbles as a memento of their progress. Some, like Mong herself, have gone so far as to keep all the incorrect pages and consider hanging them on the wall as a symbol of their effort.
Other students take advantage of the limitation to experiment with the form of the text and with typewriter fontsInspired by poets like EE Cummings, they play with margins, irregular spaces and the visual arrangement of lines, so that what could have been a simple academic exercise also becomes a small laboratory of typographic creativity.
Less screen time, more classroom conversation
One of the most striking side effects of these "analog tasks" is the change in classroom dynamics. Without computers, mobile phones, or open browser tabs, the number of students interacting with each other is drastically reduced. typical distractions from any connected classroom: notifications, instant messages, social networks, or quick Google queries while typing.
Several students point out that, in this context, they feel almost compelled to talk to each other more. Unable to use an automatic translator, any doubt about vocabulary, syntax, or expression in German becomes a reason to ask a classmate. Phelps not only tolerates this exchange but encourages it as part of the exercise.
A computer science student, Ratchaphon Lertdamrongwong, summed up the experience by saying that the difference in typing lies not only in the relationship with the machine, but in the way in which interacts with the environmentHe commented that while writing a film review in German, he had to socialize much more, something that, in his opinion, was common in classrooms before the digital age.
The student himself acknowledged that, without the option of opening a tab and asking the AI ​​on duty, he was "forced" to think for himself about the linguistic problem, instead of delegating it to a quick search. What might sound exaggerated is, for many teachers, the crux of the matter: recovering the intellectual authorship of the work versus the automaticity of responses generated by algorithms.
To preserve this screen-free space, the teacher even has some unusual help: her young children, aged seven and nine, who act as a kind of "tech support." Their role isn't so much to fix problems as it is to make sure no mobile phones appear on the table and that the analog rules are strictly followed.
A global trend that also looks to Europe
Although the Cornell experiment has gone viral because of how striking the typewriters in the 21st centuryThis is not an isolated case. In the United States, there is a growing trend toward returning to paper-based exams, oral tests, and assignments completed entirely in the classroom, precisely to limit the use of ChatGPT and other AI tools during assessment.
In Europe and Spain, the debate is following similar paths, although not always with such striking solutions. Many faculties have begun to review their assessment systems, reinforcing in-person exams and assignments that require intermediate stages supervised by the professor. The underlying concern is the same: how to prevent students from delegating the entire writing process to a virtual assistant.
Phelps' strategy, based on a radical return to analog methods, raises a fundamental question that also resonates in European universities: to what extent is technology, intended to help, emptying the writing and learning process of its content? And, above all, what tools do teachers have to guarantee the academic honesty without falling into constant surveillance?
For now, their approach isn't intended to become a universal model, but it does serve as a laboratory of ideas in a context where many institutions are exploring hybrid approaches. In this scenario, it wouldn't be surprising if, beyond the United States, some European universities consider introducing similar exercises, perhaps not with physical typewriters, but with strictly disconnected spaces and times.
All this movement points in the same direction: to recover slowness, concentration, and property of the text In an environment flooded by algorithms capable of writing in seconds, the scene of a classroom full of young people typing on old typewriters may seem anachronistic, but for many teachers it's a reminder that, beyond the glow of screens, writing is still about thinking word by word, with its doubts, its mistakes, and its subtle mechanical noise in the background.
