Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/students-are-better-off-without-a-laptop-in-the-classroom/

by thearn4 • 9 years ago

425 240 9 years ago

makecheck• 9 years ago

If students aren’t engaged, they aren’t going to become star pupils once you take away their distractions. Perhaps kids attend more lectures than before knowing that they can always listen in while futzing with other things (and otherwise, they may skip some of the classes entirely).

The lecture format is what needs changing. You need a reason to go to class, and there was nothing worse than a professor showing slides from the pages of his own book (say) or droning through anything that could be Googled and read in less time. If there isn’t some live demonstration, or lecture-only material, regular quizzes or other hook, you can’t expect students to fully engage.

jaclaz2• 9 years ago

Yep, and the article does propose boredom as a possble cause BUT the data seems like excluding it being the major factor.

In this case, however, boredom was not the answer – at least not entirely. Students who reported lower interest in the class did tend to have lower exam scores, but this relationship did not account for the relationship between internet use and exam performance.

tjr2• 9 years ago

Most interesting, engaging class I have ever had was Philip Greenspun's short database class at MIT. All day for three days, a cycle of ~15 minute lecture, ~15 minute problem sets worked by each student on their own laptop, ~15 minutes of reviewing student solutions (and, if needed, presenting the "correct" solution).

I imagine that many classes could be presented in a similar format. I also imagine it would be a lot of work on the part of the educators to do this.

rz2k• 9 years ago

That sounds like an excellent format. What were the hours?

I can imagine that taking a lot of planning and refinement over multiple offerings to get the timing just right on the exercises.

marlokk2• 9 years ago

+1 also had a professor who did this for his courses and it was a win. The theory being people only have ~20 minute attention spans, so instruction should be switched up as such. Result was I learned more, actually collaborated with classmates, and motivated me to prepare for class.

msla• 9 years ago

It's like we never left the Middle Ages, when books were expensive and the point of lecturing was to read the book, which was the only book, or one of a few, to students, who'd then copy it down in their notebooks so they'd have at least a copy of what was in the book.

These days, despite the textbook publishers' best efforts, the information is freely available (up until you run into paywalled research papers, but that's at a whole different level from undergrad work, mostly) but the lecture format has barely changed.

tbihl• 9 years ago

In some topics, the copying method still works perfectly well. As I've experienced it, the necessary component is time spent mulling over a concept. Sometimes copying is part of that, especially if you need to have facts in your head for later integration and application. Granted, it needs to be mindful (which I do by trying to look up as infrequently as possible, so I'm at least taking in sentences rather than individual words.)

izacus8• 9 years ago

Copying content (any by extension doing practice like mathematical problems) is scientifically proven to improve recall by orders of magnitude.

There's a reason why people demand you copy stuff down on your own.

soperj• 9 years ago

As soon as a lecture brought out slides, I knew my mark was going to be abysmal in that class. Thankfully I recognized that and in my later years promptly dropped those classes.

bigger_cheese• 9 years ago

When I was at uni 2004-2008 There was a weird amalgamation of tech used in the lectures. Some lecturers used power point slides and some used an overheard projector with transparencies.

Most lecturers tended to post their content online (either as a .ppt or as a scanned pdf).

People realised that with all of the notes provided in advance there wasn't a huge incentive for them to be physically present for the lectures and the theatre would get progressively emptier throughout the semester. I admit I skipped more than a few lectures during course of my degree did not feel like I missed anything particularly relevant.

At my university the lectures were supplemented by "tutorials" - wikipedia tells me this is an Australian thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial) essentially the lectures were 150+ people sitting in a theatre taught by a Professor and the tutorials were usually 10-20 people in a classroom overseen by a postgrad student. We'd spend the tutorial reviewing what was covered in the previous lecture and working through problem sets in a small group. It had the benefit that you would be able to get 1 on 1 attention from the tutor if you needed it. Most lecturers would not even field questions during their lectures whilst the tutors would allow you to email them question etc outside of classroom which was very helpful.

frozenport• 9 years ago

both

djrogers• 9 years ago

If students aren’t engaged, they aren’t going to become star pupils once you take away their distractions

That's a bit of a straw-man - nobody said anything about turning every student in to star pupils, it's a matter of degrees.

