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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.'"
College is a choice, if students decide to squander it, banning laptops won't fix it.
;)
Besides, they'd just pull out their iPhones then.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
It all depends on what is done in the classroom if a laptop (or other device) can be used or not.
During some laborations the use of a laptop can be good since it allows the students to have a location where to make notes and share them, but in other cases it may be a distraction instead. Don't forget the information overload factor - education is often about how to come to a conclusion yourself, not to draw on other people's conclusions.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I type all my university notes. I'm able to work faster than if I was writing, can research if I didn't understand something, can format it into an understandable piece.
Yes you get distracted. But you know what I do when I have paper and I'm bored ? I doodle or daydream. You're still going to do something else to pass the time. If you can't stay attentive, stop bringing it yourself. There's no need to remove it for everyone else.
Yes, let's ban a useful tool because some people are too meek to ask others to stop doing distracting things with their laptops. [rolls eyes] When did people become so afraid? Is it really that hard to respectfully ask someone to change their behavior so as not to disturb others? Are we to ban a useful technology in the classroom because of a handful of bozos?
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
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.
"[W]hen I'm trying to pay attention to the lecture, even someone's screensaver in the row ahead of me can be a major distraction."
How about having the ones with laptops sitting in the back or the ones distracted sitting in front (perhaps depending on whichever is the larger group).
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
I'm a little mixed on the topic. I've had horrible handwriting since I was a kid. But I had an excellent memory. Something I learned in middle school and high school was I had a choice: I could either take notes, to which I could read very little of if I went back later, or I could pay attention to the lecture and retain more of it. The exceptions were math/physics. Those classes I had to take notes as I'd understand the material in class, but if I went to do homework later that night or the next night, I wouldn't remember the finer points.
I had a laptop in college, rarely used it for note taking in class. Once again, for most classes I could take notes (paper or computer) or listen and learn the lecture. Again the exception being classes that were math intensive or subjects like Econ where drawing graphs were kinda hard on a computer.
That changed, however, when I was in Law School. There having a laptop was almost a must and a useful tool. I had hard copies of the texts, but also CD-rom's of the case law and the particular program made it extremely easy to highlight text and leave margin notes on the computer. Extremely useful when you're reading 300 pages a night and then needed to make references the next day in class. I'm not sure if I would have survived 1L with out those notes on the computer.
But I wasn't using it to *take* notes in class as much as search/recall information already stored from the night/day before.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Students will be a lot less likely to be using Facebook in a class if it's their second time through.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Should laptops be banned? Yes. But let's ban them because writing offers better recall and less personal distractions. Frankly the argument that someone else reading facebook is distracting is almost laughable. I fail to see how facebook or slashdot are any more distracting on someone else's laptop than for example a word document or OneNote.
But as a sidebar I just want to point out how lame "college" has become. It used to be for those serious about their education or the academic subjects, but now it is just another mandatory level of education with the same behavioural problems from those who really have no wish to be in attendance. The fact that we're talking about treating 19 to 24 year olds like small children should tell you how silly the situation is becoming.
Block the problem, not the tool.
I never understood why students need to take notes. When I was in college I never took notes, instead I tried to listen and understand what was being said. The rest of the required information I got from the course material that was prepared by the teacher.
I am working as researcher/post-grad student, and computer is the number one research tool. Like is hammer for a blacksmith. No surprises there.
When in the same place I work should "forbid" the major research tool in the classrooms, this is an obvious sight that the teaching system I-speak-and-you-listen-and-take-notes is broken. Or at least obsolete.
For most of the time I have been good student, and I am writing a doctoral dissertation now. One would expect I like lectures. Still, most of them are boring as hell. I didn't have smart phone/netbook when I was in high school (and I envy the nowadays students so much for having them), and guess what - when I got bored, I always find a way to distract myself. And the others. Chatting with a schoolmate during class is less distracting that launching a paper airplane, IMHO.
Colleges should ban class lectures. They are one of the less efficient way of conveying information and knowledge. The fact that these survived the invention of the printing press amazes me but I am confident it won't survive the internet era.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Why would someone even ask this question, let alone get it headlined on Slashdot?
Like it or not, computers are an integral part of higher education in the U.S. and can't be removed. Lecture notes and other materials are routinely provided online, most communications are via email or via campus-wide chatboards, and grades are supplied via online systems.
