From Inside Higher Ed.

What They Are Really Typing

May 18, 2011

College students might sometimes feel they are getting mixed messages about laptops. Many receive them for free or at a discount from their colleges, only to have professors banish the machines from their classrooms, or at least complain about them.

For years, researchers have conducted studies in hopes of answering whether having laptops in class undermines student learning. In the avalanche of literature, one can find data pointing each way. A 2006 study of 83 undergraduate psychology students suggested that having laptops in class distracts both the students who use them and their classmates. Several law professors have written triumphal papers documenting their own experiments banning laptops, which one of them complained had transformed his students from thoughtful, selective note-takers into “court reporters” reduced to mindlessly transcribing his lectures. And yet other papershave argued that laptop bans are reductive exercises that ignore the possibility that some students — maybe even a majority — might in fact benefit from being able to use computers in class if only professors would provide a modicum of discipline and direction.

Still, there is one notable consistency that spans the literature on laptops in class: most researchers obtained their data by surveying students and professors.

The authors of two recent studies of laptops and classroom learning decided that relying on student and professor testimony would not do. They decided instead to spy on students.

In one study, a St. John's University law professor hired research assistants to peek over students’ shoulders from the back of the lecture hall. In the other, a pair of University of Vermont business professors used computer spyware to monitor their students’ browsing activities during lectures.

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