The Washington Post revisits the question of laptop use in the classroom.
A generation ago, academia embraced the laptop as the most welcome classroom innovation since the ballpoint pen. But during the past decade, it has evolved into a powerful distraction. Wireless Internet connections tempt students away from note-typing to e-mail, blogs, YouTube videos, sports scores, even online gaming — all the diversions of a home computer beamed into the classroom to compete with the professor for the student’s attention. . . .
Professors have banned laptops from their classrooms at George Washington University, American University, the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia, among many others. Last month, a physics professor at the University of Oklahoma poured liquid nitrogen onto a laptop and then shattered it on the floor, a warning to the digitally distracted. A student — of course — managed to capture the staged theatrics on video and drew a million hits on YouTube. . . .
Diane E. Sieber, an associate professor of humanities at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has debated her students on the collegiate conceit of multitasking, the notion that today’s youths can fully attend to a lecture while intermittently toggling over to e-mail, ESPN and Facebook. . . .
One recent semester, Siebert tracked the grades of 17 student laptop addicts. At the end of the term, their average grade was 71 percent, “almost the same as the average for the students who didn’t come at all.” . . .
[Professor David ] Cole surveyed one of his Georgetown classes anonymously after six weeks of laptop-free lectures. Four-fifths said they were more engaged in class discussion. Ninety-five percent admitted that they had used their laptops for “purposes other than taking notes.”
Even when used as glorified typewriters, laptops can turn students into witless stenographers, typing a lecture verbatim without listening or understanding.
I’ve yet to ban laptops in my class, but I’ve considered it, primarily because non-classroom use on a laptop can distract other students. Perhaps I should consider it again.
Houston Lawyer says:
People who think that they can multi-task are kidding themselves. You are either paying attention or you are not.
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March 9, 2010, 8:48 amSkyler says:
The clear answer is that professors should actually try to be less boring and more prepared.
I’ve had precious few professors that actually taught as though teaching were a skill or art that took some forethought beyond just putting together a few notes. In such classes, no one surfed the net because the class being taught was engaging and worth listening to.
In the vast majority of classes, the lectures are boring, poorly prepared, and delivered by professors who have no real expertise in imparting knowlege beyond the fact that they have tenure and once did well in school themselves.
In fact, having done so well in school themselves almost makes them less capable of teaching. It’s easy to teach the superlative students.
In most of my law classes, I learned almost nothing from the class and everything from my own reading. The class tended to be just a place I was required to sit or get my grade lowered. That laptop really was a blessing.
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March 9, 2010, 8:58 amSteve says:
It doesn’t make much sense to ban what many people consider the most efficient method of note-taking.
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March 9, 2010, 9:08 amcneumi says:
...how are students getting a 71% in a class when they don’t even come? O.o
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March 9, 2010, 9:13 amSimon Karpen says:
As a current MBA student, I’ll make the professors a deal: I’ll give up my laptop (despite its primary in-class use being note-taking with OneNote) if they will give up PowerPoint.
PowerPoint leads to boring lectures where you know what’s going to happen, and you’ve probably already downloaded the slides. So far, the best lecturers are the ones that have needed nothing beyond their voice and a whiteboard.
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March 9, 2010, 9:15 amDG says:
I think the key issue is that for many classes, you still can’t take notes with a laptop, OneNote or not. Try it in a math or engineering class, and your head will explode...
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March 9, 2010, 9:17 amProf. S. says:
I think that you let people make their own choice on how to react to your class. If people choose not to pay attention, then they hurt their grades, not yours. Besides, it only rewards those who do pay attention. And if for some reason you allow their attentiveness to determine how you feel about the class, then make the class more interesting and engage more students.
I will say that when I was in law school (just a few years ago), laptops were starting to be the norm (the year after me, all 1Ls received them). I had classes where I took diligent notes, made diagrams, and depended upon my class notes. I couldn’t have made it without my computer. I had another class where I surfed sports message boards (and not suprisingly, I didn’t do well).
Then again, my Evidence class was so boring that I downloaded a copy of Oregon Trail (yes, from the old-school Apple IIe). I learned that you could easily make it to Oregon during one class period, including ample time for hunting. When I was bored with that or my character was safely resting in Oregon, I played Lemonade Stand or Burger Time. I ended up receiving an A in the class. Go figure.
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March 9, 2010, 9:18 amUnbranded Bovine says:
Guilty as charged. I’m in class right now.
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March 9, 2010, 9:20 amTRE says:
What about professors that use scripts? Several of my LS profs used verbatim scripts. Some people had access to verbatim notes from prior years and some didn’t.
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March 9, 2010, 9:21 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Word.
Jonathon, my question would be: to what extent do you consider yourself in loco parentis to your students, and to what extent should they really be grown-ups by now? If I were the professor, I probably would: (1) present those stats to the students at the beginning of the semester and on the syllabus, and (2) declare the front third or so of the classroom to be laptop-free so that those students don’t have to see others’ laptops. And then let the chips fall where they may.
(I did not permit my child to have a computer in her bedroom until her last year or two of high school, but then I stayed out of her business. I thought, better for her to learn self-control now than to get to college and flunk out b/c she’d never understood that the time had to come to close Facebook and get on with it. She worked it out.)
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March 9, 2010, 9:25 amJonathan H. Adler says:
Just to clarify, I generally believe that law students should make these choices for themselves. They’re adults after all. My biggest concern is that the decision of some students to use laptops in class for non-class purposes has effects on other students. One effect is that students sitting behind or nearby another student can be distracted based upon what’s occurring on the screen. A second effect is that a critical mass of laptops can reduce the overall level of class participation and make the class less valuable for those students who are not using laptops and are more engaged in the class discussion. What I ponder is whether these effects justify a blanket rule.
