*Banning *vs. *using* laptops in class
The students sit in class, tapping away at their laptops as the boring old law professor mechanically plods through his lecture. Except one. Instead of hunching over a portable computer or a notebook, he’s playing solitaire with a deck of cards on his desk. The professor halts his droning. “What are you doing?” he demands. The student shrugs. “My laptop is broken,” he says.It was a sketch, performed at a Yale Law School skit night some time ago, that sent a chill through the professors’ section in the auditorium. more>>
What do you think? Should laptops be banned and/or wireless access points blocked in classrooms? Or should the lecture itself get moved to the web, so class time can be used for engaged discussion and other activities that don't leave the students time for shopping, sorting photos, and cruising facebook during class meetings?
posted by Andrew at 11:32 AM
2 Comments:
There are several trains of thought you can follow for this kind of question.
As a budding information professional, I would first ask the question that trumps the proposed censorship- Why would you consider doing this?
If your college or university is having a problem with students abusing wireless in classes, the students grades will drop, and they will either be forced to pay attention in class or they will drop or fail out. The students should have the freedom to fail in class if they want to.
If your lectures are useless enough that the students don't need to pay attention during them, the professor may want to consider changing the focus of the class. There will be courses where lecture's are important, and could be placed online, and some where you could forgo lectures and move straight on into a discussion session. It's going to really depend on the material being covered and the motivations of both the students and the professor.
The concern I would have would be if other students were not able to follow the lecture due to disruptive behavior by these students, and these issues should be handled like any other disruptive student, so no additional rules should be needed to do deal with disruptive students.
I have had many classes where the lectures were worse than useless, and following them closely would actually reflect badly on your grade (because the grade would be assigned by how closely you followed the text, and your professor disagrees with the text, but the GA grading the assignment is using the book as a guide).
Also, as someone who has had issues with their own horrible handwriting and taking notes, I would find a laptop in class very handy for taking notes I could actually read and work with once the class had finished. If a professor or university wanted to ban a device because it's possible that students could mis-use it, that would be I feel a great waste of the resources of the campus, not to mention a lawsuit waiting to happen for people with disabilities.
many thanks for the feedback, Colin. As a point of clarification, I linked to the "Tomorrow's Professor" column to get some dialogue going -- I myself do *not* advocate banning laptops in the classroom, for all of the reasons you mention and then some. In fact, we have several classrooms here at the UO that are specially equipped with racks of laptops for students to use. The professors who use these rooms most effectively incorporate the laptops right into the class meeting, sending individuals or small groups off on various information gathering/research tasks, then having them report back to the large group. These are not typical lecture classes -- there is a different instructional model in play.
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