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Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

• TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  > In contrast with their heavy nonacademic internet use, students spent less than 5 minutes on average using the internet for class-related purposes This is a potential methodological flaw. It takes me 5 minutes to log onto my university's VLE and download the course materials. I then read them offline. Likewise, taking notes in class happens offline. Internet use does not reflect computer use.
• makecheck 9y ago
  If students aren’t engaged, they aren’t going to become star pupils once you take away their distractions. Perhaps kids attend more lectures than before knowing that they can always listen in while futzing with other things (and otherwise, they may skip some of the classes entirely). The lecture format is what needs changing. You need a reason to go to class, and there was nothing worse than a professor showing slides from the pages of his own book (say) or droning through anything that could be Googled and read in less time. If there isn’t some live demonstration, or lecture-only material, regular quizzes or other hook, you can’t expect students to fully engage.
  • jaclaz 9y ago
    Yep, and the article does propose boredom as a possble cause BUT the data seems like excluding it being the major factor. >In this case, however, boredom was not the answer – at least not entirely. Students who reported lower interest in the class did tend to have lower exam scores, but this relationship did not account for the relationship between internet use and exam performance.
  • tjr 9y ago
    Most interesting, engaging class I have ever had was Philip Greenspun's short database class at MIT. All day for three days, a cycle of ~15 minute lecture, ~15 minute problem sets worked by each student on their own laptop, ~15 minutes of reviewing student solutions (and, if needed, presenting the "correct" solution). I imagine that many classes could be presented in a similar format. I also imagine it would be a lot of work on the part of the educators to do this.
    • rz2k 9y ago
      That sounds like an excellent format. What were the hours? I can imagine that taking a lot of planning and refinement over multiple offerings to get the timing just right on the exercises.
      • tjr 9y ago
        It was scheduled for 10-5 three days in a row, with a break for lunch, and a short break in the morning and afternoon. One of the days included a ~1-hour guest lecture from Michael Stonebraker, which did not fit into the lecture/problem set/review format. The last day fizzled out from the format a bit early, concluding with some random discussions. Web page for the course here: http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/three-day-rdbms/ http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/three-day-rdbms/
    • marlokk 9y ago
      +1 also had a professor who did this for his courses and it was a win. The theory being people only have ~20 minute attention spans, so instruction should be switched up as such. Result was I learned more, actually collaborated with classmates, and motivated me to prepare for class.
  • msla 9y ago
    It's like we never left the Middle Ages, when books were expensive and the point of lecturing was to read the book, which was the only book, or one of a few, to students, who'd then copy it down in their notebooks so they'd have at least a copy of what was in the book. These days, despite the textbook publishers' best efforts, the information is freely available (up until you run into paywalled research papers, but that's at a whole different level from undergrad work, mostly) but the lecture format has barely changed.
    • tbihl 9y ago
      In some topics, the copying method still works perfectly well. As I've experienced it, the necessary component is time spent mulling over a concept. Sometimes copying is part of that, especially if you need to have facts in your head for later integration and application. Granted, it needs to be mindful (which I do by trying to look up as infrequently as possible, so I'm at least taking in sentences rather than individual words.)
    • izacus 9y ago
      Copying content (any by extension doing practice like mathematical problems) is scientifically proven to improve recall by orders of magnitude. There's a reason why people demand you copy stuff down on your own.
      • snakeanus 9y ago
        > There's a reason why people demand you copy stuff down on your own. If someone demands from you (instead of just suggesting) to copy stuff down by hand on your own it's probably because they want to fuck with you (or because they are too lazy to do actual teaching). I can see no other explanation. That was especially true during elementary, middle and high school.
  • soperj 9y ago
    As soon as a lecture brought out slides, I knew my mark was going to be abysmal in that class. Thankfully I recognized that and in my later years promptly dropped those classes.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • bigger_cheese 9y ago
      When I was at uni 2004-2008 There was a weird amalgamation of tech used in the lectures. Some lecturers used power point slides and some used an overheard projector with transparencies. Most lecturers tended to post their content online (either as a .ppt or as a scanned pdf). People realised that with all of the notes provided in advance there wasn't a huge incentive for them to be physically present for the lectures and the theatre would get progressively emptier throughout the semester. I admit I skipped more than a few lectures during course of my degree did not feel like I missed anything particularly relevant. At my university the lectures were supplemented by "tutorials" - wikipedia tells me this is an Australian thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial) essentially the lectures were 150+ people sitting in a theatre taught by a Professor and the tutorials were usually 10-20 people in a classroom overseen by a postgrad student. We'd spend the tutorial reviewing what was covered in the previous lecture and working through problem sets in a small group. It had the benefit that you would be able to get 1 on 1 attention from the tutor if you needed it. Most lecturers would not even field questions during their lectures whilst the tutors would allow you to email them question etc outside of classroom which was very helpful.
  • frozenport 9y ago
    both
  • djrogers 9y ago
    > If students aren’t engaged, they aren’t going to become star pupils once you take away their distractions That's a bit of a straw-man - nobody said anything about turning every student in to star pupils, it's a matter of degrees. There is no question in my mind that a device capable of being online, using social media, and that is constantly pushing information at you is going to be a higher level distraction than a pen and paper. Reducing that level of distraction will be beneficial for many students, even if they only pay attention to 30% of the lecture instead of 15%, that's still an improvement.