There is no question in my mind that a device capable of being online, using social media, and that is constantly pushing information at you is going to be a higher level distraction than a pen and paper. Reducing that level of distraction will be beneficial for many students, even if they only pay attention to 30% of the lecture instead of 15%, that's still an improvement.

sillysaurus3• 9 years ago

What if star pupils do better when given a laptop?

SilasX• 9 years ago

I would say that the lecture model works, but only when specific preconditions are met:

1) Eager learners who have reflected on the same material before coming in, to the extent that they know the gaps in their understanding.

2) A lecturer who is above the students' level (on the material) and willing/able to answer arbitrary questions about the topic.

3) Students keeping up and asking questions to ensure that they stay that way (but not so often that progress crawls to a halt).

That was probably typical of medieval universities that taught that way (just a guess though, haven't actually researched it).

Today? Not so much, and so the typical lecture is almost pure waste.

ghaff3• 9 years ago

Among other things, you're also describing what teaching using case studies looks like for example. There's pre-class reading and the class is built around interactive discussions. It's harder to see how this works for most technical topics outside of project-based courses.

chongli2• 9 years ago

Almost anything works with eager learners. They learn in spite of the bad teaching methods. They are the best candidates to be autodidacts.

collyw• 9 years ago

Lectures have worked well enough for years for many people.

syrrim• 9 years ago

They controlled for that:

In this case, however, boredom was not the answer – at least not entirely. Students who reported lower interest in the class did tend to have lower exam scores, but this relationship did not account for the relationship between internet use and exam performance.

nerpderp83• 9 years ago

Paying attention requires work, we need to purposefully use tools that are also distractions.

ahussain2• 9 years ago

I definitely feel my attentiveness and focus dropped dramatically after computers were introduced into my work life. It's a shame that computers provide such a thin line between work and entertainment.

striking2• 9 years ago

You can make that line thicker. You can create a new user on your computer specifically for work, with a restricted environment. You could use VMs or dualboot or something.

Personally, I'm very happy that we have devices that are capable of doing so many things.

homie• 9 years ago

instructors are also better off without computers in the classroom. lecture has been reduced to staring at a projector while each and every students eyes roll to the back of their skull

stevemk14ebr• 9 years ago

I think this is a highly personal topic. As a student myself i find a laptop in class is very nice, i can type my notes faster, and organize them better. Most of my professors lectures are scatter brained and i frequently have to go back to previous section and annotate or insert new sections. With a computer i just go back and type, with a pen and paper i have to scribble, or write in the margins. Of course computers can be distractions, but that is the students responsibility, let natural selection take its course and stop hindering my ability to learn how i do best (I am a CS major so computers are >= paper to me). If you cannot do your work with a computer, then don't bring one yourself, dont ban them for everyone.

compuguy6• 9 years ago

Some of us also have terrible handwriting, so taking notes by hand is out of the question. Though I will also surmise that they can also be a distraction.

izacus8• 9 years ago

Why is improving your handwriting out of the question?

wott2• 9 years ago

In 15 years of studies, I have never ever heard anyone complaining about his own handwriting. Even with a handwriting that can be very bad for others, one can always reread 99.9% of what one has written, because it is one's own handwriting and one knows its quirks.

This kind of complaint magically appeared after students got Internet-enabled laptops and were allowed to bring them at school.

That's bullshit of the same level as "I can take faster and better notes with my laptop". No you can't. You can't draw graphs, you can't draw diagrams, you can't draw small maps quickly and properly as you can by hand. You can't either type fancy maths, physics and chemistry formulas as fast and as "aligned" as you can do do it by hand.

"But it is searchable". Wonderful. As if you used to be lost in a 30 pages long course (which has a logical organisation and/or progression) that anyway you have to learn one way or another, by practice or rote memorisation.

There is zero benefit in typing notes vs writing them down. At best, in an unlikely optimistic case, it could be equal.

Laptop in a classroom are used to play, browse the web and social networks; the rest are made-up justifications to be allowed to bring them.

pmiller22• 9 years ago

You might think laptops are as good or better than paper notes, but the research says otherwise. Here is a popular article from Scientific American about this very topic: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...

