Here's a message I sent out to my students a few weeks before the start of class about this. When the semester is done, I'll ask my students to fill out an anonymous survey, and I'll report both on that and on my personal conclusions. I don't know what the result will be (though I have my hopes and my guesses), but that's why it's an experiment.
Dear [Students]:
I'm very much looking forward to our class this Fall. As you know, law school classes — much more so than most large undergraduate classes — rely on class participation. I don't grade students' in-class comments, chiefly because I'm a big believer in fully anonymous grading. But I would like to see more and better class participation, because it helps both the participant and the other students learn, and because it makes the class more interesting for the students (and for me).
Because of this, this semester we'll be conducting an experiment: The rule will be
(1) no laptops in class — that's no laptops, not just no Internet access — but
(2) one student per day will take notes [on a laptop,] which will then be circulated to the entire class.
Several law professors at other schools, including some I know well and trust, have conducted such an experiment, and report that they have gotten great results. Class discussion, they say, is much better. Students are less distracted, both by things on their own laptops and on their neighbors'. Students don't feel pressured to take verbatim notes (since that's very hard to do in longhand on notepads), and instead focus on identifying the important points and tying them together. Students are therefore listening more actively, and are more ready to discuss things and answer questions.
Also, most of the other professors report, anonymous surveys at the end of the semester show that most students like this system more than the normal laptops-OK rule. (The few exceptions report that students are on balance indifferent to this new system.) So it sounds like a win-win, which is why I decided to try it here as well.
After the semester is over, I will ask you folks to anonymously report back on the results; you will then also be able to compare your in-class experience in this course with your in-class experience in the other courses, which to the best of my knowledge aren't conducting this experiment. While obviously the different subject matters might be a confounding factor, I think that on balance the survey will likely yield useful information. Armed with it, I'll know whether to keep on this track in future classes, or to switch back to the laptops-OK rule. And my colleagues might be able to take advantage of the results as well.
In any case, I wanted to give you some advanced warning, so that when class starts next Wednesday (August 20), you'll
(1) know what will happen,
(2) know that you need to bring a notepad and a pen (I found the four-color pens to be especially useful when I was a student), and
(3) know that you could leave your laptops in your lockers and save some back strain.
I'd also like volunteers to take notes for that class and the classes the following week; I'll soon have a more formal system set up for that. A special bonus for the volunteer notetaker: You won't get called on that day or the following class day. So please e-mail me if you'd like to volunteer. I in turn will e-mail all of you the syllabus in a couple of days.
Again, looking forward to seeing all of you next week,
Eugene
Related Posts (on one page):
- Class Discussion:
- Libertarianism and Actions Within Institutions:
- Experiment with a No-Laptop Policy for Class:
Then again, maybe I am overthinking this.
and
Are directly contradictory.
This is why it won't work. Some disabilities require laptops. So then do you make an exception, or just allow them all.
I say allow them all.
And frankly, for a libertarian, its funny how quickly "libertarian" professors turn into an authoritarian on this. If students want to check drudge, shop, or god forbid, visit your site, what is it your business? Really.
Usually, I sat right in the front -- the better to pay attention. Occasionally, if I arrived late, I would sit in the back. Yes, when sitting in the back, I saw some students playing card games on their computers, or sending email, or generally surfing the 'net.
HOWEVER, in my case, I used my computer for everything from quickly checking a case that a professor might mention, to looking up the meaning of a word. I am convinced that my computer and instant 'net access were the only things that allowed me to stay even with the rest of the class. I am seriously dyslexic, and I read slowly so more than once I had not completed all of the readings. However, with my computer and the 'net as a crutch, I was able to understand what was being discussed in class.
I would recommend not making a stint as designated note-taker mandatory, however. I was not good at taking notes in school and would not want to impose my notes on anybody, nor bear the responsibility of being the sole note-taker for the class. The class would probably get very mad at me if my notes were the only ones available for a given day.
This policy only makes sense for optional classes, as opposed to the mandatory first year classes.
The problem with using it for the first year classes is (1) each student is at the mercy of whomever the notetaker is and whatever they think is relevant (not to mention their note-taking style), and (2) the student's grades for first year classes have an undue influence on their legal career, as their first year grades affect whether they will make law review, whether they get a job after the first year, etc. Plus they are in effect curved against other sections of the law school taking the same class but with different note-taking rules, unless you are the only one teaching this class and/or the same rule applies to everyone taking the class.
You are making your students into Guinea pigs, and if the experiment fails, the consequences will fall mainly on them.