    • sillysaurus3 9y ago
      What if star pupils do better when given a laptop?
      • klodolph 9y ago
        I don't think that there's any question about that, there’s not some kind of one-size-fits-all set of rules that you can make everyone follow. But I can tell you from personal experience that I did my best performance in classes where I brought my laptop to class. Why? The answer is obvious when you look at it—if a class was below my level, and I was only taking it because it was required for my degree, I brought my laptop to stave of the boredom and breezed through the homework and tests. So the answer to “what if?” question is really just that students are ultimately responsible for their own outcomes, and figuring out that laptops are a liability is part of that.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  • SilasX 9y ago
    I would say that the lecture model works, but only when specific preconditions are met: 1) Eager learners who have reflected on the same material before coming in, to the extent that they know the gaps in their understanding. 2) A lecturer who is above the students' level (on the material) and willing/able to answer arbitrary questions about the topic. 3) Students keeping up and asking questions to ensure that they stay that way (but not so often that progress crawls to a halt). That was probably typical of medieval universities that taught that way (just a guess though, haven't actually researched it). Today? Not so much, and so the typical lecture is almost pure waste.
    • ghaff 9y ago
      Among other things, you're also describing what teaching using case studies looks like for example. There's pre-class reading and the class is built around interactive discussions. It's harder to see how this works for most technical topics outside of project-based courses.
    • chongli 9y ago
      Almost anything works with eager learners. They learn in spite of the bad teaching methods. They are the best candidates to be autodidacts.
      • kwhitefoot 9y ago
        We're discussing university lectures? If so why are there any non-eager learners?
        • bluGill 9y ago
          Today it is considered expected to have a degree, but most students do not really understand why, and will not understand until it is too late. They are not motivated, but they know "dad" expects them to get the degree so they slog on learning just enough to get by.
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
  • collyw 9y ago
    Lectures have worked well enough for years for many people.
  • syrrim 9y ago
    They controlled for that: >In this case, however, boredom was not the answer – at least not entirely. Students who reported lower interest in the class did tend to have lower exam scores, but this relationship did not account for the relationship between internet use and exam performance.
• nerpderp83 9y ago
  Paying attention requires work, we need to purposefully use tools that are also distractions.
  • ahussain 9y ago
    I definitely feel my attentiveness and focus dropped dramatically after computers were introduced into my work life. It's a shame that computers provide such a thin line between work and entertainment.
    • striking 9y ago
      You can make that line thicker. You can create a new user on your computer specifically for work, with a restricted environment. You could use VMs or dualboot or something. Personally, I'm very happy that we have devices that are capable of doing so many things.
      • wott 9y ago
        You can but you won't as long as it is possible to bypass the trick, because you are inevitably attracted (not to say addicted) to the online web content and interactions and you'll quickly switch back to it.
        • striking 9y ago
          I see that as a problem with the person viewing the content, not the device that enables them. There are technological tools to help you. There are psychological tools to help you. You can call upon your friends and family for help. But for gods' sake, don't blame the computer. That's not going to help anyone.
          • ahussain 9y ago
            This is a fair position, but we shouldn't forget that companies have poured billions of dollars into making these "tools" as addictive as possible, because that's ultimately how they make their money. See [1] and [2] for more. [1] - Addiction by Design (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Addiction-Design-Machine-Gambling-Vegas/dp/0691160880 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Addiction-Design-Machine-Gambling-V...) [2] - Chomsky on Advertising (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CFwSQiTu3I&t=186s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CFwSQiTu3I&t=186s)
• homie 9y ago
  instructors are also better off without computers in the classroom. lecture has been reduced to staring at a projector while each and every students eyes roll to the back of their skull
• stevemk14ebr 9y ago
  I think this is a highly personal topic. As a student myself i find a laptop in class is very nice, i can type my notes faster, and organize them better. Most of my professors lectures are scatter brained and i frequently have to go back to previous section and annotate or insert new sections. With a computer i just go back and type, with a pen and paper i have to scribble, or write in the margins. Of course computers can be distractions, but that is the students responsibility, let natural selection take its course and stop hindering my ability to learn how i do best (I am a CS major so computers are >= paper to me). If you cannot do your work with a computer, then don't bring one yourself, dont ban them for everyone.
  • compuguy 9y ago
    Some of us also have terrible handwriting, so taking notes by hand is out of the question. Though I will also surmise that they can also be a distraction.
    • izacus 9y ago
      Why is improving your handwriting out of the question?
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • deadhead 9y ago
        Its not an option for everyone. I had a classmate in undergrad who had a medical condition where they could not take notes by hand. They even had a doctor's note saying that they had to have a laptop in class.
        • sluggg 9y ago
          True, but Compuguy was not referring to people with medical conditions in my opinion. He is referring to the "many" that don't want make a concentrated effort to improve their handwriting but could if they did. If a student has a medical condition that makes it so their handwriting is not legible then they probably had the same issue in HS and should be able to navigate College bureaucracy well enough to get the exemption status.
• wccrawford 9y ago
  I'd be more impressed if they also did the same study with notepads and doodles and daydreams, and compared the numbers. I have a feeling that people who aren't paying attention weren't going to anyhow. However, I'd also guess that at least some people use the computer to look up additional information instead of stopping the class and asking, which helps everyone involved.
