Effects of Tablet Tilt Angle on Children ’ s Handwriting in Elementary School

Tablets and mobile devices are used in various situations in everyday life. Several researchers have reported the effectiveness of tilting a tablet in enabling a high degree of usability. Tablets are also increasingly popular in elementary school classrooms. The use of tablets in schools is considered to be different from their common use in daily life because students have many opportunities to take notes in schools. Furthermore, it is particularly important to hold a pencil or pen properly with correct posture in elementary schools. The aim of this study was to determine the tilt angle of tablets most beneficial for children’s handwriting in elementary school. An experiment was conducted with fourthgraders at a public elementary school. Twenty-eight students used tablets with three different tilt angles: 0°, 10°, and 20°. Participants were required to write a Kanji character at six positions on the tablet screen and then rate their responses on a 4-point Likert scale. The results indicated that there was an overall preferred tilt angle of 10° and that bottom part of the screen was more difficult to write on than the top. In particular, the difficulty score of a tilt angle of 20° in the bottom part was significantly higher than that of other two tilt angles. Moreover, there were several comments from participants that the second level of tilt angle (i.e., 10°) was the most comfortable positon for writing.