I've been thinking about this short report in Inside Higher Ed:
"A University of Memphis law professor has angered students by banning laptops from her classroom, the Associated Press reported. June Entman, the professor, told the AP that students were trying to transcribe everything she said, and that they would be more connected to the class intellectually if they listened and took noted with pen and paper. Students said that they take better notes with a laptop and have organized a petition drive against the rule."
Do any of your students bring laptops to class?
One of my coaching clients took a law course last semester. He was astounded by what he saw when he sat in the back of the room. Students sat with their laptops in the large lecture hall. But only a few of them took notes consistently. The majority were using the internet access to read the news, check their e-mail, and surf.
I taught a seminar of 12 grad students that semester. It was called Publish not Perish. We talked mostly about ways of getting ourselves to write, rewrite and send out articles on a regular, predictable basis. All 'assignments' were self-designed action plans that the graduate students developed in order to move their own projects forward. There was no required reading or tests. The class was pass/fail. Students passed if they attended the weekly meetings.
In the middle of the semester, one second year doctoral student began bringing his laptop to class. He'd always seemed rather bored and passive, but once he was lodged behind the computer, he stopped participating in any discussions. We stopped expecting him to contribute. There was no need to take class notes, so I assumed that he was doing other school work.
This student -- when he was still a member of the group -- had confessed that his biggest problem with procrastination was playing computer games and surfing on the web. The room didn't permit wireless access to the web so I assumed that some of his preferred time-wasting practices weren't available to him.
I was so surprised by the way he buried himself behind the laptop that I didn't say anything about it the first couple of weeks the computer appeared. His retreat behind his screen seemed disrespectful to me and rude to the other students, but I was so fascinated by the phenomenon that I decided to wait and watch. Would he bring it in each week? Should I confront him?
I'm not sure why, but I decided to do nothing. I became curious about what would happen if I ignored the situation. When students talked about the issues they'd faced each week, and we had brainstorming sessions to develop plans to attack their problems, he was left out of the loop. At the beginning of most classes, we went around the room reporting on what we'd accomplished during the previous week and noting what strategies had worked or been difficult. We celebrated when one member of the class defended her dissertation. We cheered when another member was offerred a job. We clapped when a student got a departmental fellowship that would pay her tuition for the semester.
Meanwhile, Computer Boy made no process on his disseration proposal. Nor did he make headway on the incomplete that was inteferring with his progress in his doctoral program. It was as though he had become invisible. His only contribution was the occasional tap, tap, tapping of his fingers on the keyboard. At the time, his laptop barrier and withdrawal from the group intrigued me. But as I think back to the class, I find myself mildly irritated by the memory of his withdrawal. I find myself feeling guilty for choosing not to intervene -- both because I missed the opportunity to help him and because I assume that my passivity in the face of his withdrawal probably had a negative impact on the rest of the class. I think that I was being lazy and mildly irresponsible.
What do you think? Do your students bring their laptops to class? How do you view the practice? What do you say or do about the phenomenon?
I do have some students who bring laptops to class; because of our classroom setups, this always means that they sit at the very back of the room, where the electric outlets are. This means that it's very difficult to see what they're doing on their computers and that it's easy for them to retreat. For the most part, I've decided to leave them to their own devices, to be as involved or not as they want in class, figuring that it's much the same as students who have their notebooks out and who sometimes are clearly doodling or studying for something else. I just don't want to be a watchdog. The one time I said something to a student was in a freshman English class where I saw a student who had pulled up Sparknotes on his computer; I considered that actual cheating. Also, in class this term I've had a student who was at first hiding behind his computer and clearly doing other things during class, but he's gotten engaged over the term, and now he uses his computer to look up online things that we wonder about during class, and it's quite helpful; just yesterday we had two questions -- when did Dr. Strangelove come out, and how old was James Dean when he died? -- and we turned to him to answer both questions; so sometimes a committed student with a computer can make a real contribution to the class (although I'll confess this is the only time I've ever seen this phenomenon).
Posted by: What Now? | March 25, 2006 at 11:38 AM
Oh, and I also meant to say -- a doctoral student was this rude?! This is the kind of behavior I unfortunately expect from unmotivated undergrads who are taking required courses, but I am shocked that an adult and a grad student would act that way. So did this guy get a "pass" or "fail"?
Posted by: What Now? | March 25, 2006 at 01:48 PM
I gave him a "pass" -- he attended in body if not in mind or spirit and attendance is my requirement for passing.
He was a young doctoral student. And I think that it was rude to me and to other members of the class. Still, I let his behavior continue.
Posted by: academic coach | March 25, 2006 at 06:17 PM
Just this year I've had a grad student with his laptop in class (I can't say he brings it to class because we're holding this class in the graduate student office) and it's not been at all disruptive. He's only turned to it a few times in the term to look up references as we've discussed them or to check our WebCT site for a resource.
It's the undergradutates who have the problem. I don't say they can't bring laptops to class because I don't mind the computer use in general (and even some minor recreational use). A number of my students take notes alongside the powerpoints they've downloaded from our course site. More power to them, if that works for them, though I encourage students to take fewer notes and listen more. One page of well-considered notes is, in my mind, more than adequate for an eighty-minute class! But a lot of them are addicted to looking at the computer and not paying attention to the class, particularly when I stop talking and their peers engage. That's a problem that's not specific to computers (other students also often tune out during discussion) and simply telling them to turn off a computer would feel like you were solving the problem when you really aren't -- they have to be directed to pay attention to the discussion in order to make it work!
By the time students get to the fourth year, we're entirely devoted to seminar presentations and discussions in our classes. No one brings out a computer, not even to display any visual aids, since our seminars are always held in classrooms without multimedia. *sigh* I think that's a good preparation for graduate seminars where attention is mandated and I'm not above shaming the senior students a bit. Just the other week one was passing around a little book of amusing dog photos and I eventually called her on it when it became clear that she was hijacking the attention of a corner of the room. She was embarrassed but I'm unrepentant since that was completely unsuitable for classtime.
Posted by: Ancarett | March 26, 2006 at 09:03 AM