Losing laptops in lecture

Correction appended

Some professors, who expressed frustration with students using their laptops for purposes other than note-taking, said they have asked students to leave computers at home in the hopes that this measure will limit distractions and improve participation in class.

“The main reason [for asking students not to bring their laptops] was that last year, things really started to get out of hand,” geosciences professor Allan Rubin said. “More than half the students were on their laptops during class. It became too hard to lecture to students with their heads down looking at their laptops.”

Rubin added that he believed laptop misuse was most prevalent in large classes.

Anthropology professor Lawrence Rosen said he asked his students to put their laptops away on the first day of class.

“I wanted them to be weaned from their machines to attend to one another in a conversation,” he said.

Rosen noted that he would leave it up to his students to decide whether or not they brought their laptops to future classes.

“I’m not playing kindergarten. I’m not policing people’s screens,” he said.

Maintaining an intellectual and authentic classroom atmosphere is the main reason English professor Jeff Dolven requests that students refrain from bringing laptops to class, he said.

Dolven teaches a class in which students read documents from “a time where there were no laptops.” He encourages students to turn off their laptops and cell phones while studying to help put them in the mindset of that time period, he said.

“I think that someone with a pen is more likely to be thinking with me than someone with a laptop,” he said.

Dolven also noted the distraction and multitasking that can result from laptop use in class, explaining that he once received an e-mail from a student that was written during his class.

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Rubin and Dolven both said that though students seemed surprised when they were told that laptop use in class was forbidden, none complained.

“They all looked up with their jaws slightly lax,” Rubin said.

But students maintain that there are numerous advantages to using laptops in class.

“I think that laptops should be allowed in lecture and precept,” Kalila Minor ’11 said in an e-mail. “I think that the benefit for many students of being able to take notes on the computer outweighs the distraction.”

After using her laptop in high school classes, Veena Putcha ’11 said she found it odd at first when University professors forbade them.

“I was surprised last year when it happened,” she said. “We’re in college and older, and I’m surprised [that professors are] telling us not to use computers.”

Several students said that they were disappointed at not being allowed to take notes on their laptops.

“I prefer to take notes on my laptop for most courses,” Minor said. “In lectures specifically, I find that it’s easier to have clear, thorough notes this way, particularly when the professor speaks quickly or moves back and forth between topics.”

“I have to say that it is harder [to take notes without laptops],” Qin Zhi Lau ’11 explained. “We’re all accustomed to using laptops, much to the demise of our penmanship.”

Putcha said that when she takes handwritten notes, her hand hurts and the notes are nearly illegible by the end of the class.

“It helps keep me organized if I can use my computer, and then I can go back and print out my notes,” she explained.

Still, Lau said that he did not find it difficult to adjust to a class in which laptops were banned, noting that his professor seems to be “quite aware” of note-taking and provides lecture notes ahead of time to help students keep up in class.

The decision to ask students not to use their laptops wasn’t easy to make, Rubin said, adding that he conducted research online to learn what professors at other schools were doing about the issue.

Much of what he found indicated that the misuse of laptops can be distracting to other students in the class, he added.

Some students echoed that sentiment.

“I was watching my friend play a computer game today for two or three minutes, and it definitely got me off task,” Alex Capretta ’12 said.

Lau admitted that though he was “occasionally guilty” of checking Facebook during class, he thought such activities were usually more distracting to him than to surrounding students.

Rosen added that laptops may not necessarily be the source of the problem, saying that taking notes by hand can also provide opportunities for distraction.

“If people want to be distracted, they’re going to be distracted,” Pulcha said.

Rosen also noted that having students take notes on paper did not guarantee they would pay attention in class. “Would you like to see the notebooks in which I was doodling?” Rosen asked.

Correction

An earlier version of this article attributed the last quote to Veena Putcha ’11. In fact, it was made by anthropology professor Lawrence Rosen.