The effect of a touch-typing program on keyboarding skills of higher education students with and without learning disabilities.
Fourteen short computer typing lessons gave college students with learning disabilities a lasting speed boost without losing accuracy.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers gave 14 touch-typing lessons to college students. Half had learning disabilities. Half were typical learners.
They used Easy-Fingers software twice a week. No control group. Just pre-test, post-test, and a three-month check.
What they found
Both groups typed faster after the course. Students with learning disabilities gained the most speed.
Accuracy stayed above 95 % for everyone. The speed boost was still there three months later.
How this fits with other research
Berrett et al. (2018) saw the same pattern with third-graders learning math facts. Same precision-teaching style, same lasting gains.
Smits-Engelsman et al. (2023) looks like a contradiction. Kids with coordination disorder kept new balance skills only on-screen; real-world transfer faded. The difference is age, not method. Adults keep typing speed in daily life; kids need more practice to bridge virtual and real.
Cameron et al. (1996) predicted this success. Their old review said computer lessons would help adults with learning disabilities. Doughty et al. (2015) proved it works.
Why it matters
If you support college students who struggle with writing, add a short typing course. Easy-Fingers or any paced software can cut their essay time in half. Schedule two 20-minute labs each week for seven weeks. Track speed and accuracy each session. You should see a jump by lesson six and solid maintenance at finals.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study examined the effect of a touch-typing instructional program on keyboarding skills of higher education students. One group included students with developmental learning disabilities (LD, n=44), consisting of students with reading and/or handwriting difficulties. The second group included normally achieving students (NA, n=30). The main goal of the program was to increase keyboarding speed while maintaining accuracy. The program included 14 bi-weekly touch-typing lessons, using the "Easy-Fingers" software (Weigelt Marom & Weintraub, 2010a), that combines a touch-typing instructional program and a keystroke logging program, to document the time and accuracy of each typed key. The effect of the program was examined by comparing keyboarding skills between the beginning (pre-test), the end of the program (post-test) and 3 months after termination of the program (long-term). Results showed that at the end of the program, keyboarding speed of the NA students decreased while the speed of the students with LD somewhat increased. In the long-term evaluation, both groups significantly improved their speed compared to pre-test. In both cases high accuracy (above 95%) was maintained. These results suggest that touch-typing instruction may benefit students in general, and more specific, students with LD studying in higher education, which often use computers in order to circumvent their handwriting difficulties.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2015 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2015.09.014