Should Colleges Ban Classroom Laptop Use?

theodp writes "If you were a college prof, think you could successfully compete for the attention of a lecture hall of Mac-packing students? CS student Carolyn blogs that a debate has sprung up on her campus about whether it is acceptable to use a laptop in class. And her school is hardly alone when it comes to struggling with appropriate in-classroom laptop use (vendor/corporate trainers would no doubt commiserate). The problem, she says, is that the OCD Facebookers aren't just devaluing their own education — there's a certain distraction factor to worry about. 'Students,' she suggests, 'should also communicate with each other more and tell their classmates when their computer use bothers them. I'll admit it, when I'm trying to pay attention to the lecture, even someone's screensaver in the row ahead of me can be a major distraction.'"

Comments

Why not ban mandatory attendence of lectures?

[CRCulver]

I spent my undergraduate years at an American university and then moved to Europe for the remainder of my academic years. Imagine how happy I was to find that here lectures are not obligatory -- the exams are rigorous, the expectations clearly laid out in a syllabus, and you're welcome to study on your own and show up on the last day of the course and show your knowledge. While some fields may actually impart useful knowledge through lectures, in so many fields one can get the same information from books.

So why not just make lectures optional? The students who are likely to simply surf the net can be absent, while those who come will probably want to be there.