In the last year or so I have seen an explosion in the number of laptops present in the average classroom here. This may be attributable to two factors: one, the ever-shrinking price of laptops, and two, the pervasive wireless networking, which now covers pretty much the entire campus.
This leads me to wonder, though, what exactly are these laptops being used for? Are you all actually taking notes or are you surfing the Dope and IMing your friends? I can see using a computer to take notes on “Macbeth” in english class, but whats going on in that calculus class? Is there software for taking math notes that’s actually easier than writing by hand, or is everyone just goofing off?
Everyone (or at least nearly everyone) does actually have some sort of program open to take notes with, but likewise nearly everyone is also surfing the 'net or IMing friends. Friends in the same class, as often as not. In calculus, they may have some sort of program open that lets them run calculations right there, or graphing software, or something along those lines.
Kids at my school seem to use it partly for taking notes but mostly for surfing Facebook and MySpace. And they use lab computers partly for printing and homework but mostly for Facebook and MySpace.
I refuse to bring mine to class because I will not pay attention if I do. And the battery dies quickly now.
I decide at the beginning of the semester which classes it makes sense to bring my computer to. These often end up being classes where there’s a lot of writing. My handwriting is absolutely horrible, and I type much much faster than I can write. Most of my classes, however, end up having either a lot of mathematical notation (and thus don’t lend themselves to typed notes as easily) or don’t require much in the way of writing because the professor has prepared slides that have most of the important information already on them, the idea being that then you’ll be able to actually listen to the lecture instead of focusing on furiously writing everything they say. I only allow myself to bring my laptop to class when I will actually will use it to take notes–otherwise I’ll just end up distracting not only myself but also the people behind me and the professor.
That being said, a LOT of people that bring their laptops do seem to be chatting or surfing the internet or something. In my (obviously anecdotal) experience, about a half of students in lectures don’t even keep up the pretense of having a note-taking application open. One guy I sat behind in lecture once was doing some serious multitasking, flipping between Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Firefox, AIM, and an FTP program. He was totally absorbed in the work and ended up designing the better part of a website during the lecture, but (predictably) ended up absorbing absolutely nothing–he might as well have stayed in his dorm the entire time.
There are legitimate uses for laptops in almost every lecture, so it doesn’t make sense for a professor to ban them. What a handful of my professors have started doing is reminding people at the beginning of class that it’s rude for students to use their laptops to do things other than note-taking during class. That way, no one can pretend that they didn’t know that what they’re doing is sometimes considered rude.
I taught for three semesters as a graduate student, ending last Spring. In that time, only one student brought a computer to class. He was a smart guy, and it was an easy class, but he got a C. He said on the class evaluation that it was probably because he didn’t pay attention in class.
I have also given a lot of guest lectures in a computer lab, and I HATE-HATE-HATE it. No one even pretends to pay attention.
Grrrrrr. I wish you wouldn’t bring your laptops to class!
Laptops set my teeth on edge in a classroom, but I know that some students genuinely take better notes while using them. I also know that college students are much better at multitasking and managing to absorb information than their predecessors (simply because they’ve been doing it for so long), but while they may be absorbing some of what I’m saying, they’re not giving a blasted thing back and chances are that most of them are not absorbing enough material to perform beyond a low B level. There’s little I can do about this in a large lecture, but I am desperate to get rid of laptops in my seminars or smaller classes. In a class like that, students need to be giving back to the class via questions, comments and interaction with their 'mates. I would say that 99% of students are incapable of doing that if they are multitasking on AIM/Facebook/etc.
Maybe I should create audio files of each class and make them available to students who were either present OR had an excused absence and then ban laptops from my seminar/discussion classes. Students, what would be your thoughts on this? Colleagues, have any of you tried something similar/what are your thoughts?
I never take my laptop to a lecture. I tried once; but it’s far more effective for me to take notes on paper, and the keyboard noise annoys people. Also battery issues.
I have yet to see someone effectively using a laptop in a lecture*; all the people I observe are IMing friends, or even playing games. Why come to lectures, then, idiots? I also find there is far more value in interacting with the lecturer and students than just mindlessly tapping away.
*I actually have one friend who asks the lecturer to wear a wireless microphone, and makes really high-quality mp3s on his laptop. He just starts the recording and closes the lid, though, so it’s a fancy recording device, in effect. The mp3s then get shared with whoever wants them. I think that’s brilliant.
I’ve never brought my laptop to a class. I have a laptop because it’s easy to transport between home and school, and I can do work in more comfortable places than at a desk.
The program I was in at school (Business Administration) required you to have a laptop. They gave them to us, with assorted fees and warnings etc because they had certain programs they wanted you to run. I forget the name of them but one was a program that, when used in conjunction with certain classrooms, stored the teacher’s lecture and whatever was drawn/done on a special whiteboard so you could watch the class again. Another was used to see what students were doing during class and could lock down certain programs (messengers etc) for during online tests.
Of course we hardly ever used those programs, the ones we used most you can get easily yourself (Microsoft Office, WinXP).
The classrooms we used were all wired up, I can only recall one classroom that we used that didn’t have an internet port and plug in at every seat. They were setting up wi-fi in certain areas of campus when I was there, but it didn’t always work.
Really, it depended on the course. The computer courses we took you used some of the programs, for others I took notes and typed up assignments. Certain textbooks had online content, practices and quizzes that we were required to access. Our marks could be found online, we selected our options, had school email. Other courses they were just a waste of time to bring along and a distraction.