Tons of journal articles on this are available if you look.

trustyhank• 9 years ago

Ive tried both, I perform significantly better taking notes on a computer. Dont need a research paper to figure that out for myself.

wccrawford2• 9 years ago

I'd be more impressed if they also did the same study with notepads and doodles and daydreams, and compared the numbers.

I have a feeling that people who aren't paying attention weren't going to anyhow.

However, I'd also guess that at least some people use the computer to look up additional information instead of stopping the class and asking, which helps everyone involved.

aleksei• 9 years ago

However, I'd also guess that at least some people use the computer to look up additional information instead of stopping the class and asking, which helps everyone involved.

No it doesn't. Practically the only point of lectures is so students can ask questions. Otherwise just read the material and don't go. Moreover there are probably others in the class too shy to ask the same question, but at worst it reinforces everyone else's learning.

watwut2• 9 years ago

I hated when people asked not needed questions in lecture for over hundred people. At least attempt to answer it yourself, don't slow other 99 people down.

Ajedi32• 9 years ago

I'd also guess that at least some people use the computer to look up additional information instead of stopping the class and asking, which helps everyone involved.

Are you sure about that? Intuitively, wouldn't it be the opposite? Asking questions results in the teacher giving an answer that can benefit the whole class, whereas if you just look something up yourself you're the only one who benefits from that additional piece of information.

wccrawford2• 9 years ago

While I won't deny that it's possible the question might help multiple people, it's more likely that if it's simple enough to look up online, it's better for everyone to do their own research.

Lectures still serve to help for more difficult questions, and the time is better spent on them instead.

hackinthebochs• 9 years ago

But its easy to see how having a computer can make someone intending to pay attention be distracted and miss critical information. A distracted mind is not going to create connections to understand the material as a whole, but rather will simply grab bits and pieces as their concentration is split.

bitJericho4• 9 years ago

The schools are so messed up in the US. Best to just educate children yourself as best you can. As for college kids, best to travel abroad.

robotresearcher3• 9 years ago

As for college kids, best to travel abroad.

15 of the top 20 universities in the world are in the US.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...

bitJericho4• 9 years ago

It's too bad the US is a giant cesspool that I wouldn't recommend anybody travel to, let alone live in.

izacus8• 9 years ago

As claimed by US publication using their own US biases for ranking :)

Bakary2• 9 years ago

If kids fail to learn social skills and how to deal with society, they will pay a steep price once they reach adulthood.

bitJericho4• 9 years ago

So you're saying raising stupid, uneducated kids that have learned to be bullied or be bullies, are better off than smart, educated, properly socialized children?

You're part of the problem.

brightball• 9 years ago

Shocker. I remember being part of Clemson's laptop pilot program in 1998. If you were ever presenting you basically had to ask everyone to close their laptops or their eyes would never even look up.

cmiles74• 9 years ago

I see this a lot in the workplace as well.

xexers• 9 years ago

Even without laptops I see this in the workplace. In a meeting, if there is a PowerPoint presentation with words on it, people instinctively look at the bright and shiny screen. That's why I recommend throwing a few black slides in your presentation when you want people to focus back on the presenter.

zeveb• 9 years ago

I ban laptops from meetings I run. We're here to meet, present information, receive information, share information, make arguments, come to conclusions: we're not in a meeting in order to futz about tweaking our personal blogs.

I also like 15-minute meetings or less. Other folks seem fine with multi-hour meetings where everyone is goofing off on his laptop.

Glyptodon3• 9 years ago

I feel like the conclusion is a bit off base: that students lack the self control to restrict the use of laptops laptops to class-related activities is somehow a sign that the problem is the laptop and not the students? I think it's very possible that younger generations have big issues with self-control and instant gratification. But I think it's wrong to think that laptops are the faulty party.

izacus8• 9 years ago

Riiight, because teenagers and young adults are so known for their long-term planning skills and self-control.

We're not animals, we don't get born with instincts. This is why humans require education and upbringing to teach. And yes, this (gasp!) sometimes means you need to make a non-adult person to do something against their first whim.

Balgair5• 9 years ago

To be pedantic, we do have instincts as humans and common scientific consensus is that we are animals as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_reflexes (note that instinct and reflex are essentially the same thing in biology)

Glyptodon3• 9 years ago

I don't disagree except for the fact that college students are supposed to be at least semi-adults (though perhaps young and silly ones) and getting through a 50 minute class without giving in to digital temptations is really something that people ought to be capable of well before college.