On the other hand, after the first year, this policy would make sense, since students who don't like it can opt not to take your class, and grades matter less (especially in the third year), so the consequences of the experiment failing are minimized.
And that's leaving aside the issue of the distractions such computer playing cause to other students who may be trying to focus.
Finally, I'd point out that ABA accreditation standards require that students attend a certain percentage of scheduled class hours. That standard may be technically met with the student's physical presence but mental absence, but the spirit is certainly violated.
Dissenter, Professor Volokh's goal of broad class participation and his grading policy are not contradictory, let alone directly contradictory. Because he wants something, doesn't necessarily mean that he must grade based on its presence. Still, I perceive the underlying tension that you're getting at, and I really think that legal academia needs to reconsider basing an entire grade on a single 3-4 hour performance.
I don't find the two statements contradictory at all. The in-class discussion doesn't count BUT the class is much more useful if all students participate.
Though it has been some time since I was in law school, I do teach undergradute courses on a part-time basis. My experience is that students who are engrossed in their laptops are not engrossed in the class.
Arkady,
I understand and feel your pain. I remember taking copious, copious notes in class--and then at the end of the semester typing them out as part of my final exam prep. I remember having a highlighter, multi-color pens, and steno-notebooks to get by. The horror of not having a laptop, a cellphone, and immediate Westlaw access still causes nightmares.
Spoken like someone who hasn't been in law school for a long time. (Or, possibly, is a professor). Grades are EXTREMELY important for all law students at a school not named "Harvard."
It's simple psychology -- if you want your students to act in a certain way, reward them for it. So if you want your students to talk up in class, make that part of their grade. By saying that the final written exam is 100% of the grade, you're telling your students that the exam is the only thing that really matters.
The externalities of laptop use are overblown by students with limited attention-spans who are incapable of ignoring a neighbor's Freecell game. (I also note that most of the professors who have implemented such policies attended law school before laptops became pervasive, and so the assertion that laptops are distracting is based on hearsay - and so particularly dubious.)
Learning to organize and synthesize information is part of the learning process, and banning people from taking their own notes is just counterproductive. It exalts class discussion at the expense of every other skill to be mastered.
I am not a law professor--just a prosecutor who teaches college classes on an occassional basis to earn some extra money. My experience is that laptops are distracting for both myself and my students. I do not ban them--but I certainly understand why EV is.
It's true I was never much motivated by grades in law school (or undergraduate college, for that matter), because I preferred to focus on actually comprehending was going on, rather than figuring out how to regurgitate a desired answer on a test. It's also true that I think I'm a much better practical lawyer today than a great many people who made much higher grades than I did, because I actually made sure I understood the fundamentals.
But there remains nothing contradictory, even in the sense I now understood you to have used the word, about Prof. Volokh's grading practices. In the practice of law, one doesn't often get very immediate reinforcement. The judge doesn't give you treats for good trial prep along the way; your grade comes only at the end with the jury verdict. It's entirely appropriate for a law professor, then, to also teach delayed gratification, explaining what needs to be done to maximize the chances for a good grade on the exam, and then grading (judging) only the performance on that exam.
I also don't agree with the no-laptops policy, but EV's the professor and I suppose it's his right. Just don't turn into an authoritarian in class, please.
This view is incorrect, but frustratingly pervasive. Students do not pay for the faculty "to actually teach them something." Students are paying for the right to attend school and receive the resulting credential. Whether the student chooses to learn anything along the way should be entirely the choice of the student. And there is nothing about one student's laptop use that prevents another student from learning something (unless the latter student suffers from an inability to focus.) And, to the extent that one's fellow students cannot focus, it is not clear why the student who prefers to use his laptop should be forced to subsidize the student who can't pay attention. If anything, the student who can't pay attention should be made to pay the student who wishes to use his laptop. (There's an experiment for you, Eugene - auction the right to learn in silence.)
And I don't necessarily think that class participation is good or bad by itself. Some people need to talk and argue to learn, some people learn better by reading or listening. But that's a nebulous and unmeasurable concept. From the only perspective of the only metric you can measure - grades - the prof is misleading his students.
I do agree that Prof. Volokh's no laptop rule is probably a good one; I used a laptop throughout law school and don't think that it added much other than distracting me when I was bored.
The prof isnt there to dispense grades, he's there to teach, and he should be in control of the environment in which he attempts to do that.
Don't like the rules? Take the course from someone else.
