A Student Argues that Computers Have No Place In the College Classroom
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by Tim Clement
The Web cam imbroglio involving the Lower Merion School District has rightfully raised issues of privacy. But there’s an education-related point to be made, too: Laptops offer minimal educational benefits, and they’re a direct hindrance to learning.
I graduated from Drexel University last year. I was a bit older than my academic peers, having taken a hiatus from formal education after my freshman year of college ended in 2000. I returned to Drexel in 2007. None of my classmates knew this, of course; I was 23 years old for a record-setting 2,190 days.
This slight generation gap and my observant nature led to my awareness of a stark contrast between my current schoolmates and those from my prior collegiate experience. This difference was the proliferation of laptops and the acceptance of personal computers in classrooms.
For students with laptops, class time had been consolidated with the burgeoning amount of time young people devote to media consumption (every Drexel student has access to wireless Internet on campus). However, there was a noticeable difference between this media consumption done in public, and what occurs in private. In a classroom, there is a person standing in the front of the room talking, and naively believing, or vainly hoping, that these portable-computer enthusiasts are listening to what he is saying.
To a person in the back of the room, it is plainly obvious that none of these keyboard assailants is paying any attention to the person in the front of the room. They are too involved with Facebook, AIM, Twitter, or the myriad other interactive-media outlets available to be aware of anything taking place in class. These students contribute no more to class than the corpse from Weekend at Bernie’s would have. Actually, that particular cadaver would have been much more engaged than the student with a laptop.
This is a very different form of student behavior than what I encountered during my first stint in college. In 1999, if I wanted to peruse popular Web sites, I’d do so in my dorm at Kelly Hall. If I wanted to download music, I’d skip Mr. Diggles’ history class and remain in my room. If I wanted to have an in-depth Instant Message conversation, with loud clicking and clacking accompaniment, I didn’t go to class to do so.
Now, college students don’t have to choose between the drudgery of class or the pleasurable consumption of digital media. They can do both at the same time. However, the result is students who are vacant shells. Their presence is strictly corporeal. What’s more, their frequently furious typing is disruptive. So, not only does laptop possession greatly interfere with learning for those with laptops, but it disturbs others as well. There is no way to correct this behavior because students are encouraged to use laptops for everything. This starts before the collegiate level – at least in the Lower Merion School District.
Is all this just the collateral damage of improving education through technology? No. Nobody needs a laptop in a classroom. I wasn’t disadvantaged by not having one; I had the highest GPA in my major.
Does having a laptop make some things easier for a student? Absolutely, but it would also be easier if each student were assigned a pocket-size information gnome and a personal stenographer—and these things probably would be less distracting in a classroom.
Making learning easier does not necessarily result in improved retention, especially if the facilitation allows students to recuse themselves intellectually from the classroom.
Before you say I’m out of touch, remember, I frequented classrooms at a technologically advanced university within the last year. Having laptops didn’t seem to provide any great benefits to students.
A two-year Carnegie Mellon University study on the issue found, among other things, that "while laptops led students to devote more time to their assignments, this did not translate into higher-quality work. Students often interrupted their work to check e-mail and surf the Web, or they spent significant time searching the Web for pictures or diagrams they could have created more quickly themselves."
Technology can, indeed, be quite beneficial, but not if it undermines the capabilities of those who use it.