  • aleksei 9y ago
    > However, I'd also guess that at least some people use the computer to look up additional information instead of stopping the class and asking, which helps everyone involved. No it doesn't. Practically the only point of lectures is so students can ask questions. Otherwise just read the material and don't go. Moreover there are probably others in the class too shy to ask the same question, but at worst it reinforces everyone else's learning.
    • watwut 9y ago
      I hated when people asked not needed questions in lecture for over hundred people. At least attempt to answer it yourself, don't slow other 99 people down.
  • Ajedi32 9y ago
    > I'd also guess that at least some people use the computer to look up additional information instead of stopping the class and asking, which helps everyone involved. Are you sure about that? Intuitively, wouldn't it be the opposite? Asking questions results in the teacher giving an answer that can benefit the whole class, whereas if you just look something up yourself you're the only one who benefits from that additional piece of information.
    • wccrawford 9y ago
      While I won't deny that it's possible the question might help multiple people, it's more likely that if it's simple enough to look up online, it's better for everyone to do their own research. Lectures still serve to help for more difficult questions, and the time is better spent on them instead.
• bitJericho 9y ago
  The schools are so messed up in the US. Best to just educate children yourself as best you can. As for college kids, best to travel abroad.
  • robotresearcher 9y ago
    > As for college kids, best to travel abroad. 15 of the top 20 universities in the world are in the US. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2017/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...
    • bitJericho 9y ago
      It's too bad the US is a giant cesspool that I wouldn't recommend anybody travel to, let alone live in.
    • izacus 9y ago
      As claimed by US publication using their own US biases for ranking :)
      • robotresearcher 9y ago
        It's a British publication. Choose any other well-regarded ranking and you'll get similar results.
        • robotresearcher 9y ago
          E.g. The Shanghai AWRU index 2015 has 15 US schools in the top 20. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/news/shanghai-ranking-academic-ranking-world-universities-2016-results-announced https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/news/shanghai-r...
  • Bakary 9y ago
    If kids fail to learn social skills and how to deal with society, they will pay a steep price once they reach adulthood.
• brightball 9y ago
  Shocker. I remember being part of Clemson's laptop pilot program in 1998. If you were ever presenting you basically had to ask everyone to close their laptops or their eyes would never even look up.
  • cmiles74 9y ago
    I see this a lot in the workplace as well.
    • xexers 9y ago
      Even without laptops I see this in the workplace. In a meeting, if there is a PowerPoint presentation with words on it, people instinctively look at the bright and shiny screen. That's why I recommend throwing a few black slides in your presentation when you want people to focus back on the presenter.
      • roel_v 9y ago
        Presentation remotes like those from Logitech have a button to do just that.
    • zeveb 9y ago
      I ban laptops from meetings I run. We're here to meet, present information, receive information, share information, make arguments, come to conclusions: we're not in a meeting in order to futz about tweaking our personal blogs. I also like 15-minute meetings or less. Other folks seem fine with multi-hour meetings where everyone is goofing off on his laptop.
• Glyptodon 9y ago
  I feel like the conclusion is a bit off base: that students lack the self control to restrict the use of laptops laptops to class-related activities is somehow a sign that the problem is the laptop and not the students? I think it's very possible that younger generations have big issues with self-control and instant gratification. But I think it's wrong to think that laptops are the faulty party.
  • izacus 9y ago
    Riiight, because teenagers and young adults are so known for their long-term planning skills and self-control. We're not animals, we don't get born with instincts. This is why humans require education and upbringing to teach. And yes, this (gasp!) sometimes means you need to make a non-adult person to do something against their first whim.
    • Balgair 9y ago
      To be pedantic, we do have instincts as humans and common scientific consensus is that we are animals as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_reflexes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_reflexes (note that instinct and reflex are essentially the same thing in biology)
    • Glyptodon 9y ago
      I don't disagree except for the fact that college students are supposed to be at least semi-adults (though perhaps young and silly ones) and getting through a 50 minute class without giving in to digital temptations is really something that people ought to be capable of well before college.
      • jpindar 9y ago
        In fact, it's probably helpful for them to practice that before they have to on the job.
  • Fricken 9y ago
    Yeah, kids these days have self control problems. Somehow human nature has been fundamentally altered between the previous generation and this one. It has nothing to do with external variables such as the creeping omnipresence of distraction machines like laptops.
• baron816 9y ago
  Why are lectures still being conducted in the classroom? Students shouldn't just be sitting there copying what the teacher writes on the board anyway. They should be having discussions, working together or independently on practice problems, teaching each other the material, or just doing anything that's actually engaging. Lecturing should be done at home via YouTube.
• rdtsc 9y ago
  I had a laptop and left it home most of the time. And just stuck with taking notes with a pen and sitting upfront. I took lots notes. Some people claim it's pointless and distracts from learning but for me the act of taking notes is what helped solidify the concepts a better. Heck due to my horrible handwriting I couldn't even read some of the notes later. But it was still worth it. Typing them out just wasn't the same.
  • LyndsySimon 9y ago
    As I get older, I find that physical notes help me more and more. I write in fairly neat cursive, using a fountain pen, and make it a point to never write down the words I'm hearing unless they're an important quote or something. Doing this helps me process the information while it's still fresh in my mind, which in turn leads to more thorough understanding.
    • rdtsc 9y ago
      > make it a point to never write down the words I'm hearing unless they're an important quote or something That's the key I think! The forced paraphrasing (while summarizing) helps process the information better.