It was a valuable experience. Taking and preparing notes for wide distribution is a valuable skill in and of itself, and requires much deeper understanding of the material than literally jotting down whatever the professor says.
And of course, if only one or two students are relegated to the task, it frees up everyone else to participate in the dialog.
As for the concern that not everyone takes notes equally well:
Another benefit to selecting two students is that the probability of truly bad notes goes way down (assuming that bad note-taking is sufficiently rare)
Having the notes reviewed by the professor will give a heads up if the material was not properly recorded.
And comparing this approach to having the professor prepare the notes: not every professor possesses great skills at written communication, so if the class has some decent writers, you'll actually come out ahead.
I've never ended up teaching, but I remember remarking to myself at the time that if I were to teach, I would use the same approach. I think it worked well.
It is patronizing both because any given student, and not the teacher, is the best judge of how that student learns best; and because neither the professor nor the school has a right to force the student to learn at all. If the student chooses not to learn, the school has an obvious remedy; and so be it.
Law school professors are strangely cagey about how they grade exams. Nearly all professors pay lip service to the idea that they prefer short, well-reasoned exams to long, rambling exams; but in practice, the students I know who did well were also the students who wrote the most.
The professor who motivated me most in law school would randomly call on two or three people in each class and stick with each of them for 20 or more minutes. Being unprepared never excused students from answering - it just meant that they would be embarrassed for 20 minutes.
If you think a student is distracted by their computer (or anything else for that matter), call on them more often.
As a person who took horrible handwritten notes (I was exceedingly slow), relied on a laptop, and participated often, this policy would have upset me greatly.
That is the opposite of what I'm saying. I think it's a great idea to fail students who try to receive credentials without learning.
If all you care about is your grade, then you may be right, but what are you doing in law school? There are better ways to make money if you're not that interested in the law.
Sorry, misinterpreted his email. Makes a lot more sense to me now.
Agreed. If the grade is determined 100% by the exam, then nothing else should matter. If EV is correct that students learn better without laptops, then students who voluntarily dispense with laptops will get better grades. Hell, if students don't want to attend class, why should they have to (ABA rules aside)? A 100% exam class should mean what it says.
Laptops aren't disruptive to the other students, so there's no reason to ban them outright.
I was a student BL (before laptops), and found that taking good notes was a distraction from listening, but that if I didn't, I would miss important things. I experimented with a combination of audiotaping and taking still photos of the blackboard from time to time, but never had time to go back and review them. I most appreciated instructors who published notes produced by a competent grad student who was paid to do it, with the instructor correcting his draft to get the final version. That would have been easier if the grad student had been able to videotape the session, and today the tape could be distributed to students who might have missed classes. Richard Feynman did that, and produced his Lectures in Physics from it.
Laptops, and now handhelds, serve many purposes that the students might not want to relinquish, such as checking class schedules and updates, lab results, and a host of real time events that have become a part of the university environment. Professors intervene in that environment at some risk.
To reiterate what PatHMV said: it's not just about you.
Is there a hard copy version of W.O.W. that we can play?
Personally, when possible I don't allow internet access in classrooms. I've never taken a position on use of laptops without internet access.
Students were still free to take their own notes. Honestly, I used this method because I just completed my first year on the tenure track, and was usually preparing my lectures all the way up into I gave them, and my notes were a mess. This way, I got a set of very clean notes at the end of each lecture.
The students actually really liked meeting with me one-on-one to discuss the notes... The class was small (only 9 students) so I rotated through the students fairly often, and got great feed-back on how they digesting the material long before the eventual final exam.
If you laptop-addicts can tolerate no other reason for banning laptops, consider this. As a lawyer, there will be many times in your career where your behavior is under the rigid control of others for hours, days, even weeks on end. When you're sitting at counsel table, if the judge says "no laptops while court is in session," you have zero choice but to comply, and no appellate court is going to interfere with the sound discretion of the trial court in such matters. Even if it's not laptops, there's undoubtedly going to be some other rule of decorum under which you chafe, but which you will have to accept, because it's a judge setting the tenor in his own courtroom. Consider this one class to be practice in the essential art of submission to lawful higher authority.
Even assuming that there are positive externalities from participation, a flat ban on laptops is an inefficient means of achieving those gains. Students will recognize that group participation is welfare-enhancing and so will participate.
To the extent that there is a collective action problem, a ban alone is unlikely to do the trick. Class participation is a highly imperfect substitute for Internet surfing; better substitutes include, among other things, reading magazines, drawing, giving stupid answers to the professor's questions, or skipping altogether. So, unless Eugene intends to force students to participate, whatever positive externalities exist are unlikely to be realized simply through a ban.