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March 9, 2010, 9:32 amGunner says:
If you have briefed the cases before class, taking notes by hand is not that difficult most of the time. All you have to do is annotate what you have already written. I suggest doing this in a different color pen.
Of course, some classes go significantly beyond the assigned cases, and for those substantial note-taking may be required. Taking notes by hand is slower and therefore requires some mental work between the ears and the paper. This is a good thing. When your synapses fire, trying to figure out how to express a couple of paragraphs of discussion into a sentence you can get down fast enough before the class moves on, you create pathways that you will use later when you review and synthesize the material in your outline.
As every typist knows, when typing you can bypass the brain completely and go straight from ears to fingers. This does not take any brain work and while you may well capture what was said, you will not understand it any better.
Whether to let students make their own mistakes in this regard is a philosophical question. Personally, I think I would find the temptation of wireless internet access too hard to resist. I’m glad I attended law school before wireless internet access in classrooms was common.
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March 9, 2010, 9:34 amAultimer says:
This is very sensible. It lets those who choose to distract themselves suffer the consequences. It lets those who prefer typing to handwriting (like me) have their preferred option. It lets those distracted by others’ distractions to avoid seeing laptops at all.
If a professor had tried to ban my laptop, I’d have been a very unhappy customer, and deal with the issue as such. If any professor though of me as a customer (paying full price, no less), it never would have happened.
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March 9, 2010, 9:42 amBen Barros says:
Like Jonathan, my biggest concern is for other students in class. I’ve considered making students who use laptops sit in the back of the class, and making the first few rows a laptop-free zone. But I’ve also started to consider an outright ban. I’d guess that many students would find that their classroom experience would be better once they tried it without a laptop. As for the students making the point that professors need to be hold up their end, fair enough, but the student-professor relationship works best when both sides are engaged. The failings of professors aren’t really relevant to this particular issue.
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March 9, 2010, 9:44 amASlyJD says:
Guilty as charged as well.
Though quite frankly, I think a lot of the problem in law school is the requirement that students attend class with only x number of absences. It’s yet another way law school resembles a difficult expensive high school. (Others include lockers, proms, class assemblies, and juvenile drama.)
My Law and Econ prof was in love with the sound of his voice and especially fond of noting his many TV appearances. The internet kept me sane, since my grade wasn’t even based on anything covered in the lecture.
One of my occasional problems is that I end up using my computer to work on other required projects in class, such as patents for my boss or legal columns on World of Warcraft for my blogging bosses, not to mention papers for other profs.
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March 9, 2010, 9:48 amMike McDougal says:
Maybe “learning to think like a lawyer” means “learning to teach your self the law.”
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March 9, 2010, 9:50 amSkyler says:
Unless you attend Yale which has no attendance policy and no grades, yet their faculty doesn’t seem concerned that they will lose their accreditation. I guess rules only count for the little schools.
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March 9, 2010, 10:10 amPatHMV says:
I say BAN them. To those over-privileged “entertain me!” folks who think like Skyler, got news for you. Judges could care less about entertaining you. The attorneys you will be opposing in negotiations and litigations will not be trying to entertain you or make their presentations “interesting” from your perspective. A great deal of your professional career will involve listening through boring oral presentations, and extracting relevant information from them. If you don’t practice that skill in law school, then that means you’ll be learning how to do it for the first time on some client’s dime. It better not be mine.
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March 9, 2010, 10:32 amPreston Earle says:
I’m almost half a century away from note-taking in class and I don’t even own a laptop, but my most recent experience in a formal educational environment (at a local blogging conference two years ago) was disrupted by other folks using laptops in an auditorium-lecture environment. I found it very distracting to have the open laptops of people sitting in front of me shining brightly at me. I wished then that the organizers had asked all laptop-notetakers to sit in the rear of the auditorium so as not to distract non-users like me.
I’d vote for no laptops in the front of the room/lecture hall.
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March 9, 2010, 10:42 amJWS says:
I think professors focus too much on the negatives while ignoring the positives of laptops in the classroom. Personally, I attribute a significant portion of my success in law school to the use of a laptop in all my classes.
First, as someone plagued with bad handwriting, especially when writing quickly, the laptop greatly improved my note taking as well as the organization of my class notes. Second, I think having quick and easy access to notes of all my classes assisted in my understanding of lectures. Particularly if a class focused on a concept discussed earlier in the semester or a concept discussed in an entirely different class, I could quickly access those notes to supplement my current in class learning. Third, access to educational materials on the internet enhanced classroom discussions and my understanding of the discussions. If I didn’t understand a legal term being used, I could very easily consult Black’s. Furthermore, students’ ability to consult Westlaw (and much to the chagrin of my professors, Wikipedia) would often assist in settling questions Professor’s would normally put off till the next class (if they remembered) in order to do research.
I readily admit that there were times I succumbed to the temptations of the internet. No doubt there were times I was distracted, but I also credit the internet for helping get me through two and three hour classes in my second and third year, mainly when the professor was focusing on a concept I already understood. Some students abuse the internet and choose to surf the web instead of paying attention to the class. However, I believe I got more out of my in class time because of my laptop and I would guess I am not alone.
I wonder how many professors who have or are considering banning laptops have considered what benefits they are taking away instead of focusing on the negatives they are attempting to stop.
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March 9, 2010, 10:44 amSkyler says:
PatHMV, I’m not paying a judge. I’m trying to convince a judge. There’s a big difference. You might think me “over-privileged” but I think you’re holier-than-thou.
School is not a work environment. It is a learning environment. There’s a huge difference.
