Part 1: Safer Keyboarding

• Fifteen Principles of Safer Keyboarding Instruction
• Speed or Accuracy? How Our School Reduced Typing by 50 Percent

Fifteen Principles of Safer Keyboarding Instruction

By Karl Barksdale
Speaking Solutions © 2003

Introduction

Keyboarding is like an enormous, highflying zeppelin that is gradually cooling and descending toward the horizon.

Changes in national and state standards, deteriorating student interest in typing, and new mobile technologies (Tablet PCs, handheld PDAs, speech and handwriting recognition, and Smart Screens) are starting to take the air out of the keyboarding balloon.

But, it is a gigantic balloon.

It would be a mistake to believe that keying instruction will be grounded any time soon. The money spent on North American keyboarding instruction -- salaries, software, materials, and supplies -- can be estimated at $3 - $5 billion or more annually! For the present, keyboarding is a vital input technology and must be taught.

Albeit, given the sharp rise of keyboard and mouse-related injuries since the 1980s, it is clear that we have not done enough on the safety front, so our instructional approach must come down clearly on the side of safety. Here are:

Fifteen Principles of Safer Keyboarding Instruction

1. LIMIT INTENSIVE PRACTICE TO 15 MINUTES: Practicing longer than 15 minutes at a time produces diminishing returns. Students get bored, lose their concentration, start falling into bad habits, and are at a higher risk for injury. Keyboarding is a kinesthetic skill and can not be learned in a day! Well directed practice, 15 minutes every day, will yield similar results when compared to a 45 minute per day typing regimen.

2. EMPHASIZE ACCURACY: Typing accurately is one of the most important injury prevention techniques available. Every mistake requires at least two additional keystrokes, and sometimes more. For example, say a student types the common mistake: HTE SPACE instead of THE SPACE. What started as 4 simple keystrokes has turned into 12 total strokes (4 incorrect strokes, 4 backspace strokes, and 4 corrected strokes). Typos greatly increase the amount of typing and clicking, punishing hands unnecessarily. Furthermore, we will not tolerate speech and handwriting accuracy under 95%, why should we tolerate less accuracy from keyboarders?

3. REMOVE WPM AS A PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENT: Speed increases the risk of injury. Some kids can not handle the repetitions. As teachers, we will not always guess which students are predisposed to injury. If a student comes down with carpal tunnel syndrome because they are asked to type increasingly faster and faster, then the fault may lie with the school. Speed will build naturally as a result of ongoing accuracy practice using proper ergonomic techniques.

Clarification: There's some confusion in the understanding of a speed approach (which is actually a FLUID MOTION approach) often used to help students reach a kinesthetic response to the keyboard. Most texts refer to this as a speed approach to learning a touch system. That name can cause confusion.

What we really promote is that students are taught to keep a fluid motion as they are learning new keys, regardless of errors, so that they will achieve that automatic response to keys without looking.

The "touch keyboarding" skill kicks in at about 20 wpm, so we aren't talking about excessive typing speed at this early stage. If students type too slowly and deliberately in the beginning, that 6th sense will not kick in as fast and students will be more dependent on looking at their keyboard and hands. After reaching that kinesthetic, or automatic, response to the keys, high speeds should be downplayed.

4. GRADE ON PROPER TECHNIQUE AND ACCURACY, NOT ON WPM: Students enter keyboarding class in different places, from the uninitiated to the expert. Using wpm performance measures causes at-risk students to give up because they can never compete. It will be much easier for a 20 wpm typist to increase to 30 wpm that it is for a non-typist to reach 10 wpm. The true measures of success should be proper technique, ergonomic safety, and accuracy.

5. ELIMINATE ALL TIMINGS LONGER THAN 3 MINUTES AND USE 3-MINUTE TIMINGS SPARINGLY: For years we used long production timings. Today, timings of 5 or 10 minutes should NEVER be assigned. Prolonged typing without meaningful rest must be prohibited. Even 3-minute timings should be avoided whenever possible. With 3-minute timings, the first minute usually goes fairly well, but during the second and third minutes, hands tense up, stress builds, and swelling begins. Besides, 30-second and 1-minute timings provide students with a greater feeling of success. Success builds enthusiasm. Longer timings are deflating and destroy confidence.

6. STRETCH, SHAKE, AND REST: Students should rest their hands, using proper stretching, shaking, and relaxation techniques at the end of each section of typing -- EVERY MINUTE or so. This activity MUST become habitual.

7. AS STUDENTS PROGRESS, REDUCE THEIR PRACTICE TIME: When students progress to 35-40 wpm at accuracy rates consistently over 95 percent, reduce practice time! This is an injury prevention issue. The more students type, the more at risk they are for a variety of RSIs. As students increase their typing speed, reduce practice time to 10 minutes per day, stressing accuracy while letting speed build naturally and gradually over time.

8. ELIMINATE ALL PRACTICE AFTER A STUDENT REACHES 55 WPM AT 95% OR HIGHER! It is simply not safe to type fast over long periods of time. Set a reasonable upper speed limit. Decide at what point enough is enough!

9. BE CAREFUL WHEN IMPLEMENTING KEYBOARDING INSTRUCTION BEFORE MIDDLE SCHOOL: Young people do not retain typing skills from year to year nearly as well as we would like to think. A typical seventh-grade keyboarding teacher remarked that she could achieve the same results if the students had never typed before entering her course. Students came from the elementary grades with so many bad habits that it took her weeks to get her students trained in the proper techniques and ergonomic appropriateness.

