Class Action: Laptops Not Allowed
“Could you repeat the question?”
That’s the most common response law professor David Cole gets when he calls on disengaged students during class at Georgetown University. The question, Cole says, “is usually asked while the student glances up from the laptop screen that otherwise occupies his or her field of vision.”
The laptop—the favorite in-class tool for college and university students across the country—is coming unplugged.
When used responsibly—for taking notes or quickly accessing research—a laptop provides valuable educational support. But when used irresponsibly—for watching YouTube, surfing the web, emailing, IM-ing, playing games, checking sports scores, and shopping for shoes instead of engaging in class — laptops become the scourge of professors, some of whom are now banning them, especially in law schools.
“I was happy to compete with Minesweeper and solitaire,” said University of Michigan law professor Don Herzog, but not “the entire internet.” Herzog banned all laptops from his classes for a day, and was so “stunned by how much better the class was,” that he has vowed to make the embargo permanent in the fall.
Professor Herzog is not alone in his class action.
At Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, professors have nixed classroom laptops as well. At the University of Chicago Law School, classroom Wi-Fi was recently cut in response to an “epidemic” of web browsing. And at UCLA School of Law, when the meandering minds of the country’s future lawyers need to be jolted back from cyberspace to the Socratic method, professors can activate a “kill switch” to disable classroom Wi-Fi.
Many students disdain their professors’ attempts at online mind control, saying if classes weren’t so boring, they wouldn’t look for so many distractions. Ann Althouse, a professor from the University of Wisconsin Law School agrees with the students. “The idea that we’re going to somehow save these students from being distracted is a bit absurd,” she said. “Especially in law school, I’m on the side of individual responsibility and freedom.”
Tell us what you think: Should students be busted down for booting up in class? Should professors be responsible for making lectures and classes interesting enough to hold students’ attention? Do students have a responsibility to pay attention?
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Respect
I am reading these posts and one thing I am not reading is the fact that when a person is in front of you speaking it is rude to ignore them. I don’t care if it is boring or not if you talk, play on the computer, text, etc. that is rude.
I teach at a High School and I do not accept when I am talking the students are not listening. I am currently taking classes and I give my professors the same respect. I know they say that when they play games they are entertaining them selves and not interrupting the class, I disagree, when someone in front of me is typing or playing a game during a class it is very distracting to me.
Kay Brown | 1 year, 6 months ago
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laptops are important
I use my laptop for taking notes in class and I’m grateful for the internet because I use it to add to my notes. For example, when my Psychology teacher was discussing the brain, instead of taking down the notes, I went online to Google and found a picture with the parts of the brain label. I am a visual learner and that helps when I have to study for a test. Also, sometimes I even have teachers asking me to look stuff online. Yes, people do use laptops so they don’t have to pay attention. But in college, we are adults. We are paying for our education. Let us be responsible for our actions. If a student fails because they rather be on Myspace, oh well. That’s their tuition down the drain.
Mara | 1 year, 5 months ago
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Class is a community effort
Banning laptops in law school will not solve the problem of unmotivated students. A creative professor will be able to draw anyone who appears to be distracted, back into the class instruction. Some may stray because s/he could by chance know the topic so confidently, that multi-tasking may be an option. Additionally, if the professor moves about the classroom, students will be challenged to surfing the net without getting caught. Bottom line: if the student fails the test, s/he fails the class. Banning laptops seems like a substitute to a possibly boring lecture.
Noel Jefferson | 1 year, 5 months ago
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Let the professors choose.
I think teachers should be allowed to ban laptops in the classroom. It shouldn’t be a campus policy one way or the other. There are a lot of different ways to see this issue, and professors are intelligent people – if they think allowing laptops is better, so be it. If they’d like to ban them in their particular classroom, so be it.
Maybe a certain professors likes to see who is respectful enough to pay attention in class. Or maybe certain professors empathize with bored students and feel like a few minutes of distraction are ok in the middle of a boring lecture. There’s no one right answer.
Andrea | 1 year, 5 months ago
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Professor's call
In institutions of higher learning, it is ultimately the responsibility of the student to ensure the passing of a class. With that said, it is the professor’s decision as to what conduct is appropriate for his or her class. If they decide to prohibit the use of laptops in their class, that means the student will be forced to rely on GASP! listening and taking notes by hand. That really wouldn’t be all that bad when you think about it.
Jason | 1 year, 3 months ago
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Laptops should be allowed despite distraction.
This is college, right? People are paying a lot of money for that class and yet they’re slobbing off surfing the Internet watching Youtube and whatever.
The big question I have here is why class time is that important and whose responsibility it is whether students are paying attention or not. If the lecture format is boring or isn’t working for a student, versus other methods of taking in the information — reading, discussion, whatever — then I question the lecture format. Most of all whether attendance needs to be given points or affect grades as much as actual learning. How well have they mastered the material? Can they comprehend it enough to discuss it intelligibly and write about it coherently?
I know expecting college students to think independently, stay on topic, write well and be responsible for their own learning may be optimistic, but the reality of college is that it’s paid training for high end professions. They’re not children. Treating them as if they are is a certain way to reinforce the idea that they’re against the teacher, to get them to ignore lectures as dull and not use or pay attention to the information in the lecture.
If you want them to stay on topic, then set up more active participation situations in class. Set up debates and discussions. The college I went to used the Socratic method — there was no presentation of textbook material in the class time. That was spent entirely in defending your own views on it and if you hadn’t kept up, read up, done your essay decently then you wound up with the immediate humiliation of some more articulate and well prepared student making some disgusting immoral point vile to everything you believe — better than you made yours.
Seriously, that worked better than any traditional class, and I don’t think laptops would distract from that method. Instead people would be using them for on the spot research to have a point to counter what they just heard.
There’s my view — lectures as such are only useful to the particular individuals who learn best by being read aloud to. Students should not be penalized or rewarded for which type of learning mode works best for them.
Robert A. Sloan
Anonymous | 1 year, 2 months ago
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YOU CHOOSE
Regarding this issue I believe that students should be responsible enough to know when it is appropriate to be engaged in class and when it is appropriate to goof off, because lets face it, sometimes class is just too boring and you know you can make up notes later or something, obviously students should ideally listen to teachers, but that won’t happen all the time. Besides, if students decide to miss class it is their loss because their grade will reflect that and suffer from it and if it doesn’t then everyone wins. If a student decides to play games and fail it is their loss, teachers should talk to them and try to help, but obviously in the end it is up to the student and their responsibility.
Anonymous | 1 year, 2 months ago
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YES!!!
Though I love going on IMs and Facebook during classes and lectures, I think that is the main reason why I get bad grades! If it is a rule to ban it, I think I would not have a choice but to listen to the teacher and pay attention in class! I mean laptops are just great temptations, it provides too much: games, videos, pictures, communication… etc.
Anonymous | 1 year, 2 months ago
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University Student
For some students, the noise created by others’ typing is highly distracting, enough so, that they can not fully absorb the lecture. Only laptops being used to help with a disability should be allowed.
Anonymous | 1 year, 2 months ago
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No way!
Every kid should have a laptop. It’s the only way kid’s actually WANT to listen to you. Who cares if they don’t LOOK UP? The only thing that matters is if they get about 50% on their next test.
Anonymous | 1 year, 1 month ago
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