Students sit in rows, pencils sharpened, erasers at the ready, desktops and tables cleared. A volunteer student hands stacks of paper notebooks to each student sitting at one end. The student dutifully takes one, and passes the rest down the row, each student repeating the exercise until it reaches the other end of the room and every student has a sheaf of paper wrapped in a light blue cover. 

The test, no matter the course or subject, is of the student’s memory of course content (the text, the discussions, the lectures, the late-night study sessions) and ability to answer a given set of prompts devised by the professor and shared in advance, with the promise that several will be “on the test.” 

On the day of the test, time is limited and stakes are high. The professor–at the front of the classroom–addresses the class standing behind the desk, in front of a chalk or white board, the projector screen pulled to full length in order to hide the selected prompts written on the board. 

“You have one hour and 15 minutes to write your responses on the two essays provided on the board. Please write legibly, in your bluebooks and number each question. Be sure to write your name, date and class section on the cover,” she says. “You may begin,” she looks at the clock and tugs the projector screen from the bottom, letting it roll up, “now.” The dry crisp susurration of paper, pages turning, pencils scribbling, and chairs creaking are punctuated only by the occasional cough, knuckles cracking, and chairs creaking as students pour complete attention to filling their books. 

In the late 1920s, Butler University introduced this notorious paper-based notebook assessments in the classroom¹. Butler Bulldogs don the blue and white, and blue was adopted for the cover of the miniature booklets (lending them their distinctive look and name ever since)². 

For nearly 100 years this “rite of passage,” the “blue book” exam has been carried out across campuses during exam season turning trees into paper into short demonstrations and attestations of learning. In the age of Generative AI, bluebook’s have had somewhat of a resurgence as a method for assessing students reliably. They are device-less, delivered in a proctored-testing environment, face-to-face, in a classroom. As such, they offer a window into retained student knowledge and applied thinking for the question without third party input, AI-feedback or outlines, or search engine summaries. 

Recently, at ICAI 2026 I used “green books” as my swag, adorning each with a Cursive stamp to add a little tongue-in-cheek swag to the table… A few students attending asked for a stack mentioning how the cost ($0.25 per book) had been passed along as their responsibility to purchase from the school store.

At Cursive, we think a lot about the bluebook examination and its usefulness today. On the one hand, bluebooks are a throw back to simpler times for the valid assessment of learning when computers weren’t available and hand writing was the norm. On the other, they add friction (and cost) for students who’ve eschewed hand writing for the efficiency of typing and for faculty (or TAs) who have to decipher messy student writing and mark manually. The result could look something like this:

We’re excited to bring a fresh version of the bluebook to classrooms through our tools. Rather than pen and paper, students simply login or start writing. Cursive can be enabled for any Moodle activity or in Google Docs or Microsoft Office and with it, faculty can:

• Limit or prevent pasting
• Provide a clean modern writing environment
• Increase student output (typing is 3-6x as fast as handwriting)
• Improve submission quality (easier editing, uniform readability)
• Collect submissions electronically
• Save time marking and providing feedback 

In a proctored environment (in your class, with a TA or faculty present); Cursive provides a reliable web-based “blue book” writing environment without a learning curve, software installation, or special device. No pencil sharpener required. 

Want a demo for either? please reach out.

1.  https://uvamagazine.org/articles/blue_books  ↩︎
2. Interestingly, I found “green” versions recently on Amazon, maybe it’s an artifact of Baylor, Marshall, or Dartmouth desire for an “on brand” colorway?? ↩︎