Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop In the Classroom (scientificamerican.com)

Cindi May writes via Scientific American about new research that "suggests that laptops do not enhance classroom learning, and in fact students would be better off leaving their laptops in the dorm during class." From the report: Although computer use during class may create the illusion of enhanced engagement with course content, it more often reflects engagement with social media, YouTube videos, instant messaging, and other nonacademic content. This self-inflicted distraction comes at a cost, as students are spending up to one-third of valuable (and costly) class time zoned out, and the longer they are online the more their grades tend to suffer. To understand how students are using computers during class and the impact it has on learning, Susan Ravizza and colleagues took the unique approach of asking students to voluntarily login to a proxy server at the start of each class, with the understanding that their internet use (including the sites they visited) would be tracked. Participants were required to login for at least half of the 15 class periods, though they were not required to use the internet in any way once they logged in to the server. Researchers were able to track the internet use and academic performance of 84 students across the semester.

participants spent almost 40 minutes out of every 100-minute class period using the internet for nonacademic purposes, including social media, checking email, shopping, reading the news, chatting, watching videos, and playing games. This nonacademic use was negatively associated with final exam scores, such that students with higher use tended to score lower on the exam. Social media sites were the most-frequently visited sites during class, and importantly these sites, along with online video sites, proved to be the most disruptive with respect to academic outcomes. In contrast with their heavy nonacademic internet use, students spent less than 5 minutes on average using the internet for class-related purposes (e.g., accessing the syllabus, reviewing course-related slides or supplemental materials, searching for content related to the lecture). Given the relatively small amount of time students spent on academic internet use, it is not surprising that academic internet use was unrelated to course performance. Thus students who brought their laptops to class to view online course-related materials did not actually spend much time doing so, and furthermore showed no benefit of having access to those materials in class.

Comments

But what about my porn needs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to jerk off during class, helps me relax. I need my laptop to help, else I'll be jacking it for 20 minutes, and that's just awkward.

Re:Strawman defeated

[El Cubano]

Other than businesses wanting to sell more laptop computers or students wanting to surf the web during class, who ever claimed computer use during a lecture or seminar would enhance engagement with course content?

I am guessing that you don't teach or otherwise work in the education sector. Just off the top of my head, here are people or groups would have an incentive to make that claim:

• Computer hardware/software makers (as you already pointed out)
• Administrators at primary/secondary schools who want larger budgets (in government, bigger budget == more important/influential)
• Colleges and universities who want to be perceived as leading edge
• Makers of educational support software (e.g., Blackboard, Desire2Learn, etc.)
• Textbook publishers trying to go the ebook route (remember, ebooks are nearly free to reproduce/distribute compared to dead tree books)
• Parents who want to make themselves believe that because Johnny or Sally is using a computer in class they will get a better education and turn out smarter, more capable, etc.

This whole "computers in the classroom" thing is probably the best example ever of the self licking ice cream cone or the solution in search of a problem.

I've seen it both ways

[XxtraLarGe]

When I was studying computer science in school, most of our classes were in lecture halls, and you'd have a lab portion on a different day. I got a PowerBook for my last couple of years, and was able to type my notes, since I can type way faster than I can write., so it worked out pretty well for me. Of course, Facebook wasn't a thing yet, and I detested MySpace.

Now that I'm teaching, we're in a classroom with computers. Since so many students just goof off on the computers during the lecture, I decided to start flipping my classroom. I record video lectures and then have them work on their labs & homework during class time. It has worked out pretty well, especially for the good students, and it removes some excuses for the bad students.

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You don't bring a laptop to class to pay attention

[Nite_Hawk]

Granted it's been well over a decade for me since college, but it's the same story with technical conferences and work meetings. Inevitably you will run into people who spend 60 minutes saying something that should take 5-10. Allowing the audience to bring a laptop to do other stuff when this happening is the socially acceptable solution we've come up with as a society to let the lecturer save face while letting the audience quietly stop listening to them.

Perhaps it would be better in the long run if we were honest and just booed or walked out so lecturers were more forcefully encouraged to get better. I'm not sure it would really work that way though. It's already scary enough presenting in front of a lot of people. As it is, if you've got an audience full of people staring at their laptop instead of staring at you, it's them gently telling you that what you are saying is less important to them than whatever is on their screen.