To cut off students from all these resources during lecture may have certain merit from the point of view of a vain or self-important professor who believes all eyes should be on him, but for maximizing efficiency of learning, students today have to have their laptops.
For one thing, most young people can barely write without a keyboard. I do like to take notes on paper, but typing is so much faster that there's no comparison. For a fast typist, it's the difference between getting almost all of the information down and getting maybe 60% or 70% of the information down. There are certain advantages to writing, like drawing arrows, figures, etc. Heck, you really need both. But the keyboard rules.
There are students who learn better at their own pace, who get little out of the lectures, but who need to be in the lecture hall in case sneaky professors provide information verbally that is not written down in the lecture notes. Such students can read, study other material, and half-listen. I've done it myself. It's perhaps not ideal, but it's a way to get through a course.
Another point to consider is that even if they managed to ban laptop use in lecture halls on some luddite campus, the students will still have smartphones which are functionally similar. Do we also ban use of iPhones and Android phones? Force the students to keep them out of sight? What about students with iPad and Kindle type computers which literally slide into a notebook and are barely visible?
What about students with hearing impediments or other physical problems that rely on computers to get them through a lecture?
Thanks for playing. Next.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
There were classes I took in college in which the only way for me to take notes fast enough was to type them. Even if that wasn't the case, it was much easier to organize and share notes that are in electronic form. Sure, it may be distracting if someone in front of you is browsing on Facebook, and sure, that may be an abuse of their use of a laptop in class. However, this is a fairly minor distraction for those around. Just wait until you get a job where your cube mates are all arguing about and sending you constant email updates while you are just trying to finish your bread-winning work for the day.
College students are ostensibly adults. If they don't want to pay attention in class and want to look like an idiot while they do FarmVille offers in the lecture hall, that's their problem. It's also their right if they want to use it to look up something they didn't understand or to take notes. There's no reason to meddle with this if it's not actively disrupting class. If the bare fact that they have one out is bothering you, get over yourself. If they're being disruptive, sit somewhere else or talk to someone about it. You're in college, it's time to grow up now.
Profs:
If you want to ban laptops, then you need to go after cell phones, pagers, and everything else a student can bring in. I don't care about the result, as long as its uniform.
You may be required to change your teaching methods, to engage more students.
Students:
If you can't pay attention in class, it could be that's your problem. You may need to focus on the class and not care what screensavers are running on laptops, since you'll have to do the same thing when you are done with school.
Or gang up on the Facebook students and ask them to be more polite.
Personally, I say let them filter certain websites on the academic networks with the ability to request per-account authorizations when a student is doing a research project dealing with social networking. It's not going to stop anyone from SD, but it will at least stop the casual classroom infringer (for a while). Granted, soon everyone will just have CDMA or GSM laptops capable of getting online from anywhere, and school wifi networks will be bypassed completely. It's a tricky subject, and students will have to familiarize themselves with the network regulations to decide what campus to go to.
Banning laptops in the classroom is absurd. It's hitting a nail with an anvil. Establishing proper etiquette protocol and disciplinary procedures for students who disrupt a classroom is a much more sensible solution to outright bans. Computers are increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives, and students need to learn to be able to use them in a professional manner. Just as you don't see people staring at porn in the classroom or in a business meeting (typically), we shouldn't see people staring at their friend's FB page.
I came, I saw, She conquered.
Maybe they could just not have WiFi in the classrooms. If they don't have MSN facebook tweets popping up the whole time then the laptops would be much less of a distraction.
No sig today...
Seems to me that this should be a choice. The student (or their family) are paying for the college in the first place, should it not be their choice whether or not they pay attention? I realize that in theory the idea of distraction might be valid (distracting other kids with screensavers and games), it also seems to me that a little self control would go a long way there for the kids who are being distracted. Alternatively, as another poster mentioned have a brief at the start of the session about laptop etiquette.
Of course, I think that the social network problem and games could both be battled with a relatively simple fix; turn off the wireless! Last I checked, laptops still come with onboard storage for documents... hell even that Google thing has storage for offline edits. Most game players are playing online games anyway these days, so turning off the wifi makes it less interesting... though yes, the hardcore gamers might still fire up a game in class. Having said all this, the same students who are playing games and their social networks during a class are probably the same students who doodle in their notebooks and distract those around them during class... should we also ban pen and paper?
