Motor Skills Typing Skills

Turbo Typing

School Type: Primary Year Groups: 3, 4, 5 Participants Needed: 1000
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Email Emily at [email protected]

Motor Skill Researcher Dr Emily Williams is breaking down the puzzle of typing skill learning into puzzle pieces called sub-skills, such as planning, dexterity and error detection.

Though typing is everywhere, scientists have yet to observe its learning process in much detail – until now!

Emily has created Turbo Typing to observe how each of the typing sub-skills develop over time while pupils learn to touch-type (finding keys by touch and typing each with a particular finger).

A free, online, 24-week touch-typing programme for Primary Schools as a research study. Pupils log on and follow the self-paced programme, requiring minimal staff guidance.

It merges the best commercial typing courses with key findings from over 100 years of typing training research. It was developed in collaboration with Education Professionals of Primary.

Pupils are guided by Quentin Werty, the inventor of a typing time machine, through course modules interspersed with mini-games that regularly test pupils’ typing skill and sub-skills.

4 x 20-min sessions per week for 24 weeks from Jan 2024

Some or all classes from Years 3, 4 and 5 participating in the programme

1.5 hour training for relevant staff

Selection of a school representative

Weekly digital progress reports about each pupil

Rewards package of certificates and pencils (staff discretion)

Bespoke supportive materials (e.g. paper touch-typing template)

Optional sets of headphones

In our 2022 survey, 68% of parents and teachers said that children’s current typing ability is a barrier to their education. 96% agreed that touch-typing would benefit children’s education.

Efficient typing lays a solid foundation for future academic success and countless career paths.

As with handwriting, muscle memory for typing allows more attention for composition, leading to higher creativity, improved logical structuring, and expanded elaboration in their typed work.

Typing programmes have also been found to improve fine motor skills at large.

Project Image for Turbo Typing