I’d be more impressed with your argument if there was anything about law school that had much to do with the practice of law instead of the theory of law. When law school gets practical enough to teach someone where to file documents, how to keep track of client paperwork, and how to interact with colleagues and opposing counsel, then I’d think you might have a point. But it doesn’t.
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March 9, 2010, 10:58 amChris Travers says:
Absolutely.
I never like to lecture with powerpoint. Give me a whiteboard anyday.
Powerpoint is a “solution” for not wanting the class to be focusing on you. It is a solution in search of a problem.
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March 9, 2010, 11:07 amBlue says:
It’s not the computer that’s the biggest problem. It’s the WiFi internet access.
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March 9, 2010, 11:11 amMaureen says:
As long as it’s not too absorbing a task, doing something with your hands can improve concentration on what you hear. For example, knitting. Or taking notes, for those who process it as a mostly manual skill. Sorting, proofreading for typos, all that sort of thing is pretty low level brain processing. A simple, slow videogame (like Bejeweled on the Endless setting) would probably not turn off your ears, either. Doodling alongside your notes is a classic example.
However, doing things that require higher level processing is sure to shunt your attention away. If you stopped doodling and started sketching a real artwork, if you started reading your email instead of skimming it, if you play a fast absorbing videogame, then sure, you’re going to be distracted. Writing verse or a short story next to your notes is usually a bad idea, unless you’re sure you already know the material.
However, I notice that nobody here has any compassion for the many people who can’t take notes and pay attention at the same time. These people either develop really good memories in school, or do a lot of flunking from elementary school on.
Similarly, a lot of people can’t multitask anything, even dishes, while listening to music or audiobooks or conversation. Surprisingly common, also, are people who find all extraneous movement to be distracting. Yet nobody bans the movement of pencils in class, or commands that the professor stand still and quit gesturing so much while talking. :)
If people want to go to the effort of writing down every word the prof says, let them. People’ve done that for years with pen and paper, or tried their best. It’s not new.
Anyway, I can’t imagine that anybody using a laptop in class isn’t already recording the entire class as an audio file, so that you couldn’t actually miss anything no matter what you played in class. The professors have nothing to worry about in that respect. If the students want to flunk, even with all their advantages, they’re adults and can do as they like.
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March 9, 2010, 11:22 amii says:
I guess just the students who use their laptops for non-class purposes are the only adults in the classroom. Why can’t the students who want to be in class and pay attention to the discussion be adults too, which presumably includes resisting the temptation of staring to the point of distraction at the laptop screens of their classmates. For goodness sake, grow up. If you can’t resist the temptation to gawk at your neighbor’s screen, then how can you resist the temptation to engage in other diversions on your own laptop? Don’t coddle these grown-up babies.
As for laptop distractions hindering more robust classroom discussion, law professors need to get over themselves. 90% of everything law professors say in class is redundant and unnecessary. The average law school class should be about 15 minutes long, and in those 15 minutes of substantive teaching, class “discussion” isn’t the least bit necessary to impart the law and facilitate learning. It’s makework; time honored tradition inherited by each new generation of law professors to justify their own collective existence, where only marginal justification actually exists for it.
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March 9, 2010, 11:42 amRoger the Shrubber says:
Makes the underlying assumption a bit clearer, I think.
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March 9, 2010, 11:52 amKevinM says:
“One recent semester, Siebert tracked the grades of 17 student laptop addicts. At the end of the term, their average grade was 71 percent, ‘almost the same as the average for the students who didn’t come at all.’”
That could mean:
(a) Using a laptop (at least to the point of being an “addict”) robs lectures of their effect; or
(b) Lectures have no effect in the first place, at least as to these students. One of my professors described a lecture as a means of transferring material from the notebook of the professor to the notebook of the student without its passing through the mind of either.
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March 9, 2010, 12:01 pmjimM47 says:
I am reading this very post (and commenting on it) on my laptop during class.
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March 9, 2010, 12:18 pmPaul Horwitz says:
I think the anti-in-loco-parentis arguments, and the variants thereon, cut both too deeply and not deeply enough. Classroom environments are shot through with rules of conduct, most of which are treated as unobjectionable, and not just on Millian grounds. Professors who impose more restrictive rules may be accused of not treating their students like adults, but students who are unwilling to follow those rules, or who insist that their travels to web sites and the like are their own problem regardless of the demonstrable distraction they cause, may likewise be accused of being unwilling to act like adults in honoring the rules and minimizing the costs to others. The debate must remain one of what the best rule is.
Along those lines, I wonder whether the anti-laptop advocates here, at least those who are in law school, see a relationship between their views on this topic and their broader view of the rules vs. standards debate in the law. You can still argue the merits of the rule at the rule-formation stage, but are there not potential problems for rule-formalists with the argument that every student ought to be free to decide for himself or herself what to do?
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March 9, 2010, 12:37 pmMartha says:
These arguments remind me of the arguments I’ve heard people make to support their texting-while-driving habits. “I can do it safely.” “What I do behind the wheel is my own business.” “My texts are important (I need to be able to tell people when I’m running late),” and so on. Granted, the stakes are higher for driving. But when enough students are goofing off, the entire classroom environment suffers, to the detriment of all students and the professor. Not that students today would necessarily be able to tell, since it appears that many have never experienced anything else.
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March 9, 2010, 12:38 pmii says:
What Martha and Paul Horowitz are missing here is that it’s eminently EASY to avert your eyes when your classmate plays Bloons on his laptop during a class; or, as I am apt to do, peruses VC. The idea that these students are being so compelled to stare at someone else’s laptop screen that they simply cannot resist, or that it is in any way difficult to do so, is absurd. What world do you people live in? Laptop screens are small, and, frankly, the content of most games and webpages are not so visually stimulating that you can’t tune them out with little effort, just as you can anything else that may divert your attention from a boring and unnecessary class discussion. Given that it’s so easy to not be distracted by other people’s laptops, why should it be incumbent on those students who use their laptops for non-class activities in class to lose their internet access, or their privilege of having their laptops in class at all, rather than to just inform the other students what should already be known by them: Pay attention (if that’s what you really want) and stop being so easily distracted.