Keyboarding instruction at elementary grades is fraught with problems. (For more, read The 10 Things Wrong with Elementary Keyboarding.) You MUST TRAIN YOUR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS! And, don't forget, by the time our current elementary students reach high school, the input technologies revolution will be in full swing, and computers and input methods will have changed drastically. Computer skills elementary students should also be learning include penmanship, clear enunciation, and reading aloud clearly.

10. REDUCE TYPING FOR ALL K-12 STUDENTS BY 50 PERCENT BY 2005: The amount of typing that students are asked to do in some school districts goes beyond any long-term need. (Read HOW OUR SCHOOL REDUCED TYPING BY 50 PERCENT below.)

11. ASK STUDENTS TO USE PROPER TECHNIQUE WHEN THEY ARE OUTSIDE OF YOUR WATCHFUL EYE: In an informal survey we discovered that over 80 percent of our students went back to two-finger typing as soon as they are not being observed. This means, when they are doing their e-mail at home, instant messaging, or report writing, they put aside what we have taught them and practice bad habits!

12. EXPECT STUDENTS TO KNOW WHAT THE RSI SYMPTOMS ARE AND EXPECT THEM TO USE ALTERNATIVES TO KEYBOARDING: Sadly, only a few students will describe their repetitive stress injury symptoms to their teachers. Many students will continue to type and never voice their symptoms and pains. For this reason, make sure your students know about the alternatives to typing. Make sure they have speech and handwriting recognition skills. Let them know that not everyone types and it is OK for them to use these alternatives if thy feel RSI-like symptoms. Plus, teaching keyboarding alternatives will introduce variety into your program. Variety is the spice of life. Variety can help reduce injuries. Lets face it, change is often as good as a rest.

13. FORBID THE USE OF THE BACKSPACE OR DELETE KEYS DURING PRACTICE: Students that use the Backspace or Delete keys quickly become dependent upon them and become less concerned with keying accurately the first time. Those who depend on Backspace/Delete are more prone to mistakes, increasing the total number of keystrokes they use to complete a document. If students make a mistake, have them type the line over again correctly rather than backspacing over errors.

14. TEACH PROPER KEYING/SITTING POSITION: While ergonomically correct techniques alone WILL NOT prevent injuries from happening, they can minimize the impact of typing and clicking on the human body. Always:

• Teach neutral wrist and arm position. If the wrist is bent, either upwards or downwards, the nerves and tendons in the carpal region are either stretched or crunched, and the risk of injury dramatically increases.
• Demand proper sitting position and keyboard height. The height of the keyboard should complement proper arm and wrist position.
• Provide each student with an adjustable chair. It is impossible for each student to maintain the proper sitting position in a lab setting without an adjustable chair.

15. TEACH PROPER CURVED FINGER AND FLOATING TECHNIQUES: Have students pay attention to their hands and how they work the keyboard. Always:

• Tell students to use a light touch. Pounding the keys also pounds the connective tissues in the fingers and joints.
• Emphasize curved fingers. Curved fingers are stronger when pressing keys than straight fingers.
• Allow hands to float to the upper and lower reaches. This is an old manual typewriter technique that has been somewhat forgotten. Hands that float to the upper and lower reaches more easily retain the curved position of the fingers and allow arm and shoulder muscles to move and relax, thereby reducing stress.
• Never let students rest their hands on the keyboard or the table. Anchoring the hands on the table or keyboard forces the fingers to abandon the curved position when pressing the upper reaches. As fingers straighten out, the fingers are weakened and hyperextend, causing joints and connective tissues to take a beating.

SPEED OR ACCURACY?
CASE STUDY: HOW OUR SCHOOL REDUCED TYPING BY 50 PERCENT

BACKGROUND: Keyboarding has reached unsafe levels for many students. In our district keyboarding instruction has been the rule every year for grades 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. One of our elementary feeder schools starts keyboarding in kindergarten! Another starts in third grade.

And there is another requirement that is baffling from an injury perspective -- students MUST pass a typing exam after 8th grade where they must type 30 wpm at 96% accuracy on multiple three-minute timings before they are allowed to continue taking computer classes in the 9th grade. Failure to pass the exam requires yet another required semester of typing in summer school where instruction proceeds for nearly two hours each day.

To reduce typing pressure to reasonable levels, under the leadership of our thoughtful principal, we completely canceled our semester of 7th grade keyboarding. This cut the amount of typing students do in our school by 50%. (We only have two grades, 7th and 8th.) This was no easy political task since keyboarding has become somewhat of an institution in our district. Nevertheless, the 7th grade class was dropped and students were allowed to take an elective course in its place. Students got a year of much needed rest from typing practice and registered for important elective classes such as computer graphics, sewing, band, orchestra, foreign language, and ballroom dance.

CONCLUSION: Careful records were kept comparing the last group to have 7th grade keyboarding with the first group to avoid the class. With these 8th graders, we were careful to follow the 15 principals of safer keyboarding outlined above. Here is how things are turning out!

• Total passing for 2001-2002 school year for students WITH 7th and 8th grade keyboarding = 52%
• First semester 2002-2003 total passing for students WITHOUT 7th grade keyboarding = 65%

Less can be more! So, what caused this significant jump in performance despite cutting the time spent keying? The elementary and 7th grade programs were concerned with increasing typing speed. To validate this point, students coming in from the elementary school keyboarding programs were given pretests at the start of 8th grade. The average accuracy on 3-minute timings was 70.8 percent, which is abysmal from a health perspective. This means students are typing thousands of unnecessary keystrokes each day, which increases their risk for injury.

Under the new "Safer Keyboarding" program, typing speed or wpm is a non-factor in grading. Students are only encouraged to type accurately for 15 minutes or less each day using proper ergonomic techniques.

The results are starting to speak for themselves.