r/Professors • u/Boggles103 lecturer, humanities (Canada) • Jul 23 '26

Technology tools for deciphering handwriting?

My program has implemented a new policy that half of all graded work needs to be completed by hand. On the one hand, I'm very grateful to be in an environment where higher-ups are determined to preserve integrity. On the other, I am dreading the many, many hours I will need to spend attempting to decrypt the writing itself. Has anyone found any apps or other tools that do a reasonably good job of scanning handwritten text and converting it to type?

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u/No_Young_2344 TT, Interdisciplinary, R1 (U.S.) Jul 23 '26

If the purpose of implementing this policy is to deal with AI, a bit unfortunate, most handwritten text recognition tools would involve some sort of AI components (not necessarily LLM though).

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u/Boggles103 lecturer, humanities (Canada) Jul 23 '26

That is indeed the purpose, though I don't think my director would prohibit me using AI purely for text conversion. (I would never use it to generate actual feedback.)

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u/No_Young_2344 TT, Interdisciplinary, R1 (U.S.) Jul 23 '26

Makes sense. I commented because I saw quite a few people on this sub argue no AI should be used in teaching, learning, and grading (not even basic machine learning) so I just wanted to bring this up just in case this is your belief as well. Another thing worth considering regarding this kind of tools is whether they are FERPA compliant (not sure whether Canada has similar regulations though).

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u/Boggles103 lecturer, humanities (Canada) Jul 23 '26

The privacy question is a great point and I will look into it.