Fricken• 9 years ago

Yeah, kids these days have self control problems. Somehow human nature has been fundamentally altered between the previous generation and this one. It has nothing to do with external variables such as the creeping omnipresence of distraction machines like laptops.

Glyptodon3• 9 years ago

I don't think I ever implied any changes in human nature.

And I don't disagree that there's a degree of difference between hiding a comic book behind a textbook and having a machine that can likely grant instant access to the majority of comics, movies, games, etc., known to humankind, not to mentions texting, chatting, snapchats, social media, etc.

But I think it's ludicrous to think someone's ready for college if they don't have the self control to not give in to that temptation for a 50 minute lecture.

It's not the laptop that created uncommitted just-show-up-ism and incessant digital nothing-chatter or the thoughtless and blasé acceptance of app-based magic voodoo without thought towards its implications.

There's a much larger and more omnipresent failure at play. Deciding not to put games on your phone shouldn't be an amazing and praiseworthy anomaly.

Human beings don't lack for volition when sufficiently aware of it.

baron816• 9 years ago

Why are lectures still being conducted in the classroom? Students shouldn't just be sitting there copying what the teacher writes on the board anyway. They should be having discussions, working together or independently on practice problems, teaching each other the material, or just doing anything that's actually engaging. Lecturing should be done at home via YouTube.

rdtsc2• 9 years ago

I had a laptop and left it home most of the time. And just stuck with taking notes with a pen and sitting upfront.

I took lots notes. Some people claim it's pointless and distracts from learning but for me the act of taking notes is what helped solidify the concepts a better. Heck due to my horrible handwriting I couldn't even read some of the notes later. But it was still worth it. Typing them out just wasn't the same.

LyndsySimon• 9 years ago

As I get older, I find that physical notes help me more and more. I write in fairly neat cursive, using a fountain pen, and make it a point to never write down the words I'm hearing unless they're an important quote or something. Doing this helps me process the information while it's still fresh in my mind, which in turn leads to more thorough understanding.

rdtsc2• 9 years ago

make it a point to never write down the words I'm hearing unless they're an important quote or something

That's the key I think! The forced paraphrasing (while summarizing) helps process the information better.

izacus8• 9 years ago

My experience from college is pretty much the same - as soon as I stopped bringing laptop to courses and started using a paper notebook, my recall improved significantlly. If you don't have a distraction device on-hand, it's significantly harder to get distracted as soon as a lecture gets a bit more boring and doing notes forces you to pay attention to those boring bits as well.

kyle-rb• 9 years ago

students spent less than 5 minutes on average using the internet for class-related purposes (e.g., accessing the syllabus, reviewing course-related slides or supplemental materials, searching for content related to the lecture)

I wonder if that could be skewed, because it only takes one request to pull up a course syllabus, but if I have Facebook Messenger open in another tab, it could be receiving updates periodically, leading to more time recorded in this experiment.

FussyZeus• 9 years ago

Disengaged and uninterested students will find a distraction; yes, perhaps a laptop makes it easier but my education in distraction seeking during middle school, well before laptops were even close to schools, shows that the lack of a computer in front of me was no obstacle to locating something more interesting to put my attention to.

The real solution is to engage students so they don't feel the urge to get distracted in the first place. Then you could give them completely unfiltered Internet and they would still be learning (perhaps even faster, using additional resources.) You can't substitute an urge to learn, no matter if you strap them to the chairs and pin their eyeballs open with their individual fingers strapped down, it won't do anything. It just makes school less interesting, less fun, and less appealing, which makes learning by extension less fun, less appealing, and less interesting.

ourmandave• 9 years ago

This reminds me of the running gag in some college movie where the first day all the students show up.

The next cut some students come to class, put a recorder on their desk and leave, then pick it up later.

Eventually there's a scene of the professor lecturing to a bunch of empty desks with just recorders.