I really think you should have given more notice, especially before such an "experiement." I don't know if it was practical or not, but perhaps it would have been better to circulate such an email during class signups--not a few weeks before classes begin.
I never said that "all I care about was my grade" or that I didn't enjoy the study of law as an academic pursuit. But I often get the vibe that people on this website - most of whom went to top ten law schools - have the idea that all law grads have a $150K a year job guaranteed for them upon graduation. Coming from a state school, I can assure you that's not true. And I knew that when I interviewed with firms, it was better to be the guy with "Order of the Coif" on his resume than the guy who says, "True, my GPA is low, but I learned so much more than those pedants who only cared about their final grade."
This is only true for certain classes. Eugene, in which class are you mandating your commie-pinko preferences?
Edit: "Students will recognize that group participation is welfare-enhancing and so will participate until the marginal costs exceed the benefits." Which I expect will happen pretty quick.
Talk about guinea pigs.
You also ignore the fact that laptops are an attractive nuisance. Students may well be willing to participate, but with so many alternatives provided by a laptop may be readily distracted. Removing the laptop doesn't force constructive participation, but removes an impediment to it.
(Of course, there were some classes where one came prepared with a magazine, but we can all be certain that E.V. isn't that boring professor who's been teaching the same class for 30 years and is just going through the motions.)
Yes, but the results of their experiment will fall on them, so let them try it if they think it will work. The problem with EV's experiment is that the effects of it fall on others, and those others have no choice in the matter (unless this policy is only used for optional classes).
That rule will apply to all counsel, including opposing counsel, so everyone is at least playing by the same rules. EV's rules apply only to his classes, so students fortunate or unfortunate to take other professors for the same class will be under a different rule -- but they are all under the same grading curve. It is as though the judge let the plaintiff's counsel use a laptop, but not the defendant's counsel, or vice-versa.
Either the rule should be the same for everyone taking a certain class (contracts, for example) regardless of professor, or it should only apply for optional classes.
I am with you in theory, and think that is the best justification for Eugene's rule. But I don't think the data backs this up. I could be wrong, but my sense is that most people who use laptops for purposes other than learning are doing so because they just don't care, and not because they're distracted against their better judgment.
Sometimes strict control by an authority figure is necessary. Judges, military officers, etc. fall into that category. If I ever felt the need to practice such submission, I'd move to Beijing, not UCLA.
Sheesh. To read some of these comments, you'd think E.V. was proposing to force students to memorize the class in iambic pentameter. Students have taken notes by hand for a very long time.
The curve is applied section by section. The students in the no-laptop section will all take the same exam and compete only against each other. Who's disadvantaged?
I went to a second-tier law school and did very well (Order of the Coif, Law Review). I went to a very good (an Ivy reject school) undergrad institution and did very poorly.
There are two big reasons for the difference: maturity and my laptop.
The former requires no explanation. The latter, naturally, does. I learn better when the class moves faster, and I obviously can't control for that. So instead, I fill the dead time when the professor goes off on an uninteresting tangent and/or when a student's question meanders. FreeCell and Spider Solitare, sure, but more heavy games as well.
NB that my school did not have wifi access in the classroom, which was probably a good thing for me. But in the end: different people learn differently, and taking away my "distraction" would have just lead my mind to wander.
This bears repeating 1000 times. Eugene knows how competitive law school is. If having a laptop in class makes the difference between taking notes that net the student an A- at the end of the term instead of a B, that's a huge deal.
Students should be allowed to take notes in whatever manner works for them, as long as it doesn't distract students around them. I'm fine with a no-Internet rule, because having someone surf the Internet in front of you is distracting. But banning laptops is just going to put students who do better with laptops at an unnecessary disadvantage.
Some students may learn better without laptops. Some may learn better with laptops. In a typical class, students can make that decision themselves and (presumably) make a rational choice. In EV's class, a student who learns better with a laptop is disadvantaged compared to an identical student in a different section.
EV is taking that choice away from students, and a lot of us are very skeptical whenever that sort of action occurs.
You make a valid point. But for the record, it would totally rule if anyone could memorize a class that way.
I also agree that note taking should not be verbatim, and that laptops tend to encourage unfiltered notes. My outlining process for final exams started the moment the words came from the professor's lips. I organized everything into bullet-point lists as they lectured, placed headings and subheadings on the page as they switched topics, and filled the pages with arrows relating topics back to previous ones, etc. When it came time to do the concise 15-page outlines I always made at the end of the year, my class notes already had the wheat separated from the chaff and had the topics somewhat organized, so that writing the outline became a part of the studying and not just preparation for it.