  • izacus 9y ago
    My experience from college is pretty much the same - as soon as I stopped bringing laptop to courses and started using a paper notebook, my recall improved significantlly. If you don't have a distraction device on-hand, it's significantly harder to get distracted as soon as a lecture gets a bit more boring and doing notes forces you to pay attention to those boring bits as well.
• kyle-rb 9y ago
  >students spent less than 5 minutes on average using the internet for class-related purposes (e.g., accessing the syllabus, reviewing course-related slides or supplemental materials, searching for content related to the lecture) I wonder if that could be skewed, because it only takes one request to pull up a course syllabus, but if I have Facebook Messenger open in another tab, it could be receiving updates periodically, leading to more time recorded in this experiment.
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• microcolonel 9y ago
  Students are also better off without forcible teacher's unions and federal curriculum mandates; no chance of hearing about that. Maybe the best way out of this mess is vouchers. If the schools are functioning, it should be obvious to them that the laptops are not working out.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • posguy 9y ago
    Where have vouchers proven effective? If anything, we need to follow Finland's lead and ban paying for school. Segregating students by economic class has not improved education in the United States, about the only effects are 30+% unvaccinated rates in private (mainly Catholic) schools, and strong clique effects that allow so so students from said schools to do notably better than those from nearby public schools. Also, the local Archdiocese across the US need to get their shit together, its fucking disgusting that they are the leading cause of whooping cough, mumps and so on coming back in force and killing people.
    • dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Also, the local Archdiocese across the US need to get their shit together, Local dioceses, which include but are not limited to archdiocese; metropolitan archbishops have extremely limited authority over the diocese of suffragan bishops within their province, so archdioceses have no real special status here other than that they also happen to be dioceses. > its fucking disgusting that they are the leading cause of whooping cough, mumps and so on coming back in force and killing people. They aren't, anti-vaxxers are. There's some cases where the vaccination policy of the a particular diocese is less strict than those of public schools in the same area, and cases where the reverse is true [0]; and Catholic schools are the most common private schools in the country. So, where they have more lenient vaccination policies than public schools, they are where anti-vaxxers tend to end up, but they aren't the cause. [0] Texas is, apparently, an example of the latter, since public schools accept religious exemptions but the Catholic schools do not. http://staugustinecs.org/archdiocese-statement-on-immunzations/ http://staugustinecs.org/archdiocese-statement-on-immunzatio...
• FussyZeus 9y ago
  Disengaged and uninterested students will find a distraction; yes, perhaps a laptop makes it easier but my education in distraction seeking during middle school, well before laptops were even close to schools, shows that the lack of a computer in front of me was no obstacle to locating something more interesting to put my attention to. The real solution is to engage students so they don't feel the urge to get distracted in the first place. Then you could give them completely unfiltered Internet and they would still be learning (perhaps even faster, using additional resources.) You can't substitute an urge to learn, no matter if you strap them to the chairs and pin their eyeballs open with their individual fingers strapped down, it won't do anything. It just makes school less interesting, less fun, and less appealing, which makes learning by extension less fun, less appealing, and less interesting.
• ourmandave 9y ago
  This reminds me of the running gag in some college movie where the first day all the students show up. The next cut some students come to class, put a recorder on their desk and leave, then pick it up later. Eventually there's a scene of the professor lecturing to a bunch of empty desks with just recorders. And the final scene there's the professor's tape player playing to the student's recorders.
  • pmiller2 9y ago
    FYI, this gag appears exactly as described in Real Genius. I wonder if there are any other movies that use it?
    • drblast 9y ago
      I'm pretty sure an episode of Scrubs did something very similar.
    • kfriede 9y ago
      Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt4vXaoPzF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt4vXaoPzF8
    • skocznymroczny 9y ago
      TVTropes probably has it, but I couldn't find it. Snopes has it as urban legend here http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/recorder.asp http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/recorder.asp
  • Balgair 9y ago
    For real though. Many large undergrad lectures kinda run this way. I'll take the video of the lecture (many large universities record all lectures now) and just play it back at ~1.3x speed later. I can rewind, stop, and fast-forward to the stuff I know I need to know. Since the tests/HW are the only thing that matters, why would I not do it this way? It's a better use of all of our time.
    • ML_God 9y ago
• rokhayakebe 9y ago
  We really need to begin ditching most studies. We have the ability now to collect vast amount of data and use that to make conclusions based on millions of endpoints, not just 10, 100 or 1000 pieces of information.
  • Balgair 9y ago
    informed consent for scientific research is very specific and very important. It's history is somewhat intersting, but goes back to the Geneva conventions in the aftermath of WW2 and the Axis efforts on human experimentation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2328798/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2328798/
• alkonaut 9y ago
  This is the same as laptops not being allowed in meetings. A company where it's common for meeting participants to "take notes" on a laptop is dysfunctional. Laptops need to be banned in meetings (and smartphones in meetings and lectures). Also re: other comments: A video lecture is to a physical lecture what a conference call is to a proper meeting. A professor rambling for 3h is still miles better than watching the same thing on YouTube. The same holds for tv versus watching a film on a movie screen. Zero distractions and complete immersion. Maybe VR will allow it some day.
