Peer-reviewed research
The effect of a touch-typing program on keyboarding skills of higher education students with and without learning disabilities
Hayley Weigelt Marom and Naomi Weintraub, Research in Developmental Disabilities, vol. 47, pp. 208-217, 2015 · DOI 10.1016/j.ridd.2015.09.014
Read the originalRead on October 16, 2026
- What it is
- A study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem of 74 university students, 44 with learning disabilities and 30 without, who took 14 bi-weekly touch-typing lessons with keystroke logging. Speed and accuracy were measured before, at the end, and three months after the program.
- How much weight it carries
- Peer-reviewed with a three-month follow-up. It has no control group, so the gains cannot be separated from practice effects. The students were in higher education and the lessons were software-led, so results for children or for teacher-led classes may differ.
Facts taken from this source
- The study's touch-typing program had 14 lessons held every two weeks, using software that logged the time and accuracy of each key.
“The program included 14 bi-weekly touch-typing lessons” (Abstract)
- The study included 44 students with developmental learning disabilities and 30 students without them.
“One group included students with developmental learning disabilities (LD, n=44)” (Abstract)
- Students in the touch-typing program kept accuracy above 95 percent.
“In both cases high accuracy (above 95%) was maintained.” (Abstract)
- At the three-month follow-up, both the students with learning disabilities and the students without them were significantly faster than before the program.
“In the long-term evaluation, both groups significantly improved their speed compared to pre-test.” (Abstract)
- At the end of the touch-typing program, keyboarding speed of the typically achieving students decreased, while the speed of students with learning disabilities somewhat increased.
“Results showed that at the end of the program, keyboarding speed of the NA students decreased” (Abstract)