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March 29, 2006

Laptop Lameness

This is fascinating.

June Entman, a law professor at the University of Memphis, has banned laptop use in her Civil Procedures class:

"Beginning on Tuesday, March 14, the use of laptop computers and other similar devices will not be allowed during Civil Procedure class sessions. Please be sure to bring with you ... paper and pen or pencil for taking notes," Entman's March 6 e-mail to her students read.
[. . .]
"My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing," Entman said. "The computers interfere with making eye contact. You've got this picket fence between you and the students."

As you might expect, the reaction has not been favorable. Peeved law students are circulating petitions to the University to have the laptop ban removed, sending angry letters to the American Bar Association to force that group to intervene, and are threatening to transfer to another law school.

What I find most interesting about this are the connections it highlights between technology and cognition.

One the one hand, Professor Entman is arguing that laptops are preventing her students from learning. Laptops, according to this view, transform students from thinking, questioning beings into nothing more than dictaphones with pulses.

On the other hand, the students argue that without laptops they cannot think:

Cory Winsett, a first-year law student, said his participation in class has dropped because he's too busy writing notes on the lecture. And his notes are less organized and hard to read when he gets home. "If we continue without laptops, I'm out of here. I'm gone; I won't be able to keep up," Winsett said.

Obviously, I'm with Professor Entman on this one. As one respondent to the article notes:

As I choose to sit towards the back of class, it would be nice if there were not a sea of blinking TV screens between me and the professor. Laptop computers are a distraction for all students, not just those who use them (and I would venture to say that even the most diligent computer-aided note-takers check their e-mail at least once per class).

People have been learning the law for hundreds of years without frantically typing every word their teacher utters. I really can't see why these students are making such a big deal about having to trade in their keyboards for a pencil.

When I taught in computer labs at the University of Pittsburgh, my students sat facing me, with the backs of their computer monitors thus also facing me. This meant that I honestly had no idea (most of the time) what they were looking at or doing when I was standing at the front of the classroom. Partly because of this, I tended to stroll through the classroom a lot. I had, however, the godlike power to project whatever was on any student's monitor onto the massive screens at the front of the room. I tended to do this, a lot, too. Once, this resulted in an embarrassing IM from another student in the classroom being projected for all to see. I enjoyed that little life lesson for my students tremendously.

But the most useful tool I had was the "blackout" button. With a single touch to the control panel, I could cause every student computer monitor in the room to go blank. It was amazing. I found that it was also absolutely necessary when lecturing because there were always students who would incessantly IM and e-mail each other, as well as catch up on their Fark and Something Awful reading.

Now, I'm not going to argue that the whingeing law students in Professor Entman's class are actually upset over the loss of some quality IMing, e-mailing and blogging time -- I don't have to. Noting that the act of taking notes on computer is sufficiently different from taking notes on paper is enough to demand investigation and research.

As I see it, the problem raises the following questions:

What are your thoughts?


UPDATE: Check out the comments on this story from The News Blog. I was especially impressed with the thoughts of frito, roxtar, and atheorist.

People like Charisse and Gracchus don't seem to get it. It's not a hatred of technology, it's the endlessly frustrating experience that every teacher has had: students are frantically taking notes on every word that dribbles from your lips (and you're feeling really good about that), but when you ask a question you get nothing but silence as every pen waits, quivering with anticipation, for the answer they demand you provide. That's not teaching. It's dictating. And I have neither the time nor the interest to do that.

And people like drumwolf will never get what it is that Professor Entman is trying to get out of her students -- active, communal learning.

Posted by reparent at March 29, 2006 1:30 PM

Comments

The other night on the news there was a segment on the loss art of penmenship. Now the argument was that people (especially those of the younger generations) no longer have the ability to write well. Now, here, "write well" does not merely mean grammatically, but clearly, as in "chicken scratch." Now this loss art can be one factor into why people may prefer to use the computer to take notes, however I find there are multiple, shall I say obstacles, to using a computer during classtime:

I find that regardless of how note taking is done (with exception to the ever-so-nice audio tape recording with the profs permission), it is difficult in many respects. Writing-of which note taking is a form- requires you to write as fast as you think, which for some is not doable: words get lost, things get jumbled and yes, sometimes you cannot read and/or make sense of what you wrote.

But I wonder how much the computers in the classroom is also an issue of control? Students want control over their time, their note taking abilities, and the "right" to spend their time "productively" (which could insue IM messages when the lecture is "boring"). Or is it a matter of control for the prof? Difficult questions indeed.

I've run up against the student as consumer in my classes lately, acting as if I owe them the grade or postivie encouragement/comments because they (or more likely their parents) are paying for that. Are their parents also paying for their children to check email during classtime: classtime that is to reportedly give your child a life-learning-skill he can use in the "real world"?
Now it may seem my soapbox is faltering a bit, however it was not my intention to purchase or step upon it but moreso to contribute to this conversation....

Posted by: jmj at March 30, 2006 9:46 AM

Although I lack your collective perspectives in the art of teaching, I do have the slight advantage of having attended law school a long, long time ago. My advantage is merely minuscule because, back in the Stone Age, there were hardly any laptop computers in our hallowed law school lecture halls. Maybe one or two laptops per 150 students. More like an oddity or curiosity than a distraction.

My sole observation about Professor Entman's circumstance is: She teaches Civil Procedure. Whatever you've seen and heard about law school via The Paper Chase or television, where they try to teach you HOW TO THINK, pretty much doesn't apply to Civil Procedure. This is not Constitutional Law or Criminal Justice or even Contracts or Torts. This is Civil freakin' Procedure. The topic all but cries out for a laptop intervention, both because it is rife with formulaic lecture material and because it is often dry and boring and you really do need to be Instant Messaging as often as possible during class. In my very humble opinion.

Posted by: coeurlion at March 30, 2006 7:55 PM

My sister swears she can't concentrate on a lecture unless she's knitting something, but this probably has more to do with fidgeting habits rather than cognitive conflict between the technology of keyboards and the technology of ink.

Here's a link to a slightly related, Eye vs. Ear debate between Harold Bloom and Neil Gaiman. Bloom insists that the visual apprehension of text is the only way to access "that part of you which is open to wisdom," and Gaiman calls him a twerp:
www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/05/looking-or-listening.asp

Posted by: Liam at April 2, 2006 4:12 PM

Hmm. And yes, Bloom can be a major twerp. Especially when he's being condescending, which seems to be pretty much all the time nowadays.

Anyway, I think that the knitting thing is a special case. I had a student who would sit in class and start with some needles and a ball of yarn and by the end of the hour-and-twenty-minutes would have a hat. Or the start of a scarf. When I asked her about it, she said that it was because she needed something brainless to do to keep her hands busy so she could concentrate on listening to what was going on in class.

And she really did participate in class discussion.

But the real difference here is that knitting is, largely a mindless activity. It doesn't compete (much, I think) with the acts of listening, interpreting, making connections, and forming responses.

So, what does it say about us that we (some of us) need to keep parts of our brains occupied with something monotonous (as when I listen to music I know well while writing) to free up other parts of our brains to do higher-level thinking?

Posted by: Richard [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 2, 2006 6:47 PM

Sounds to me like y'all are rather busy trying to drown out those pesky voices inside your head. Perhaps an adjustment in medication is warranted. May I suggest taking it easy on the single-malt Scotch for a little while and bumping up the haloperidol?

Posted by: coeurlion at April 2, 2006 7:28 PM