If 2/3 of your classmates used laptops and spent much of their time fooling around, isn't that a good thing for you? That should put you ahead of the curve.
So what's your incentive to ban laptops and prevent those people from sinking their own ship? Unless, of course, some people learn BETTER with laptops, and a good hand-notetaker has an advantage if laptops are removed. Hmm...
EV's Con Law II (Free Speech) textbook already provides an outline which serves as a veritable set of preprinted notes (as one commenter suggested he might provide). I found it to be quite good. You don't really need thorough notes in this class, because the ball is not hidden. He uses the classes as practice using the material, not as the primary forum in which to reveal the material (you get that from the cases and from his outlines synthesizing the cases).
Though I don't think it matters much, my only concern is whom to trust with the task of notes typer. I don't think I'd be comfortable having that one person be responsible for getting everything done. And what pressure for that poor student!
Thought! Is EV's new method subtly communist? Having the single typist seems like a tacit admission that laptop notetaking is ultimately better for the individual student. EV's plan seems to be to diminish each individual's capacity to record information (by robbing them of their laptop) for the sake of the group discussion.
If people think taking notes is a good idea, there is no reasonable argument why someone should not be able to take them on a laptop with no internet capability.
That's a different question. Read jgshapiro's comment for what I was responding to. But to your point, when laptops are allowed, those who are distracted by them are disadvantaged. Every environment has conditions more or less amenable to some than others. EV is just trying an alternative to find out what's most conducive to classroom participation.
I don't think it's a different question. In the end, the students in EV's section will be compared to the students in other sections who were allowed to use laptops. Sure, environments always differ, but here EV is throwing in another variable with little warning and no ability to opt out. In a forced-curve zero-sum atmosphere, that's going to affect the outcomes somewhat.
How? Certainly not in determining the grade for this class?
1. Everyone takes notes differently. I almost always hated trying to read someone else's notes. First of all, they thought different things were important than I did. Secondly, for me at least, someone else's notes are meaningless. Only MY notes usefully remind me of what we were talking about at that moment.
2. The teacher was excruciatingly uninteresting. The classes were 90-minute vanity rants on things he liked to think about. I think he showed very little respect for the students needs, for one thing, with that lesson plan, but also, it was death to not have a distraction. I would either cut class or pass notes to my friends the old fashioned way. I merely resented him more and still did not participate. Or worse, I would skip because I couldn't face an hour and a half of his noodling about things only interesting to him.
Final point: I often did choose to take paper notes rather than laptop notes because it was easier for me to pay attention and less distracting. One thing professors don't like to hear is that it's not just the lazy, ungrateful students' fault for bringing laptops and not hanging on their every word. Sometimes it is the professor's lack of preparation, planning, and good teaching.
Jody Freeman, in contrast, was one of the best profs I had, and I think she banned laptops. I can't really remember though, because everyone participated anyway. She was engaging and relevant.
If I ever browsed the interweb with a glazed look in my eye hour after hour, it was, to me, a teacher evaluation.
As for the people who are being "forced" to use someone else’s note, just take your own, or is that not a skill that students have anymore? If you want them in your computer and not a notebook re-type them when you get home, this is probably a good learning exercise as well.
I have actually found that the ability to take good hand written notes at work is a very valuable skill. No meetings I go to have anyone sitting at the table typing, they are discussing the issue, and often my notes are the only ones that come out of the meeting.
whiningcomments above, I suggest you resign from your position. You can then spend your time petitioning the State of California to close UCLA's Law School. After that, all law schools.It's quite clear that the purpose of schools and law schools has been subverted by an egocentricity that can only bring smiles to the dead mouths of Derrida and Lacan.
The lawyers don't have to be killed, just put out of work....
Also, I handwrote notes for one semester and used the laptop each other semester. When handwriting, I wrote too slow and often failed to accurately record important points. Notwithstanding the distractive allure of the internet, I found that my understanding of the material was greater in scope and depth when typing notes in class.
I also tend to discount the argument that nontypists are distracted by the flickering screens of internet browing and game playing layabouts. When I handwrote, I was either looking at the professor, my notes or out the window.
Obviously, YMMV.
That said, I am opposed to this policy.