It seems to me that the technology progresses, but people remain fundamentally the same. You're not going to fix that by striking out at the new technology. I am not currently in college, but my girlfriend is and they've had exactly this discussion in the last 12 months because she likes to take notes using her cellphone (an old HTC Touch Pro), which she can then save, email or print. Me, I go to meeting with my iPhone and use Evernote to take notes during the meeting... that way I have a copy of it waiting on my desktop computer when I get out of the meeting. And yes, I've seen people at meetings sitting there with their cellphones playing games or on Facebook... hell, I've done it once or twice. Still, that's my choice; if I miss something fundamental in the meeting because I'm distracted then I will pay the price... no-one else.
I love my iPad, but I have to tell you -- it would do a terrible job note-taking.
My old Windows Tablet XP machine would do a better job, it had a stylus, handwriting-recognition, and a keyboard. Combined with Microsoft One-Note, it would do about as good a job IMO as a pen a paper -- but be easier to share with your classmates.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Like most touch typists, I type several times faster than I write. Even still, taking notes with a laptop isn't the right answer. Even if you're using a laptop (or, for that matter, a pencil and paper) to take notes, you're still distracted from the lecture and are unable to fully absorb the material, much less be fully interactive. If you're still focusing on the last thing the professor said, you're missing the next thing. I make it a point to never take notes in class, meetings, etc. The few times I've broken that rule, I've invariably regretted it.
The right answer is for the professor to make lecture notes available for further study at the end of class so that students who want to review the material can do so without being distracted during the lecture. By doing so, students who need to go over the notes afterwards to refresh their memory can do so without being distracted during the lecture itself by doing something other than listening and interacting with the professor (and, ideally, simultaneously reading slides that drive home the main points).
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If I ever had a problem with a student I would ask them to be quite or leave the class directly. If they are still a jerk then I get a little louder and say it so the whole class can hear and use peer pressure to make them fall into line. I don't expect someone else to deal with my problems for me. I deal with them directly on my own in a reasonable and peaceful manner. If students haven't learned how to do this then they better learn because it is a skill they absolutely have to have once they leave college. It is need on the job, and needed in dealing with other adults in a responsible manner when there is a conflict.
Banning laptops is not the answer here. If one student is a problem, address that student directly and respectfully resolve the issue. Don't make capricious rules against everyone because of a few students who are an issue.
The government and universities are not there to take care of you and create a nanny state. Learn to deal with this problems on your own rather than jumping immediately to creating rules and laws to deal with something you don't like.
Why is that? Because you think that you write well that everyone should have to be able to do that? Guess what in the real world no one writes by hand anymore. They type everything they do in the business world so it is easily readable by everyone. Also some of us can type faster than we can write. I type much faster than I write, of course I grew up on computers from the time I was 8, so have had years of experience sitting in front of keyboard typing that others may not have. That is still no reason to punish me because you can't deal with laptops. I can actually type every word the professor is saying in class. Can you write every word that they say?
I have taught at the elementary, middle, high school levels, as well as adult and technical training.
In the technical training I've done, it's on them to pay attention. For the kids, it's on me to make them pay attention (and by kids, I mean K-12, not college students).
The only ban I would consider would be if their behavior is distracting the OTHER students, like using their cell phone in class. Other than that, if Mommy and Daddy keep wanting to pay for little Sally to get Cs and Ds in college, then so be it.
I type my notes into my personal Wiki (so they are available to me everywhere and can easily be organized). Take my wifi from my cold dead hands!
Seriously, why should I be punished to force the facebookers/warcrafters to pay attention? What's next, banning pencils because people like to doodle?
Keep the laptops, keep the wifi.
Explain to students that there aren't many professional work environments that ban either, so they need to get used to managing their own usage, and get used to people around them doing things on their laptops. It's an opportunity for people who have problems with either or both to learn that if they can't rein in their attention, they're going to fail at class, at work and at life.
For those that say that it's not the job of the class to teach these lessons, I agree - it's simply the students' job to take control of their own life. It's no different than someone tailgating you on the freeway or cutting in front of you in line. University classrooms are learning environments and professors and TAs should help enforce that, but they aren't surrounded by some magical force field that entitles you to a guardian angel when you walk in.
