When German language instructor Grit Matthias Phelps began introducing manual typewriters into her Cornell University classroom, she was not aiming to recreate a retro aesthetic for its own sake. She said she wanted students to experience writing and classroom interaction without the constant availability of laptops, online translation tools, or generative AI—tools that can make it easier for work to come out “grammatically perfect” without requiring the student to do the thinking that goes into writing.
Phelps, a German language instructor at Cornell, runs the assignment once each semester. On a recent “analog” day, students found typewriters at their desks—some set up with German keyboards and others with QWERTY keyboards—while phones were kept out of sight and the activity took place without screens.
Phelps said the exercise started in spring 2023, when she grew frustrated with how students were using generative AI and online translation platforms to churn out assignments. She said the goal is not only about preventing AI use, but about giving students a different relationship to drafting and error-checking: “What’s the point of me reading it if it’s already correct anyway, and you didn’t write it yourself? Could you produce it without your computer?” she said.
Students arriving for class on the analog day described the experience as unfamiliar even in basic mechanics. Catherine Mong, 19, a freshman in Phelps’ Intro to German class, said she had seen typewriters in movies but did not know how they worked before the assignment. Phelps demonstrated how to feed the paper manually and how to strike the keys with force without smudging letters, including explaining the audible bell that marks the end of each line and the need to manually return the carriage for the next line.
Beyond the mechanics, students said the assignment changed how they managed attention and collaboration. Phelps brought her two children, aged 7 and 9, to serve as “tech support” and to ensure no one had their phones out, according to Phelps’ account of how the day is run. In the absence of screens, students said they were less likely to be interrupted by notifications or to assume answers were one click away, and they relied more on talking with classmates as the exercise required drafting and revising without the instant correction options available on a keyboard with a delete key.
Ratchaphon Lertdamrongwong, a sophomore majoring in computer science, said the exercise carried lessons beyond typing itself. He said that without screens there were no notifications and that, in the absence of answers readily available, he asked classmates for help—something he said the instructor encouraged. He also said the assignment changed classroom social dynamics as he wrote his critique of a German movie they’d watched, saying “While writing the essay, I had to talk a lot more, socialize a lot more, which I guess was normal back then,” and adding that it felt “drastically different” from modern classrooms where many people remain on laptops and phones.
Students also described how the lack of direct editing forced more deliberate thinking. Lertdamrongwong said the absence of a delete key and the inability to correct every mistake made him pause and consider his writing. He said, “This might sound bad, but I was forced to actually think about the problem on my own instead of delegating to AI or Google search,” tying the typewriter format directly to the question of whether students can do the work themselves.
For some students, the physical demands of manual typing added another layer to the learning experience. Most students found that their pinkies were not strong enough for touch-typing, leading them to type more slowly by pecking at keys with their index fingers. Mong said she faced extra challenges because her wrist had recently been broken and she had to type with one hand, and she initially grew frustrated by the spacing and misspellings she produced.
Mong said she ended up leaning into the “process of learning” even when her typed pages looked messy. She said she was told to backspace and type “X’s” over errors, and she described the final work as something she expected to be imperfect: “This thing I handed in had pencil marks all over it and definitely did not look clean or finished. But it’s part of the process of learning that you’re going to make mistakes,” she said. She said she also found the assignment of typing a poem “fun and challenging,” saved multiple sheets with mistakes, and planned to keep them as a record of what the exercise looked like in practice.
The assignment also reflects a wider shift some schools are making in how they assess learning in the age of AI. Phelps’ typewriter revival is tied, at least in part, to a broader national trend that uses analog formats—such as in-class pen-and-paper exams and oral tests—to discourage students from relying on AI for assignments on laptops.