The burden should be on the anti-laptop crowd to overcome the idea that the “distractions” on the screens of their classmates’ laptops are anything more than negligible.
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March 9, 2010, 12:54 pmloki13 says:
Everyone is different, but I found the following allowed me to be very successful in law school (my competitive edge), especially the first year when I was still learning the ropes:
1. Do all assigned reading before the class. If you do this, then you can actually be engaged with the lecture, and understand the finer points. If you are using the lecture to catch up with your reading, you’ve already lost.
2. As a addendum to one, make sure it was active reading. Don’t just do rote reading to read the case– engage with it. Why is this case selected? Why is the plaintiff bring a cause of action? What if the facts were a little different? How does the juridiction matter? What argument could have/ should have been made to make the case turn out a different way?
3. Do not open my laptop during class– take all notes by hand. That way, I gain the benefit of learning by reading, by taking notes while reading, by taking notes during the lecture, by typing up my combined notes, by creating an outline from my combined notes, and by reviewing my outline.
This process did add some time to my studying, but it also did wonders for my GPA. As for my third year? Ummm.... let’s just say that I refined my process. :)
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March 9, 2010, 12:56 pmloki13 says:
One more thing–
During my first year, in a large lecture class, one student was infamous for looking at pr0n sites during the lecture.
He did not do well– academically or socially.
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March 9, 2010, 12:58 pmMartha says:
ii, it’s not just a matter of whether your laptop visually distracts others. It’s a matter of whether you are engaged in the class. If enough students are disengaged, the class suffers. Discussion isn’t as good, Q&A isn’t as good, and so on. Even in a lecture class, the professor’s ability to perform is lessened when students aren’t paying attention.
I disagree that “the burden should be on the anti-laptop crowd.” Using your laptop in a classroom isn’t a divine right. If you don’t like following classroom rules, then don’t go to law school.
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March 9, 2010, 12:59 pmDave N. says:
What’s a pr0n site?
(Sorry, couldn’t resist)
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March 9, 2010, 1:08 pmDavid Chesler says:
@Maureen, I assume you’re well aware that knitting in class is symbolic of masturbation.
Are these lectures videotaped? It’s probably different when attendance and class participation is required. If you can watch the video, note-taking is less important, and there’s less need for a laptop.
I can certainly see how laptops are a detriment to the users, and to a lesser degree those around them. I have no opinion on whether professors ought to ban them.
I like good Powerpoints. The dictum “Tell them what you’re going to say, then tell them, then tell them what you said” is useful. Having a Powerpoint on screen can be like having a Greek chorus for the first and third telling. Properly prepared animated Powerpoints show preparation and can be as effective as working out a problem on the board. Bad Powerpoints are just subtitles.
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March 9, 2010, 1:15 pmdjf says:
One problem with banning laptops in graduate or professional school is that students are already used to taking notes that way. I had one professor in law school who banned laptops and was, in general, an engaging lecturer. The problem was that I basically couldn’t take notes b/c I hadn’t taken notes by hand in high school!
This is something that needs to be addressed as early as high school, when (current) students are learning basic note-taking skills. Taking laptops away from graduate/professional students all of a sudden is just going to frustrate everybody.
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March 9, 2010, 1:16 pmLaptops in the Classroom says:
[...] Joyner | Tuesday, March 9, 2010 Case Western lawprof Jonathan Adler points to a WaPo story on the trend toward universities banning the use of laptop computers by [...]
Roger the Shrubber says:
Right, but of course nobody is saying students should be allowed to ignore obviously sensible classroom rules against, say, smoking or screaming. Instead, we’re arguing over which classroom rules make sense.
Reasonable people can disagree here. The “other people will be distracted by laptops” argument seems like weak sauce to me, and is easily solved by putting laptop users in the back. But I haven’t been in law school for a long time. Meanwhile, if a class is bad enough that half the students want to watch youtube, then I doubt you’re going to generate great pedagogical improvements by forcing them to close their laptops and droodle.* But I could easily be wrong.
On the other hand, arguments like “I simply know, better than they do, that their experience will be better if they don’t use a laptop” strike me as paternalistic and thus objectionable in this setting.
*Droodle, verb: to drool while doodling.
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March 9, 2010, 1:20 pmii says:
I don’t owe the class anything but civility. My responsibilities to my classmates end there. Using my laptop for non-class related things does not violate any rules of civility.
As for the class suffering because people are disengaged because they are playing computer games or surfing the web or texting or whatever, that’s debatable. But even assuming that they are disengaged because of this, and assuming further that law school classes actually suffer because a handful more students are not bandying about their throwaway opinions of cases and policy (I find this to slow things down terribly, normally, causing me to lose interest, but that’s me), this still doesn’t indicate the fault of the laptop users; or that the best policy is to take away their laptops, rather than any number of approaches that may be more than the band-aid fix that banning laptops would be, such as (a)re-thinking the utter lunacy that is the current law school classroom approach, since the sheer uselessness of law school classes in the overwhelming majority of instances turns off a substantial number of students, forcing them to diversions; or (b) re-thinking required attendance policies. Believe it or not, sometimes the casebook just nails it. Sometimes I don’t need Professor Blowhard and his little band of gunners’ help understanding the week’s reading assignments. I got it the first time around, and going to class would simply be redundant — let me opt out without an attendance sanction of some sort. That way little miss can’t-not-look-at-your-screen will be able to delay her realization that she can’t focus on things that matter when they matter until AFTER law school and the real world splashes that bucket of cold water directly on her face.
