It is most likely that students twenty years ago were not able to enjoy the Internet in their studies. That's why it took them a lot of time, energy, and even money, to do a project that we can now easily complete in one or two days.

For example, when being asked to write an assignment about past habits, the students had to go to the library, look for books on the topic, read the books, and hand-write any information that they thought was useful for their assignment. They would also have to meet with some old people and talk to them about the past. At home, they had to hand-write their assignment, possibly with a lot of erasing and rewriting of the first draft. After finishing the draft, they had to write a clean copy on another piece of paper for submission.