If Joe Laptop won't turn off Netflix or Quake Live, grow a pair and ask them to turn it off, or just get up and move. Don't sit next to him next time. If your classroom has become a LAN party with every student except for you participating, talk to the TA or professor after class and ask them to help. It is their responsibility to help ensure that you have an opportunity to learn; it's not their job to guarantee that you'll have a private fort wherever you decide to sit.
I went to college in the mid-90s when laptop use was nearly unheard of. I used a Powerbook Duo to take notes in most of my classes. I was often able to type as fast as the speaker was able to talk. I took particularly good notes for an entire semester of European history 1700-1850. At the end of the semester, I handed the professor a floppy disk and a print copy of my notes. He was so delighted by this unexpected "gift", and he was able to critically review his teaching.
I went back and worked at my alma mater as an education technologist after a few years in industry. I supported BlackBoard, deployed Moodle and Wordpress, and encouraged faculty to explore collaborative research and writing wikis. I can only imagine how engaged in the topic a class could become using a tool like iEtherpad.com to modify wikispace.
I remember getting distracted by a neighbors doodles in some classes. Should we ban the spiral-bound notebook?
Until you spend some time on the lonely side of the podium, it's hard to comment with a full scope of knowledge on this question.
Classes where laptops are left closed result in much more engaged and dynamic classes. Those where they are open result in the "room full of zombies" effect. There's a reason it's so annoying to talk with somebody who looks away and digs in a purse or engages elsewhere when it's your turn to speak. The bio-feedback loop collapses and the teacher might as well post lectures on YouTube and students post questions in an on-line forum somewhere. Heck; on YouTube you can pause and re-play stuff. And it's cheaper!
Universities were built and people attend them at great cost in order to assemble like-minds in one place so that everybody can benefit from those aspects of humanity which thrive on face to face communication, (also earned at great cost through the trials of evolution). There are many layers of communication taking place, both subtle and extreme, which bring a room alive when people engage in each other in meat-space, but which are stripped away when it's done through a computer screen. This doesn't mean that the virtual world is without benefit. It's not; computers are a boon. But the virtual world can be attended any time, any place you can flip open a laptop. It was built to simulate the grand effect of a campus assembly. But if you are actually attending a college assembly. . ?
Laptops need to be used responsibly. Turn off animations and distracting screen savers in respect of the people sitting near you. If you're going to take notes, then sure, do so, but have the courtesy to limit it to notes and stay engaged in discussions. If you need to look something up to aid the discussion, then sure, do that, but in general things work best when all eyes and ears are on whoever is speaking. If you want to play on Facebook or dip into a game, then that's fine by me, but please physically leave class first because you're literally sucking the life out of the room by removing your mind and leaving a vacant corpse in your chair. It's creepy.
Ideally, I like to have wifi and fluorescent lights killed and windows open for fresh air. I also like to rearrange the chairs so that we can all see each other to better engage. Do that, and everybody wakes up, but these days it's very hard to scrub an environment of all the fuzz designed to keep us zoned out.
-FL
The single most useful thing a lecturer can do to improve lectures and outcomes for all students is to strongly suggest (i.e., "insist") students make an effort tofamiliarize themselves with the relevant material in the textbook before a lecture on any given subject, and to lecture under the assumption that the "good students" are doing so.
Among other things, this means "good students" will be less likely to waste "mental energy" transcribing facts (formulas, definitions, etc.) that appear in the textbook, and "bad students" will be compelled to at least open it up once in awhile (since the material in the lecture won't "make any sense" without reference tocited definitions from the text).
If any of this is "asking too much," a student(or lecturer) truly doesn't belong in college. Note in particular that I said "make an effort" above — not understanding everything "the first time through" is the rule rather than the exception, even for exceptional students, in most if not all subjects.
The worst thing a lecturer can do is to assign "brownie points" to reward students for "paying attention" —I've seen this — by including "easter eggs" in lectures.
"As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) is the art of skipping," William James once wrote, "so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."
This "certain stage" is different for each student, and something "students" in all walks of life must ultimately figure out for themselves.
Cheers,
Jason
I haven't been in school since 1990, but sometimes at work, someone will insist that people close laptops during a meting.
Its usually either a self-important, ignorant project manager or a director.
Because they take notes in their stupid leather bound book, they assume the rest of us should too.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.