But this might hurt class discussions too since so few people would show up! I say good because this might give law school administrations and professors the wake up call they really do need: The classes are not that important. They really aren’t. Not for most students. (That’s why they aren’t showing up when not required to!)
One of my better law school courses was my Conflicts of Law course. Not because the material was particularly interesting (it was not) but because the professor didn’t give a whit if we showed up for class or not, and so didn’t take attendance. I think I attended a total of 5 classes the entire semester, and I got an A– on the exam. The readings were all that mattered, and when I didn’t understand something I read, THEN I attended so that I could understand it with the help of the class discussion.
Paternalism in law school has to end, because more often than not it’s just a way for the schools and the professors to justify tradition and needless pontification, rather than genuine concern for students.
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March 9, 2010, 1:34 pmAriel says:
A friend of mine said that at his law school, they all had privacy screens. That solves the distraction problem for about $50 a head. If some people start doing it, more people will do it quickly. Or you could mandate it for people who sit toward the front.
As to whether it’s a good idea, I’ve found that I learn best from the reading. That won’t be true for everyone but it is for me. Lecture, for the most part, is a waste of my time. This is especially true for professors who (1) largely recite from the book; and (2) call on people who don’t know what they’re talking about but keep asking them questions.
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March 9, 2010, 1:42 pmJens Fiederer says:
Where would you get the liquid nitrogen?
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March 9, 2010, 2:03 pmKullervo says:
I feel like I was able to do a pretty good job of multitasking as a 1L, but I found as time went on and my law school carer progressed, that ability rapidly deteriorated: once I started using my laptop for off-task activities, I had completely checked out.
It was nice to be able to check my email and Facebook when some tool in class would ask an extended, irrelevant, barely on-topic question (back as a laptopless undergrad I would have just counted ceiling tiles or doodled and simply wished to die), but the problem there was eventually the professor would come back to the point and move on with the lecture, but I would rarely come back with him. Again, once I checked out I rarely checked back in.
Eventually I just stopped bringing my laptop, and I generally found that I was a lot more attentive and on-task. On the downside, I was a lot more deathly bored. at least I had my cellphone and I could send text messages...
I do think the “witless stenographer” point, which gets brought up fairly often, is not entirely accurate. Maybe an accomplished typist could simply transcribe everything the professor says, but last I checked, advanced secretarial skills were not a prerequisite at most academic institutions. I couldn’t have been a stenographer of any kind even if I had wanted to, and I seriously doubt I was the only law student who just couldn’t type all that fast. I don’t remember seeing anyone next to me or in front of me stenographing witlessly either.
I did take down as much as I could, often using pauses and stupid question time to try to catch up, but to be honest, I did that when I hand-wrote my notes, too. In most academic classes, a lot of dense factual and conceptual information can come at you rapid-fire, and when one is taking 15–19 credit hours, I know that I certainly could not have recalled minutiae from a spare outline, even if I had been fully engaged. Typing or handwriting, I wrote down as much as I possibly could, and when it came time to study for exams, I was always glad I did.
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March 9, 2010, 2:13 pmAbdul says:
“Even when used as glorified typewriters, laptops can turn students into witless stenographers, typing a lecture verbatim without listening or understanding.”
I’ve heard that a thousand times, never with any empirical support. Do actual court stenographers return home at the end of the day with amnesia of everything they transcribed?
As a practicing attorney, I take almost all of my notes on my laptop–reading notes, interview notes, etc. then I can cut and paste relevant text into briefs, search engines, etc. It’s been a great time saver.
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March 9, 2010, 2:17 pmJennifer says:
I graduated near the top of my class in law school and would not have done nearly so well if not for my laptop + WiFi in class.
1) Laptop enabled note-taking. Taking thorough notes and having the ability to re-arrange, cross-reference, and electronically search them at a later date vastly improved my study habits.
2) WiFi: Not only was I able to satisfy my curiosity on points that weren’t covered by my text while in class, I was able to take the five-minute mental breaks we all need from time to time to stay focused for the rest of the class period.
I am an adult and I expected my law professors to treat me as such. People who screwed around on the internet all semester had to study harder and performed more poorly than those of us who were paying attention. I shouldn’t be punished for the misdemeanors of my classmates. I suffer from nerve damage and would not have been able to take notes properly if I’d had to use pen and paper. Further, I’ve always written on a computer — that’s how my generation learned to write papers and perform analysis. It’s how I think. Let the idiots fail; there will always be enough people who value their education dollars and future aspirations enough to keep class participation lively and beneficial, whether they’re using laptops or no.
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March 9, 2010, 2:18 pmPatHMV says:
I’m beginning to think that this would be an EXCELLENT interview question to ask job applicants. If they answer along the lines of having a “right” to use it, and it being the professor’s responsibility to spice the lecture up, then BOOM! easily identified as self-centered and believing the world must cater to them. It also indicates that they got little out of class and probably spent the past 3 years without paying close attention to much of anything that they considered “boring” or “useless.”
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March 9, 2010, 2:22 pmAnonsters says:
I have to agree with those commenters who argue that if professors want students to pay attention, perhaps they should make it worth the students’ while to pay attention. In classes where there is worthwhile discussion (i.e., it’s not pre-planned, canned, lead-you-along a single path that everyone can see for themselves, but actual engagement with students, letting the discussion go wherever it goes (within certain limits, of course)), I’m likely to pay attention and not play around on the intarwebz. Where I can get the same information or material from reading the book as the professor offers in class, you can pretty much bet I’m going to be playing on the intarwebz during class (when I actually go; sorry, professors, but if you’re providing nothing more than can be gleaned from simply doing the reading assignments, I’m not going to show up (unless you take attendance; in which case I’ll show up for the minimal number of classes I can get away with, and pay no attention to you in the process)).