• Kenji 9y ago
  If you keep your laptop open during class, you're not just distracting yourself, you're distracting everyone behind you (that's how human attention works - if you see a bright display with moving things, your attention is drawn towards it), and that's not right. That's why at my uni, there was an unspoken (de-facto) policy that if you keep your laptop open during lectures, you're sitting in the backrows, especially if you play games or do stuff like that. It worked great - I was always in the front row with pen & paper. However, a laptop is very useful to get work done during breaks or labs when you're actually supposed to use it.
• zengid 9y ago
  Please excuse me for relating an experience, but it's relevant. To get into my IT grad program I had to take a few undergrad courses (my degree is in music, and I didn't have all of the pre-reqs). One course was Intro to Computer Science, which unfortunately had to be taught in the computer lab used for the programming courses. It was sad to see how undisciplined the students were. Barely anyone paid attention to the lectures as they googled the most random shit (one kid spent a whole lecture searching through images of vegetables). The final exam was open-book. I feel a little guilty, but I enjoyed seeing most of the students nervously flip through the chapters the whole time, while it took me 25 minutes to finish (the questions were nearly identical to those from previous exams).
• tsumnia 9y ago
  I think its a double edge sword; not just paper > laptop or laptop > paper. As many people have already stated, its about engagement. Since coming back for my PhD, I've subscribed to the pencil/paper approach as a simple show of respect to the instructor. Despite what we think, professors are human and flawed, and being in their shoes, it can be disheartening to not be able to feed off your audience. That being said, you can't control them; however, I like to look at different performance styles. What makes someone binge watch Netflix episodes but want to nod off during a lecture. Sure, one has less cognitive load, but replace Netflix binge with anything. People are willing to engage, as long as the medium is engaging (this doesn't mean easy or funny, simply engaging). [Purely anecdotal opinion based discussion] This is one of the reasons I think flipping the classroom does work; they can't tune out. But, if its purely them doing work, what's your purpose there? To babysit? There needs to be a happy median between work and lecture. I like to look at the class time in an episodic structure. Pick a show and you'll notice there's a pattern to how the shows work. By maintaining a consistency in the classroom, the students know what to expect. To tie it back to the article, the laptop is a great tool to use when you need them to do something on the computer. However, they should be looking at you, and you should be drawing their attention. Otherwise, you're just reading your PowerPoint slides.
  • quantum_magpie 9y ago
    >That being said, you can't control them; however, I like to look at different performance styles. What makes someone binge watch Netflix episodes but want to nod off during a lecture. Sure, one has less cognitive load, but replace Netflix binge with anything. I personally find that if the air quality is not perfect for my needs, I tend to go drowsy really fast. Since I hate the artificially dry air, in any setting where there is either excessive heating in the winter, strong AC in the summer or too many people in a classroom where you get excessive CO2 concentrations, the attention span plummets. A 15 min break every hour helps, where you can get outside for at least 5 minutes and get some fresh air. Also, rooms that have windows that actually open are a lifesaver.
    • tsumnia 9y ago
      Not to be a jerk, but that's a discipline matter - you need to do what you need to do to maintain attention. Too much heating in my car in the winter and I get drowsy as well; and that's a situation where I need to be VERY engaged! If I fall asleep at the wheel, I can't blame it on the car, that was my fault. I do try to practice mindfulness, so I never let myself fall into "auto-pilot". Breaks help and are definitely needed, the classes I've taught have been anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. I'd typically do a 1 hour block, 10 minutes and finish (or 50 min then break depending on room vibe and natural progression of material). However, I cannot control things like AC or number of people. AC in a large-scale building is an unsolved problem as-is, I have no control over every person's thermal comfort level (plus everyone's different). In that situation, I view it more internally as "What can I do to stay engaged?" rather than "What can they do to keep me engaged?" With more students enrolling, all you can do is offer ways to let them receive the material outside the prescribed time. No one has a photographic memory and can remember literally everything - that's why I make Khan Academy-style videos of my lectures. I'd love to mirror a martial art class, where I can rely on more experienced students to help others, as they may be able to offer another viewpoint I skipped over (since, I already understand the material, they just figured it out). However, in a college setting, it's a harder thing to do, given its hard to convince TAs attend the class again and act as an assistant. Repetition is a very important tool for learning, but current Western education philosophy dislikes it. I could go on, but I'm starting to ramble on a tangent...
• erikb 9y ago
  I'd argue that students are better off without a classroom as long as they have a laptop (and internet, but that is often also better at home/cafe than in the classroom).
• imgabe 9y ago
  I went to college just as laptops were starting to become ubiquitous, but I never saw the point of them in class. I still think they're pretty useless for math, engineering, and science classes where you need to draw symbols and diagrams that you can't easily type. Even for topics where you can write prose notes, I always found it more helpful to be able to arrange them spatially in a way that made sense rather than the limited order of a text editor or word processor.
  • eduren 9y ago
    I went to a state engineering college that provided students with tablet-style laptops so that you could fold the screen down and jot notes+diagrams with a stylus. It was really nice because some of the professors were flexible enough to accept tablet-written homework (one even required it as everybody had the requisite device). I knew plenty of fellow students that eschewed paper notes during their time there.
    • dyarosla 9y ago
      Out of curiosity, what laptop model and software combo?