I feel that other students surfing Facebook and IM'ing one another makes them learn less. This, in turn, allows me to have better performance on the end of term examination than them. If there were no laptops, their performance might improve and mine might suffer.
As a result, for self-interested reasons, I oppose this policy.
If the comments here were remotely representative of the lawyers I know, I'd agree. They're not and I don't.
The problem is if you have wi-fi and games and 95 percent of the class using laptops, I can very much see Professor Volokh's point that it could interfere with the class. And frankly, if I had been told to leave my laptop at home, I would have been able to do fine in law school relying on ordinary notes.
"just recently"?
You should know better.
At this late date, the student who disagrees with being a participant in EV's pedagogical experiment will incur significant transactional costs in declining to do so. At the least, they will have to shuffle their schedules in order to take courses from professors with less draconian restrictions on technology. At worst, they would have to move their domicile and go to another law school (or abandon their legal career altogether, and you can be sure that the school will not be refunding any tuition already paid!)
I'm hardly assuming that a class discussion run by EV would be boring; I certainly don't find his blog boring. At the same time, some students might disagree, and attempting to augment the class discussion by encouraging participation by the bored and easily distracted does not sound like a winning strategy to me. ;p
If anything, it is a one transcriber policy.
The good Professor specifically told his students to bring a pad of paper and a pen. What do you think that was for?
I am an indifferent notetaker. I am primarily an auditory learner. I used a notepad to jot down key references and ideas, but never attempted to transcribe everything that happened in a class.
Having someone else transcribe the whole lecture so that I can pay attention to what is being said would be a dream come true. Then I would have something to reference my handwritten notes too when I was studying later.
BTW, I've been a programmer/network professional for over 20 years. When I go to meetings, I still just bring a pen and pad of paper to take notes on, unless there is something on my computer that is absolutely essential for the meeting.
Beyond that, I really can't imagine how distracting it must be as a professor. I've never considered a career in academia, so this hadn't occured to me until just now, but if I were giving a lecture and I had to stare out at 50, or 500, open laptops instead of the students' faces, I'd lost my mind. There's no doubt I'd ban laptops.
I have to respond to this. I'm like the last guy to defend everything that is taught on in law schools, but "pedogogical experimentation" could also be labeled "academic freedom". That's right, every time a student sits down, he or she is a guinea pig for whatever methodology the professor wishes to use to convey the curriculum.
I had some professors (including a very popular one who has gone on to great success since leaving the law school I went to) who just read their outlines in class. I had some who were sort of vaguely Socratic. I had some who were so Socratic that Professor Kingsfield would have found them too strict. And I had at least one who used a teaching methodology so far out in left field that I don't even know that I could describe it here.
I happened to learn from all of them. Some students hated some of them and avoided their classes when they could.
But Professor Volokh has the right to teach his material any damned way he well pleases to, as long as he covers the topics the university wants him to cover. In this sense, the students don't have a say (except by negatively evaluating him which could theoretically affect his teaching methods in the future).
Perhaps if Eugene provided the notes for the students rather than having a student take them, it would be more fair, since they wouldn't be dependent upon another student's typed notes?
Ergo, there's no need for any of his students to fret about using someone else's notes. If they don't like the computer generated notes from one of their colleagues, don't use 'em.(??)
In the end, I suspect this experiment will prove little as good notetakers will probably be good notetakers....regardless of the tools at their disposal. And those who may attempt to shrink from participation by looking busy behind their laptop screens will find other ways to not participate.
In my law school classes, very few people were taking notes most of the time. When the professor actually said something useful, though, everyone would start tapping away. This was great if your attention had been wandering -- the typing noises were an excellent signal that you should start paying attention again. (The rest of the time you just heard mouse clicks from people playing solitaire and free cell.)
I assume Professor Volokh wishes to have all of his students perform and learn to the best of their abilities. So this line of argument - while rational from a student's perspective - isn't really relevant.
This style of notetaking is very difficult to do by hand because you can't just insert lines when you come back to a new topic. The few times I have taken notes by hand, I get messy disasters with arrows all over the place, and I have to spend a long time trying to recreate them into an outline at the end of the class.
I don't think this style is that rare, either. At least half the time when I borrow a fellow student's notes, they have used a similar outline style. That is the power of computer note taking. I know some people just transcribe what is said, but that is their choice. It is also each student's choice whether to spend class time buying shoes or playing games. I prefer to be given the freedom to make such choices.
If you want students to pay attention more closely, just cold call at random and refuse to let students immediately pass. Students should be embarrassed for not being prepared. Students sit in class now and play games because there are no consequences except the need to spend more time studying later.