The “distracting others” theme is a little silly. For the small number of students who absolutely cannot focus if there are people in front of them playing on laptops, the simple solution is to sit in the front of the class. And I’m pretty sure the number of students who absolutely cannot focus if there are people in front of them playing on laptops is small. The rest of us have grown up on and around computers. They’re not magic machines that instantly capture your undivided attention every time they’re around. We know how to deal, for the most part.
In sum, I think professors should look inward before trying to command student behavior. (Especially law professors, who as a class of people (generalizing here) are among the most narcissistic I’ve ever encountered.) Just because you’re smart, or went to a good law school, doesn’t mean you’re either (1) interesting or (2) good at teaching. If you care about teaching (and trust me, we students can tell), you’ll probably do better.
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March 9, 2010, 2:36 pmSkyler says:
Martha wrote:
I didn’t realize that my education was a collective effort.
It gets back to this: If the professor is engaging and is not wasting my time, then I’m going to pay attention.
I had one professor that was so bad (but a very sweet lady) that I would put in ear plugs and study the material on line while she spoke incoherently at the lectern. I once tried to write out what she was saying verbatim, but she rarely formed complete sentences and would side track herself before completing any idea.
And yet not only was I forced to be there, I had to pay for it too. If I didn’t have a laptop, I’d just be reading a horn book or doing a crossword puzzle.
See, you can ignore a professor with or without technology.
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March 9, 2010, 2:44 pmSkyler says:
PatHMV wrote:
Well, duh. Who ever said that lectures are the only or best way to learn anyway? Realistically, how can a professor hope to cover so much material in an hour and a half a week anyway? There is too much for it to be covered and lectures are really only a way to help the student pace himself through the material and to let the students have hints as to what among the hundreds of pages in the text book is likely to be on the exam.
If professors really want people to learn in class, they’d have more tests, more quizzes, more exercises and less yakking.
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March 9, 2010, 2:49 pmSung Alfred Sung | says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Laptops in Class Redux [...]
Anonsters says:
Yeah. They really should warn you before you go to law school that you are not, in fact, going to learn any law. You’ll do that in the first year or two of practicing.
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March 9, 2010, 3:13 pmMike Levine says:
I’m a 3L in class right now not paying full attention.
I’d welcome a laptop ban in any of my classes. I’ve gone full semesters here with nothing but a pencil and 4 subject spiral.
Unfortunately, my profs make so many references to online cases and citation checkers and their own TWEN and Blackboard posts and e-mails that it’s become virtually impossible to not bring my laptop to class.
If I was a prof, I’d ban them. None of your best students will care and all of your worst students won’t take your classes. They will facebook, itunes, etc., instead. Thank god I was of the last college students to get a true liberal arts education where little to none of my classmates used laptops in clas—this only 3 years ago.
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March 9, 2010, 3:22 pmEvilDave says:
Well, in school, I used my laptop use as a guide.
One day I realized that I had been playing a complex video game for ~30 minutes and had no clue what the professor was talking about, nor did I care.
The moral of the story I took was that I might as well “home school” that class as I wasn’t paying attention anyhow (plus if you haven’t learned how to learn by grad school, you missed something very vital).
So, I didn’t go back to that class and got my usual A/B
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March 9, 2010, 3:23 pmMartha says:
Skyler says,
I didn’t realize so many law students believe their behavior has no effect on anyone else. It’s like you think you’re watching tv, where the little people in the box can’t see what you’re doing.
Anonsters says,
Right.
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March 9, 2010, 3:24 pmEvilDave says:
And therein lies why I have so little respect for my law school.
I didn’t feel I got value-for-money and this was with my company picking up the tab.
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March 9, 2010, 3:26 pmSkyler says:
To be fair, this applies to almost all of higher education because of the tenure system. But it does seem particularly bad at law school.
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March 9, 2010, 3:29 pmASlyJD says:
If law schools really cared about preparing students for the practice of law, classes would need to look something like this:
Applied Civil Procedure — how to draft complaints, responses, settlement offers
Applied Contracts — how to draft basic purchase, service, and licensing agreements
Applied Property — how to perform title searches, perfect liens, draft sales agreements
Client Relations — how to draft client correspondence for all occasions
Bar Prep — the service provided by the BarBri, but as part of my actual 5 digit tuition bill.
Torts — instead of learning about barrels rolling out into the street in 19th century England, learn the actual tort laws of your state! What a concept.
Of course, all this would require profs who actually know this stuff and are willing to grade papers, as opposed to the graduates of Ivy League Legal Finishing School who dare not squander their research time on something as pedestrian as giving student feedback.
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March 9, 2010, 3:44 pmTed says:
Say again?
Clarity is important in legal writing.
Right after, “Are you inevitably distracted by butterflies?”
Pretty much the same argument. Oh! And it’s just like people who claim they can walk and chew gum a the same time...and then they trip and fall into a head-on collision with an innocent family of four, killing all involved.
You know, now that I think about it, maybe it’s not like any of those analogies. Maybe it’s more like some people can drive and text safely, and some people can use laptops effectively and ignore others’ use of laptops, but, we want to be as paternalistic as possible so we cater to the lowest level of competence. Yeah, it’s more like that.
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March 9, 2010, 3:54 pmUbu Walker says:
Here is an idea — engage the students with the laptops.