      • eduren 9y ago
        The school has been purchasing laptops from the Fujitsu Lifebook T series for a few years now. They swapped out old models for each student after 4 years of use. Back when I attended, most people were on the Fujitsu Lifebook t901 I think, but looking at their IT site now, the latest models the school uses are http://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/pc/tablets/lifebook-t726/ http://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/pc/tablets/.... I loved those tablets, the stylus and screen digitizer felt top notch back when I used them. Software-wise, most students used OneNote for note taking/annotating text and a few professors required https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Journal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Journal for assignments. Not sure the preferred approach these days as Journal seems dead.
      • discreditable 9y ago
• ChiliDogSwirl 9y ago
  Maybe it would be helpful if our operating systems were optimised for working and learning rather than to selling us crap and mining our data.
  • snakeanus 9y ago
    There are many OSes that don't do that.
• Bearwithme 9y ago
  They should try this study again, but with laptops heavily locked down. Disable just about everything that isn't productive including a strict web filter. I am willing to bet the results would be much better for the kids with laptops. Of course if you let them have free reign they are going to be more interested in entertainment than productivity.
• vblord 9y ago
  During indoor recess at my kids school, kids don't eat their lunch and just throw it away because of the chromebooks. There are only have a few computers and they are first come first serve. Kids would rather go without lunch to be able to play on the internet for 20 minutes.
• emptybits 9y ago
  It makes sense that during a lecture, simple transcription (associated with typing) yields worse results than cognition (associated with writing). So pardon my ignorance (long out of the formal student loop): Are students taught how to take notes effectively (with laptops) early in their academic lives? Before we throw laptops out of classrooms, could we be improving the situation by putting students through a "How To Take Notes" course, with emphasis on effective laptopping? It's akin to "how to listen to music" and "how to read a book" courses -- much to be gained IMO.
• zeta0134 9y ago
  Oh, okay, I thought the study was going to be on the benefits of attempting to use the laptop itself for classroom purposes, not for social media distractions. This would be more accurately titled, "Students Are Better Off Without Distractions in the Classroom." Though I suppose, it wouldn't make a very catchy headline. I found my laptop to be very beneficial in my classroom learning during college, but only when I made it so. My secret was to avoid even connecting to the internet. I opened up a word processor, focused my eyes on the professor's slides or visual aids, and typed everything I saw, adding notes and annotations based on the professor's lecture. This had the opposite effect of what this article describes: my focusing my distracted efforts on formatting the article and making my notes more coherent, I kept myself focused, and could much more easily engage with the class. Something about the menial task of taking the notes (which I found I rarely needed to review) prevented me from losing focus and wandering off to perform some unrelated activity. I realize my experience is anecdotal, but then again, isn't everyone's? I think each student should evaluate their own style of learning, and decide how to best use the tools available to them. If the laptop is a distraction? Remove it! Goodness though, you're paying several hundred (/thousand) dollars per credit hour, best try to do everything you can to make that investment pay off.
  • DINKDINK 9y ago
    >I opened up a word processor, focused my eyes on the professor's slides or visual aids, and typed everything I saw There are studies that show that verbatim computer note taking is actually inferior to remembering the lecture content: A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...
    • discreditable 9y ago
      I'd really like to see a comparison of written notes on a laptop vs paper. Many schools are moving towards tablet PC devices to enable handwritten notes on the computer.
      • 9y ago
• zokier 9y ago
  I love how any education-related topic brings out the armchair-pedagogist out from the woodworks. Of course a big aspect there is that everyone has encountered some amount of education, and especially both courses they enjoyed and disliked. And there is of course the "think of the children" aspect. To avoid making purely meta comment, in my opinion the ship has already sailed; we are going to have computers in classrooms for better or worse. So the big question is how can we make the best use of that situation.
  • discreditable 9y ago
    I noticed that the article is speaking from a university perspective. I work in the high school realm, where teachers have more ability to reprimand students not on task. That seems to help students use computers more effectively, but at the same time it requires some effort on the part of the instructor.
• partycoder 9y ago
  I think VR will be the future of education.
  • snakeanus 9y ago
    How so?
• polote 9y ago
  Well it depends on what you do in the classroom, when class is mandatory but you are not able to learn this way (by listening to a teacher), having a laptop can let you do other things. And then use your time efficiently, like doing some administrative work, send email, coding ... Some students are of course better with a laptop in the classroom
• LaikaF 9y ago
  My high school did the one laptop loan out thing (later got sued for it) and I can tell you it was useless as a learning tool. At least in the way intended. I learned quite a bit mainly about navigating around the blocks and rules they put in place. In high school my friends and I ran our own image board, learned about reverse proxying via meebo repeater, hosted our own domains to dodge filtering, and much much more. As far as what I used them for in class... if I needed to take notes I was there with note book and pen. If I didn't I used the laptop to do homework for other classes while in class. I had a reputation among my teachers for handing in assignments the day they were assigned. In college I slid into the pattern they saw here. I started spending more time on social media, paying less attention in class, slacking on my assignments. As my burnout increased the actual class times became less a thing I learned from and more just something I was required to sit in. One of my college classes literally just required me to show up. It was a was one of the few electives in the college for a large university. The students were frustrated they had to be there, and the teacher was tired of teaching to students who just didn't care. Overall I left college burnt out and pissed at the whole experience. I went in wanting to learn it just didn't work out.
• marlokk 9y ago
  Students are better off with instructors who don't bore students into bringing out their laptops.