(1) My main reason for using a laptop? Because I find taking notes by hand physically painful. Throughout undergrad, I felt that I did worse on three-hour exams simply because my hand would cramp up and become useless after only an hour. Laptops make it much easier to focus on the class rather than focus on the amount of pain I'm feeling.
And yes, I did see a doctor about it. His suggestion was that I re-learn how to handwrite. Not very useful.
(2) I can't understand the criticism of "verbatim" note taking. Yes, my style of notes is to write down verbatim what the professor is saying during straight lecture. But, so what? I participated in all my classes, and my note-taking style worked for me. In fact, there were many times when I couldn't comprehend what the professor said during the lecture (even upon repeatedly asking questions and/or approaching the professor after class), but upon reviewing my notes weeks later in view of the semester as a whole, everything suddenly made sense. And, if I hadn't been copying it verbatim, I would have missed a subtle point (many of which came up on final exams).
If this is my learning style, why not let me choose to do what works best for me?
Obviously, when I missed a class, I would "borrow" somebody else's notes from that day's class. For one class, I borrowed notes from two friends. After reviewing their notes, I remember thinking how absolutely horrible they were -- few details, incomprehensible, etc.
At the end of the year, all three of us -- including me and the authors of the horrible notes -- had GPAs at the top of our class.
The moral of the story? Notes are a very personal thing; what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another.
It's also worth noting (no pub intended) that although I tend to copy professors' words verbatim, I also annotate my notes with my own thoughts throughout. This lets me think through what the professor is saying and record my disagreements or confusion for later review. It would be almost impossible to do this by hand or with somebody else's notes.
On the other hand, if a class is primarily about learning how to think, rather than assimilating simple information, there's no particular advantage to note-taking at all. I had no trouble following along and getting the correct answers when I sat in on second-year law classes my mom was in a few years ago, and all I had to help me was the casebook. Of course, most of the people in that classroom were ignoring the discussion completely, because some blowhard in the back had decided to go on a completely unrelated tangent. It sort of made me re-think the value of law school, actually.
I might, but I choose whom I get notes from, when I need them, quite carefully.
I like it best when the professor hands out his own notes or learning points. I don't see the point in keeping things secret. You still have to learn it even if it is already on a paper for you, with professor supplied notes you're more likely to learn the subtleties that you might miss in class. Law school is supposed to have a lot of nuance and subtlety so it's natural that you won't catch them all when they are exclusively imparted orally. The important thing is to learn, not play "I've got a secret" with your students.
This seems like a good compromise.
My advice:
* Don't call it an "experiment." If you think the laptop ban will benefit this class, ban the laptops. You can reflect later on whether the ban was as useful as you expected. Telling students that you're experimenting on them will just upset them. Every revision you make to the class is in a sense this same "experiment."
* "Advanced" warning, as opposed to those "beginner" level warnings? :) I think you mean "advance warning." (if I may indulge a peeve)
* I usually distribute the outline I use to teach from. Students can annotate that pretty easily, and it is handy when students return after an absence to ask, "Did I miss anything?"
Assigning one student each class to take "official" notes for the class to share with everyone: Fine.
Not letting students take their own notes: Absolutely terrible idea. I urged you NOT to do this.
Have the professors who've already run this experiment seen any improvement in exam quality? That seems a better indicator of the usefulness of a laptop ban.
The best measure of whether students learn more without laptops is not whether they're participating more in class discussion, but whether they do better on the final exams. Exams are also the way most students measure their learning; if class discussion increases but test scores decrease, would your policy really help students? I doubt the students would think so.
By the way, were the no-laptop student surveys taken before or after grades had been reported?
Some of the justifications for a no-laptop policy are pretty weak. They seem to boil down to these:
(1) With laptops, students spend more time transcribing and less time thinking. Maybe so. The question is whether transcribing is really as bad as people think. Come exam time, it can be helpful to have a lot of detail recorded—details that would be lost by some students who had to take notes manually.
(2) Students with laptops are too easily distracted. So are students without laptops. Anyway, a student bears the risk of his choice. There's some merit to the argument that students with laptops distract other students, but I think those effects are overstated.
(3) Removing laptops increases class participation. That's probably true. But the same objective can be achieved through less drastic means. Call on students directly. Don't let them off with a "pass." Push the discussion. Do you think something as trivial as a laptop would keep Prof. Kingsfield from grilling a student? Maybe some of the lack of participation isn't just laptops, but the decline of the old-school Socratic method. At any rate, class participation isn't the ultimate goal; learning is (or grades). Class participation is only valuable if it improves learning.