1) Have them download a case involving law in the schools jurisdiction during class and discuss it.
2) Have them use their laptops to answer questions during class. When you ask a hypothetical, everyone posts answers on the classes blog or directly to the professor.
3) Students who are distracted, are watching movies, browsing porn, etc., get penalized on their grades. Each time they are caught goofing off, they lose 1+(n-1)% of a point on their final grade, where n = the number of times the student is goofing off.
4) Students who positively use the laptops to find relevant cases get +1%
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March 9, 2010, 3:58 pmForex Neutrino | Market Actual-Google Market says:
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Perseus says:
And therein lies the professor’s dilemma. What to do when many students hate Powerpoint while others like it? Using animated Powerpoint, though, strikes me as pandering too much to the desire to be entertained.
As for laptops, I teach undergraduates, and while the students are legal adults, that doesn’t mean they behave like adults. So paternalistic policies like banning laptops (and jamming cell phone signals) seem appropriate.
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March 9, 2010, 4:41 pmii says:
This is a good idea, so, naturally, few law professors would ever dream of implementing it. How dare students not want to pay close attention to every irrelevant thought that comes flying out of an excruciatingly dull Administrative Law professor’s mouth without having to coax students to listen with tricks on this crazy portable technology! Besides, why innovate when you don’t have to. Just penalize students for not showing up to classes they feel they don’t need to, and then force them to jump through meaningless hoops with inefficient question and answer sessions that cause everyone who read and understands the material to zone out. If it’s not broken, law school will break it.
Somebody tackle this person before they disrupt the whole imbalance on which law professors thrive! The notion of teaching practical legal skills in traditional casebook classes is so unbelievably outrageous that if you were to actually suggest this incendiary hate speech in a law school, the professoriate would introduce you to a death by a thousand paper cuts from the sharp edges of their useless law review articles. That’ll teach you to challenge 100 years of a bad format.
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March 9, 2010, 4:43 pmPerfect Wedding | Wedding Planning says:
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Anonsters says:
Law school isn’t college.
It’s curious, isn’t it? I’ve always found the most interesting professors to be, not the ones who give you random hypos and get you to apply doctrine to new facts, but the ones who talk to you about the strategy involved in the litigation that generated the opinions you’re reading, or about the strategy you’d take in a case going forward as a result of the opinion you’re reading. The ones who actually acknowledge that law is not merely for law professors to think and write about.
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March 9, 2010, 4:55 pmJH says:
I’ve thought about buying a portable wifi jammer to take care of the facebook addicts who sit in front of me in my auditorium-style classes.
I like the idea of asking students who use laptops to sit in the back rows.
I also suggest that if a professor is concerned about laptop use, they make a simple request: When the student wants office hours, make them show their outline.
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March 9, 2010, 4:55 pmMozee says:
“When law school gets practical enough to teach someone where to file documents, how to keep track of client paperwork, and how to interact with colleagues and opposing counsel, then I’d think you might have a point. But it doesn’t.”
News for you: Professional interaction means that you listen when others are talking–the judge, the other lawyer, and in class, the professor and your colleagues. Rudeness carries a denigrating message — that what others are saying doesn’t matter. I can deal with that as a professor, but it rankles the crap out of me when a student is sharing ideas in class and a fellow student sitting within her line of vision is giggling at something on the flippin’ computer screen. Eye contact matters. If you don’t learn this in law school, you won’t learn it in practice. Some students do find your FB page/YouTube/video game flashing screen distracting; they pay the same tuition dollars as you.
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March 9, 2010, 4:57 pmAnonsters says:
Sit in the front. Problem solved.
I stopped making outlines after my first semester. Does that mean I don’t get any office hour time?
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March 9, 2010, 5:07 pmFranklin says:
To any professor considering banning laptops: get over your moral quandry and do it. Those of us who listen in class (or even legitimately use our laptops for notes) have no desire to watch our classmates browse for panties on Saks 5th Ave or view in silent a never-ending parade of espn.com pundits. Its simply inappropriate and the debate over whether stopping this constitutes paternalism has gone on for no reason for too long. My generation is incredibly disrespectful both to adults and to their peers. Questioning whether something should be banned because it seems paternalistic speaks entirely to the source of the problem — no one wants to do anything about it. Do something about it and end it.
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March 9, 2010, 5:11 pmAnonsters says:
Sit in the front. Problem solved.
And I’d suggest that depending on precisely who is browsing for panties we may or may not have a desire to watch. :D
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March 9, 2010, 5:13 pmSkyler says:
Mozee wrote:
I’m not paying some academic to teach me basic manners. My mother did that already, and I’m older than many of the professors anyway. I’m paying the academic to teach me about law. Many do a good job at this, but far too many have no idea how to teach and engage students. The ones worried about laptop use are often the ones that feel that their teaching can’t face the competition.
And I can do a crossword puzzle just as easily online or offline. But I’m more likely to be reading about what you’re supposed to be teaching me if I have a computer.
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March 9, 2010, 5:22 pmLalala says:
My own perspective may be different from many other students, but having a laptop in class was critical to my success in law school. I learn not by hearing but by seeing. Sometimes it was difficult for me to process everything that was said in class, and my remedy for that was simply to type most of what was said. That way, if there was something I didn’t follow in class, I could easily review it by looking at my notes after class. This allowed me to absorb just as much of the in-class material as other students, and I graduated near the top of my class — if laptops had not been allowed, my grades would likely have been significantly lower.