• njarboe 9y ago
  This is a summary of an article titled "Logged In and Zoned Out: How Laptop Internet Use Relates to Classroom Learning" published in Psychological Science in 2017; The DOI is 10.1177/0956797616677314 if you want to check out the details. Abstract: Laptop computers are widely prevalent in university classrooms. Although laptops are a valuable tool, they offer access to a distracting temptation: the Internet. In the study reported here, we assessed the relationship between classroom performance and actual Internet usage for academic and nonacademic purposes. Students who were enrolled in an introductory psychology course logged into a proxy server that monitored their online activity during class. Past research relied on self-report, but the current methodology objectively measured time, frequency, and browsing history of participants’ Internet usage. In addition, we assessed whether intelligence, motivation, and interest in course material could account for the relationship between Internet use and performance. Our results showed that nonacademic Internet use was common among students who brought laptops to class and was inversely related to class performance. This relationship was upheld after we accounted for motivation, interest, and intelligence. Class- related Internet use was not associated with a benefit to classroom performance.
  • throwawayjava 9y ago
    > ...Students who were enrolled in an introductory psychology course... Ugh. Also, from the paper: > Five hundred seven students enrolled in an introductory psychology class in fall 2014... Each lecture lasted 1 hr and 50 min with a 10-min break in the middle. Alternative headline: "500 person intro courses with meat-space lecture periods lasting TWO HOURS are stupid, and everything else is water under the bridge" edit2: Also from the paper: > Participants who logged in for less than half of the sessions were excluded from analysis Why?! You don't think that frequency of use could correlate at all with type of use?! It's like they're willfully introducing unnecessary threats to validity... And it keeps going like that for the entire paper. I smell experiment design hacking.
    • swiley 9y ago
      This is one of the classes I CLEPed while in highschool. I don't think I spent more than a couple of hours actually studying for it.
• zitterbewegung 9y ago
  When I was in College I would take notes using a notebook and pad and paper. I audited some classes with my laptop using latex but most of the time I used a notebook. Also, sometimes I would just go to class without a notebook and get the information that way. It also helped that I didn't have a smartphone with Cellular data half of the time I was in school.
• free_everybody 9y ago
  I find that having my laptop out is great for my learning, even during lectures. If somethings not clear or I want more context, I can quickly look up some information without interrupting the teacher. Also, paper notes don't travel well. If everything is on my laptop and backed up online, I know that if I have my laptop, I can study anything I want. Even if I don't have my laptop, I could use another computer to access my notes and documents. This is a HUGE benefit.
• Fomite 9y ago
  Just personally, for me it was often a choice between "Laptop-based Distractions" or "Fall Asleep in Morning Lecture". The former was definitely the superior of the two options.
  • izacus 9y ago
    Just stay at home and sleep in then instead of distracting everyone around you and taking up space?
• fatso784 9y ago
  There's another study showing that students around you with laptops harm your ability to concentrate, even if you're not on a laptop yourself. This is in my opinion a stronger argument against laptops, because it harms those not privileged enough to have a laptop. (not enough time to find study but you can find it if you search!)
• shahbaby 9y ago
  "Thus, there seems to be little upside to laptop use in class, while there is clearly a downside." Thanks to bs articles like this that try to over generalize their results, I was unsure if I "needed" a laptop when returning to school. Got a Surface Book and here's what I've experienced over the last 2 semesters. - Going paperless, I'm more organized than ever. I just need to make sure I bring my surface with me wherever I go and I'm good. - Record lectures, tutorials, office hours, etc. Although I still take notes to keep myself focused, I can go back and review things with 100% accuracy thanks to this. - Being at 2 places at once. ie: Make last minute changes before submitting an assignment for class A or attend review lecture to prepare for next week's quiz in class B? I can leave the surface in class B to record the lecture while I finish up the assignment for class A. If you can't control yourself from browsing the internet during a lecture then the problem is not with your laptop...
  • exodust 9y ago
    That's a sensible and practical use of laptop that I wish I had back when I was at Uni (nobody had a laptop in the 90s). I wonder how many students today make efficient use of their computers like this? I guess it's a mix of good and bad. It occurs to me that educating younger students about "how to use a computer" for organising and the like, would be essential in early education before bad habits set in.
• jessepage1989 9y ago
  I find taking paper notes and then reorganizing on the computer works best. The repetition helps memorization.
• kgilpin 9y ago
  It sounds like what students need are better teachers. I haven't been to school in a while but I had plenty of classes that were more interesting than surfing YouTube; and some that weren't. The same is true for meetings at work. In a good session, people are using their laptops to look up contributing information. In a bad one... well... you know.
• exabrial 9y ago
  Students are best of with the least amount of distractions
• thisrod 9y ago
  > First, participants spent almost 40 minutes out of every 100-minute class period using the internet for nonacademic purposes I think that I'd be one of them; in the absence of a laptop, I'd spend that time daydreaming. How many people can really concentrate through a 100 minute nonstop lecture about differential geometry or the decline of the Majapahit empire?
• BigChiefSmokem 9y ago
  I'll give you no laptops in the class if you give me no standardized testing and only four 15-20 minute lectures per day and let the kids work on projects the rest of the time as a way to prove their learning and experiences in a more tangible way. Trying to fix the problem by applying only patches, as us technically inclined would say, always leads to horribly unreliable and broken systems.
• alistproducer2 9y ago
  "Duh" - anyone who's ever been in a class with a laptop.