(4) "I made it through law school without a laptop, these kids can too." Nonsense. By this logic, any technology invented since the first law degree was granted is pointless. After all, if Aaron Burr could learn law in the one-room Litchfield school in 1774, why should the modern student need anything more? The question in evaluating a new tool is not whether people were able to do without it, it's whether the tool is useful.
(5) Banning laptops makes class more interesting for the students. Two responses here: (a) not all students think classes with more discussion are actually more interesting, and (b) the point of school is not entertainment, it's education. I don't want to be bored, but I'd rather be bored and learn than get empty entertainment.
(6) Banning laptops makes class more interesting for the professor. Irrelevant. I don't care if the professor is entertained. I do a lot of work that isn't entertaining; that's why they have to pay me to do it.
The real question is: if taking classes without laptops is so much better for the student than using a laptop, why don't all the students eschew laptops? Law students are pretty focused on grades, and if they know that students who don't use laptops get better grades then those who do, your classrooms would all be keyboard-free. That students cling to laptops suggests that (a) students are irrational, (b) laptop users don't actually score worse than students who don't use laptops, or (c) laptop users do score worse, but they don't find that out until too late because they don't get any feedback until that all-important final exam. Although (a) is a distinct possibility, both (b) and (c) deserve testing before implementing a laptop ban. Unfortunately, your experiment won't test either of those, because everyone will be without a laptop. There's no control group.
Laptop bans are paternalistic and patronizing. They reflect an "I know what's best for you, so do as your told" mentality that's ill-suited to a professional school filled with adults, each of whom are capable of making their own decisions regarding their study methods. Blanket bans ignore—or just don't care about—the fact that people learn in different ways. Some do better with laptops. Some do better without. Do you really know each of your students well enough to say that you know better than they do how they should learn?
Students do almost all of their learning outside the classroom. They attend class to make sure they don't miss something important. As long as class is just standard discussion and not seemingly important, then students will use laptops to stay entertained (or to multitask) while they wait for one or two moments in each class when something important happens.
I read #2 as saying only one student in the class "will" take notes for the entire class and others therefore would be banned from taking notes at all. If he's saying that one student gets to take laptop notes and everyone else can take notes by hand, fine.
Two (huge) advantages to typing (at least for me):
1. I took down most everything the professor said, and found - usually one class per semester - that questions on the final would include some throwaway comment by the prof. that, thankfully, made its way into my outline; and
2. during 2L and 3L year, I structured my class notes so that they would go almost directly into my outline with minimal reformatting.
I didn't want to do the verbatim note thing, nor miss out on what could be (and what had proved to be) useful comments, so I always included a section of "Notes" with bullet points of the prof's comments.
The one drawback to handwriting is the sheer tedium of typing up what is already very neat ("[theo] font", as my friends call it) and organised.
Maybe the school/professor should be more interested in improving the product it/he/she is selling to earn the wanted attention than to punish the consumer by attempting to remove more tempting fare.
P.S. There will be a lot of texting and, of course, iphone/blackberry browsing.
I've had professors who attempted to invoke this kind of policy. What typically happens is that, while discussion will improve somewhat, the professors really aren't prepared to engage their students on a higher level. This ends up being extremely frustrating for those students who take the policy seriously and attempt to bring classroom discussion to the next level.
It can't just be socratic as usual. It can't just be the lesson plan plus the points you thought would be interesting. It's got to be a real full-court press. You've got to push your students with a new approach to classroom discussion, with new kinds of questions, new lines of thought. Otherwise, all you'll get is a slight improvement in participation and a lot of frustrated students who think you're an egotistical prick.
yes, it's called AD&D.
The nice thing about the laptop was that you not only took notes, but could adjust the outline while the prof was still talking and you had a good feel what what he was slanting towards.
That made it much easier to study and then feed his bias back to him on the exams. I did much better with the laptop.
Now, as a side note, your memo makes you sound like an overaged past retirement age oaf of a classroom bully.
"Goldarn you whippers! We never used these fancy paper pads and balls points pens when I started! In my class room you use parchment and a quill pen, and you will like it. I will let women in my class but they will sit in back and wear floor length dresses!"
2. Will you permit laptop use for exams? Back in the dark age (1996) I was one of a handful of laptop note-takers (I was a programmer by day) and think my grades suffered from having to write exams in unaccustomed longhand mode.