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March 9, 2010, 5:31 pmii says:
I am genuinely stunned at the inability of grown-ups to avert their eyes away from the laptops of others. It’s just crazy to me to think that there are people out there who struggle to not look at what’s going on with someone else’s laptop, as if the thing is a giant jumbotron affixed at the front of the room. It’s a tiny 15 inch screen. And all that’s on it are solitaire, Facebook/ESPN/Volokh.com/Whatever, and the occassional Gmail chat. Why do these things catch (and hold!) your attention any more than an attractive person of the opposite (or same) gender sitting next to you; or the clock on the wall; or the notes on the whiteboard that haven’t been erased from the previous class, or any number of potential distractions that abound in any given classroom in any given law school? What is it abut someone else’s Facebook that sucks you in so much? Is it really that distracting? No. Not to normal, well adjusted people. Just no. If you are so distracted by the pedestrian, unobjectionable visual content of someone else’s 15 inch screen that you can’t even concentrate on a discussion being had right in front of you, then there’s something wrong with YOU, not that person.
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March 9, 2010, 5:44 pmSkyler says:
ii has the best plan. All cute women are hereby and forthwith banned from all law school classes for their tendency for passive disruption of the class.
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March 9, 2010, 5:49 pmAnonsters says:
Then I quit.
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March 9, 2010, 5:52 pmMartha says:
Anonsters: “Law school isn’t college.”
Apparently a distinction without a difference.
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March 9, 2010, 5:55 pmFranklin says:
I would disagree. The human body is wired to be attracted to moving objects. For example, our inability to avert our eyes is part of the basis for epileptic seizures. Its not the static image that creates a distraction, its a moving image that causes the problem. Its not quite the same as the people complaining about howard stern but not turning the radio off. The eye is a complicated mechanism, so when things move in front of it, it instinctualy finds it. Thus, this is the reason why people scrolling through computer screens are a distraction for others. A static screen of gchat is actually fine. Its the perez hilton girl who creates the problem-she might as well have a television on.
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March 9, 2010, 6:01 pmKullervo says:
Well... you could have gotten the same effect by writing it out with a pencil or a pen, couldn’t you?
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March 9, 2010, 6:25 pmFlagler Beach Attractions says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Laptops in Class Redux [...]
jcm says:
Do you ban also BB and Iphones?
In the older times most student did the same with paper and pencil , they were were “typing ( writing) a lecture verbatim without listening or understanding.”
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March 9, 2010, 7:17 pmDiet and Heart Disease | Herbal Cures says:
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Ted says:
That might be all that’s on your laptop. But you have a boring laptop. Others apparently have Pr0n, video games, and lingerie sites up during class. Much more entertaining, if not downright creepy and illegal. Still genuinely stunned?
Shouldn’t we be focusing on what prepares students to be lawyers? Sure, professors could ban laptops, or introduce any number of other restrictions in the name of curbing distractions. But isn’t distraction part of practicing law? I mean, a judge might limit the distractions in a court room, but who has the authority to do so in a deposition, or a negotiation, or a client meeting, or a committee, or a Continuing Legal Education seminar, or even just day-to-day operations in law office?
You don’t train lawyers to be professional and courteous by artificially removing their options to be anything else. You train them to professional and courteous by teaching them the reasons to do so, if there are any. IMHO, there still are. For one, it makes the day-to-day interactions in the legal field a hell of a lot more pleasant, probably for everyone involved.
In the law school context, is calling people out on their obvious unprofessionalism still effective? It was at my school, because people didn’t like any negative attention that might taint their $100k degree. If professionalism is out of vogue with the young’uns, what about docking grades for inappropriate laptop use? Students still want good grades, right? I realize professors abhor classroom micro-management, but the trade-off seems worth it. Particularly when the proposed alternative — banning laptops — would work harm on “innocent” laptop users, like Lalala.
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March 9, 2010, 7:47 pmpublic_defender says:
If in doubt, experiment. See how it works. If class functions better, then continue the ban. If not, bring the laptops back. The distraction problem will depend a lot on you, your students, and your classroom. So you won’t know until you try.
The comments from some about how much harder it is to take notes by hand is another reason to ban laptops from your class. Any lawyer who can’t take good notes by hand will be seriously handicapped in at least some meetings and some courtrooms.
I’m not saying every professor should ban laptops, but some should.
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March 9, 2010, 8:29 pmLalala says:
Can’t write 90wpm.
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olive says:
Hello,
It’s very nice post
Shouldn’t we be focusing on what prepares students to be lawyers? Sure, professors could ban laptops, or introduce any number of other restrictions in the name of curbing distractions. But isn’t distraction part of practicing law? I mean, a judge might limit the distractions in a court room, but who has the authority to do so in a deposition, or a negotiation, or a client meeting, or a committee, or a Continuing Legal Education seminar, or even just day-to-day operations in law office?
Thanks for this kind information
Olive
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JC says:
I’m a 2L at a midwestern law school, and apparently I’m the only law student of my generation that doesn’t use a laptop to take notes in class. (Not strictly true, I know of maybe three others at my school) I don’t find that the laptops of other students offer up much of a distraction, usually because what they’re looking at is incredibly boring. (Facebook/Email) If people want to play games and surf the internet during class, that is their decision to not take advantage of class time. It doesn’t affect my class experience in the slightest.
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me says:
Let’s treat the students like big boys and big girls. They paid their money, let them get their services. Those who choose to goof off can face the consequences of their actions on test day. Just like I don’t need the government saving me from myself, I don’t need this laptop rule saving me from myself.
Those of us who do pay attention will be richly rewarded.
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March 12, 2010, 2:51 amJack B. Nimble says:
I’m with this guy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5w-7IpI0fI&feature=related
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March 17, 2010, 5:38 pmColin Purrington says:
If you’re interested, I found your page while researching the topic...and decided to collate some thoughts:
http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/laptops.htm
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July 29, 2010, 1:58 pm