Profs attack laptops in the classroom
By Cody Crawford
The Charlatan, Carelton University
January 9, 2008
OTTAWA (CUP) -- Plenty of students bring laptops to classrooms, but using them for an academic purpose is not always their intention and professors across the country are asking students to unplug.
Jean Boivin, an economics professor at HEC-Montréal, said that it was not until he found out that one of his students had lost thousands of dollars day-trading during his classes that he decided to try and do something about it.
“Students wrote a complaint about their colleague misusing computers in class, which was disrupting them,” said Boivin.
He said he was receiving complaints about students doing things like trading, gaming or chatting in class. Taking a chance, Boivin and a number of other professors at Columbia University in New York, declared their classrooms laptop-free.
“I tried it and found it made a huge difference,” said Boivin, who said he was pleased with the change it made. Now other professors are beginning to toy with the notion of banning laptops.
Terence Day, who teaches geography at Okanagan College, is one such professor.
“I ask students at the beginning of the semester what they want to do about laptops in the classroom. I lay out the issues in terms of the potential impacts of laptops on learning and the need for students to take responsibility for their own learning.”
Owen Roberts, the director of research communication at the University of Guelph, recently wrote to University Affairs Magazine with another proposal, what he calls an electronic countdown.
“I started giving the students five minutes at the start of class to IM, check e-mail, call someone or do whatever they need to do electronically. Once that grace period ends, cell phones are off and IM and Internet is disengaged,” Roberts said.
Boivin said he thinks the issue should be dealt with on an individual basis, and not by university administration.
“Banning the computers has the benefit of pressuring the faculty into delivering a better course,” said Boivin. “I think people should do whatever they are comfortable with.”
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