• wh313 9y ago
  Could it be that the intermittent requests to servers by running apps, say Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, be tracked as social media use? Because they all use HTTPS I don't see how the researchers distinguished between idle traffic vs sending a message.
• aurelianito 9y ago
  Even better, just remove the surrounding classroom of the laptop. Now we can learn anything anywhere. Having to go to take a class were a professor recites something is ridiculous.
• qguv 9y ago
  Internet access, especially to Wikipedia, did wonders for me whenever the lecture turned to something I was already familiar with. That alone kept me from getting distracted and frustrated as I would in classes whose professors prohibited laptop use.
• brodock 9y ago
  Any research that takes students as an homogenic group is flawed. People can be (more or less) in about one of the 7 different types of learning styles https://www.learning-styles-online.com/overview/ https://www.learning-styles-online.com/overview/. So making claims like "doing X works better than Y" is meaningless without pointing to a specific learning style. That's why you hear people defending writing to paper, while others prefer just hearing the lectures or others have better performance while discussing with peers (and some hate all of the other interactions and can perform better by isolating and studying on your own... which is probably the one who will benefit the most of having a laptop available).
  • agentdrtran 9y ago
    Learning styles are have been debunked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#...
    • brodock 9y ago
      debunked is a hard word for "hey, lack of peer review": "... Coffield's team found that none of the most popular learning style theories had been adequately validated through independent research." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles sounds more like lack of funding than pseudoscience.
• mark_l_watson 9y ago
  In what universe would it be a good idea for students use laptops in class? Use of digital devices should be limited because the very use of digital devices separates us from what is going on around us. Students should listen and take notes (in a notebook) as necessary.
• Zpalmtree 9y ago
  I like having a laptop at uni just because I can program when the lectures are boring, I find the material is too easy in UK universities in CS at least, dunno about other courses or countries, but the amount of effort you need to get good marks along with the amount you're paying is a bit silly, and mostly you'll learn more by yourself... That said, if you're in a programming class, having a laptop to follow along and try out the concepts is really handy, when we were in an C++/ASM class, seeing the different ASM GCC/G++ and Microsoft's C++ compiler spat out was quite interesting.
  • bostand 9y ago
    If its too simple and boring for you, why don't you leave?
• jon889 9y ago
  I have had lectures where I have had a laptop/iPad/phone and ones where I’ve not had any. i did get distracted, but I found that if I didn’t have say Twitter I’d get distracted for longer. With Twitter I’d catch up on my news feed and then a few minutes later be back to concentrating. Without it I’d end up day dreaming and losing focus for 10-20 minutes. The biggest problem isn’t distractions, or computers and social media. It’s that hour long lectures are an awful method of transferring information. In my first year we had small groups of ~8 people and a student from 3rd/4th year and we’d go through problems from the maths and programming lectures. I learnt much more in these. Honestly learning would be much more improved if lectures were condensed into half an hour YouTube videos you can pause, speed up and rewind. Then have smaller groups in which you can interact with the lecturers/assistants.
• dalbasal 9y ago
  I think there is a mentality shift that may come with digitizing learning which might help here. The discussion on a topic like this can go in two ways. (1) Is to talk about how a laptop can help if students use it to xyz and avoid cba. It's up to the student. Bring a horse to water...(2) The second way you can look at this is to compare outomes, statistacally or quasi-statistically. IE, If laptops are banned we predict an N% increase in Z, where Z is (hopefully) a good proxy for learning or enjoyment or something else we want. IE, think about improving a college course the same way we think about optimizing a dating site. On a MOOC, the second mentality will tend to dominate. Both have downsides, especially when applied blindly (which tends to happen). In any case, new thinking tends to help.
• Radle 9y ago
  If students thing the class is boring enough, they'll watch youtube whether on the laptop or on their mobile is no really important.
• _e 9y ago
  Politicians are also better off without a laptop during legislative sessions [0]. [0] http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/solitaire.asp http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/solitaire.asp
• Shinchy 9y ago
  I've always find the idea of taking a laptop to a lecture pretty rude. I'm there to give the person teaching my full attention, not stare at a laptop screen. So personally I never use them in any type of lecturing / teaching environment simply as a mark of respect.
• catnaroek 9y ago
  This is why I like to program in front of a whiteboard rather than in front of my computer: to be more productive.
• jonbarker 9y ago
  Students need a GUI-less computer like a minimalist linux distro.
• dorianm 9y ago
  Pen and papers are the best. Also chromebooks are pretty cool
• calvano915 9y ago
  Just putting in my 2c that as a senior in dual BS and a minor, technology has allowed me to be more successful than paper ever will. I can get more notes written, can draw (I've used a tablet from day one, upgraded to an SP4 recently), import everything to keep it all organized, etc. These arguments about tech vs. paper are the same about learning styles. People are different, and what works for them will be different. Professors should allow any tools that are effective for some to be used, as long as a student is not abusing the privilege by distracting/harming other's learning. I've let my mind wander (by means of browsing facebook or some other distraction) in maybe 10 lectures max over the last 3 years of school. The rest of the time, I had OneNote open and was fully engaged. When students aren't engaged, they will find distraction be it on paper or tech. STOP TELLING ME THAT A COMPUTER WILL LOWER MY GRADES. I have a 3.84 and rising, and I refuse to change what makes me successful.