In the end, I think a lot of students were more distracted. There was lots of surfing online (and I admit to being one of them, but I stopped bringing the laptop to classes where it was more a distraction than help) and chatting on MSN (the only one that wasn’t blocked by the main firewall) and it was surprising how many students had trouble with their laptops which only added to the distraction as a student tried to fix what was wrong in the middle of class.
So for me it was a bit of both… surfing the Dope and IMing friends as well as doing work.
When I had a laptop in class, there were a few reasons for it.
The class lecture included website links and/or was linked through the class’ webpage. Seeing it on my personal screen made it easier to process.
Taking notes in classes that are heavily lecture-based and require a lot of note taking. If I had a laptop that could’ve done it when I had Ancient and Medieval Civilizations, I would have used it. Boy, did that class wear out my writing hand!
Surfing the internet because there’s a boring section in class that I’ve heard a million times. Now, I rarely did this. Why? Most of the time, I didn’t have a laptop with me. Most of the time I didn’t need it for notes or a multimedia heavy class. Generally, the classes were focused around either listening to a lecture or discussing (in heavy detail) the readings that were assigned. It’s tough to engage in a scholarly debate about what you were reading when you’ve got a laptop in front of you when it’s not necessary.
Mostly, if I had my laptop on campus, it was to do work while I was at school because there was no internet at home.
In my case it was minimal notes (I don’t take many notes anyways), spider solitaire, and StepMania during the breaks. That was late first year (no wireless in the classroom in question, or I’d have probably been surfing the 'Dope). Second year I left it home all but twice–I didn’t see the point of carrying the thing back and forth to school, as it wasn’t particularly light, and the battery wasn’t going to last through 6 hours of lectures anyways. Third year I got a desktop. The laptop was nice to be able to bring home with me on short breaks, but otherwise there was no reason for me to have one.
On a side note, for a test I took last semester the teacher allowed laptops and…cell phones. It was a math test for journalism students, and many of us didn’t have an actual calculator, having not needed one in over 3 years. So we had to rely on other devices.
I’m getting a Tablet PC from Gateway next week (woo hoo!) and I’m thinking about the possibility of ridding myself of notebooks for good, so as a semi-hijack, is anyone using their tablet PCs for actual educational purposes?
I didn’t have a laptop as an undergrad (though I do now as a grad student.) Anyway, I don’t take it to class now and I wouldn’t have as an undergrad either. You can’t really take notes on physics or calculus or chemistry easily or with any speed. Sure, there are programs that can be used (ChemDraw or Isis, for instance) but in my experience they are quite slow, somewhat difficult to use, and not needed.
I can see some use for an in-class laptop in the humanities, but not in the sciences.
When I use my husband’s laptop (like nearly everything we own it is, sadly, a shared commodity) in class it is strictly for notetaking. I have one class in particular that it is very useful for as the lectures are very dense. Also, I can add a notation in the file for the slide the prof is using (art history course) and go on the class website later to download the slide and insert it into my notes. I also have one course where most of the class material is in PDF form; I have neither the time nor the disposable income to go print out 100+ pages of crap so I just use the PDFs in my discussion section (this and reserve material really annoys me but that is another thread).
More often than not though I still handwrite my notes and then consolidate into a .doc later. I also like to draw diagrams and stuff - especially useful for sorting out those pesky incestual family trees in Greek mythology. I know you can diagram in Word, but it is hard to do on the fly.
I take notes for my school’s Disability Services on a laptop. Basically what we do is provide a kind of real-time, abbreviated captioning for students who have hearing disabilities. Some of our employees are trained using a special typing shorthand, basically, which I guess people who do captions for live broadcasts probably use as well? They can pretty much capture every word the lecturer says, but I just provide a summary that captures all the important meaning. The student has a laptop as well, which is sync-ed to mine, and it’s all transmitted in real-time, via a wireless network.
One of the classes I take notes for, incidentally, is a basic maths class. I mostly just make do with the notations–typing it out or making up my own notation. If it was an advanced class, it would be more difficult.
I find typing notes in this way is really great, personally. I am an extremely fast typer and I get a great deal of information down, while still being able to give more of my attention to the lecturer–I think I can type using less of my brain/concentration than handwriting requires–if that makes any sense. However, I don’t type notes in my own classes, because my laptop is not portable enough–it’s basically a laptop replacement and is generally too heavy, and has a short battery life. If I had a more transportable laptop, I would take it to class.
And yes, I’d use it to take notes, otherwise why bother coming to class?
I would be infuriated if any of my professors banned laptops. I believe that professors should treat students like adults, not small children who need parents to tell them what to do. Nothing makes me angrier faster than having a college professor who treats me like a 12 year old–I graduated high school early to avoid that. Besides, people who are not paying attention in class with laptops are not going to magically become more involved without them.
I don’t bring mine - almost all my classes (3 out of the 4 that aren’t labs) have the notes available online - PowerPoint or such - so I’m not even taking many notes this semester.
My school has these pathetic little, uncomfortable desks in some classrooms that I can barely fit a paper notebook on - I can’t imagine trying to balance a laptop on one. The typing position would be a little awkward I would think.
All of my intro business professors lecture straight off of sets of powerpoint slides and graphs, usually 30+ per lecture. Instead of printing it out, I follow along during lecture and copy down the important information in a spiral notebook.
I have to write things down to really remember them, just reading off of a slide does absolutely nothing to help me absorb the information. I tried just using the notebook, but often professors skim over important slides, figuring that it was in your printed notes anyways. Having the laptop there with the spiral allows me to copy down everything in my own time, rather than having to ask the professor to back up a slide.