05.14.08
Banning laptops in the classroom
Kevin Yamamoto has written an interesting article reporting on his experience in banning laptops in a law-school classroom. Bottom line: banning laptops is beneficial and, of course, a student doesn’t have to wait for the professor but can voluntarily abstain from laptop use during the class. The full article is available at the link. Here’s the abstract:
Over the last several years law school classrooms have seen an explosion of student laptop use. Law professors have allowed this by default, generally under the pretense that laptops make note-taking easier. However, many professors complain that students use their laptops to play games, watch movies, or if they have an Internet connection, to do web surfing and e-mailing during class. This paper presents my experience in banning laptops from my classroom in the Fall of 2006, the first time it was done at my institution. The article covers the reasons for and against allowing laptops in the classroom, my reasoning and procedure for banning them, perceived differences in the classroom experience and relevant student comments from my course evaluations, which were overwhelmingly positive to the laptop ban. Also covered are the cognitive psychological reasons in support of banning laptops. Studies show that lower grades were correlated with increased student web browsing during class (Grace-Martin & Gay, 2001; Hembrooke & Gay, 2003), and the amount of time which students used their laptops for tasks other than taking lecture notes (Fried, 2007). MRI studies of the brain indicate that the brain stores information differently when distracted, which occurs when students attempt to multi-task in class (Foerde, Knowlton, & Poldrack, 2006). The science of note-taking is also covered, which indicates verbatim typing may interfere with learning (e.g., Kiewra, 1991). The paper concludes by urging law school professors to review why laptops are allowed in their classrooms and, unless they feel that laptops increase student learning, to ban or heavily restrict their classroom use.
Alan said,
15 May 2008 at 1:15 am
I work with computers every day and own a laptop myself. As much as I love using it, there is something about a plain old notebook and good discussion that I find far more beneficial in a learning environment. Guess I have become somewhat old fashioned about that.