And the final scene there's the professor's tape player playing to the student's recorders.

pmiller22• 9 years ago

FYI, this gag appears exactly as described in Real Genius. I wonder if there are any other movies that use it?

drblast• 9 years ago

I'm pretty sure an episode of Scrubs did something very similar.

kfriede• 9 years ago

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt4vXaoPzF8

skocznymroczny• 9 years ago

TVTropes probably has it, but I couldn't find it. Snopes has it as urban legend here http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/recorder.asp

Balgair5• 9 years ago

For real though. Many large undergrad lectures kinda run this way. I'll take the video of the lecture (many large universities record all lectures now) and just play it back at ~1.3x speed later. I can rewind, stop, and fast-forward to the stuff I know I need to know. Since the tests/HW are the only thing that matters, why would I not do it this way? It's a better use of all of our time.

JTon• 9 years ago

A counter argument for the sake of discussion: students in the classroom can add value to the recorded lectures by engaging the professor with questions that ask to clarify, extend, etc. If there are no students left, the students rely fully on the profs ability to monologue. Could be a risk. Could dilute the lecture's potential.

paulpauper• 9 years ago

that's kinda what MOOCs are like

losteverything• 9 years ago

My first year chemistry courses were entirely taught (self paced) on cassette tape

No lectures.

Office hours if needed. Had to listen to tapes in chem building

(jimmy Carter president)

ams61102• 9 years ago

Back To School, Rodney Dangerfield.

rokhayakebe• 9 years ago

We really need to begin ditching most studies. We have the ability now to collect vast amount of data and use that to make conclusions based on millions of endpoints, not just 10, 100 or 1000 pieces of information.

Balgair5• 9 years ago

informed consent for scientific research is very specific and very important. It's history is somewhat intersting, but goes back to the Geneva conventions in the aftermath of WW2 and the Axis efforts on human experimentation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2328798/

alkonaut• 9 years ago

This is the same as laptops not being allowed in meetings. A company where it's common for meeting participants to "take notes" on a laptop is dysfunctional. Laptops need to be banned in meetings (and smartphones in meetings and lectures).

Also re: other comments: A video lecture is to a physical lecture what a conference call is to a proper meeting. A professor rambling for 3h is still miles better than watching the same thing on YouTube. The same holds for tv versus watching a film on a movie screen.

Zero distractions and complete immersion. Maybe VR will allow it some day.

Kenji• 9 years ago

If you keep your laptop open during class, you're not just distracting yourself, you're distracting everyone behind you (that's how human attention works - if you see a bright display with moving things, your attention is drawn towards it), and that's not right. That's why at my uni, there was an unspoken (de-facto) policy that if you keep your laptop open during lectures, you're sitting in the backrows, especially if you play games or do stuff like that. It worked great - I was always in the front row with pen & paper.

However, a laptop is very useful to get work done during breaks or labs when you're actually supposed to use it.

TazeTSchnitzel• 9 years ago

In contrast with their heavy nonacademic internet use, students spent less than 5 minutes on average using the internet for class-related purposes

This is a potential methodological flaw. It takes me 5 minutes to log onto my university's VLE and download the course materials. I then read them offline. Likewise, taking notes in class happens offline.

Internet use does not reflect computer use.

zengid• 9 years ago

Please excuse me for relating an experience, but it's relevant. To get into my IT grad program I had to take a few undergrad courses (my degree is in music, and I didn't have all of the pre-reqs). One course was Intro to Computer Science, which unfortunately had to be taught in the computer lab used for the programming courses. It was sad to see how undisciplined the students were. Barely anyone paid attention to the lectures as they googled the most random shit (one kid spent a whole lecture searching through images of vegetables). The final exam was open-book. I feel a little guilty, but I enjoyed seeing most of the students nervously flip through the chapters the whole time, while it took me 25 minutes to finish (the questions were nearly identical to those from previous exams).

tsumnia2• 9 years ago

I think its a double edge sword; not just paper > laptop or laptop > paper. As many people have already stated, its about engagement. Since coming back for my PhD, I've subscribed to the pencil/paper approach as a simple show of respect to the instructor. Despite what we think, professors are human and flawed, and being in their shoes, it can be disheartening to not be able to feed off your audience.

That being said, you can't control them; however, I like to look at different performance styles. What makes someone binge watch Netflix episodes but want to nod off during a lecture. Sure, one has less cognitive load, but replace Netflix binge with anything. People are willing to engage, as long as the medium is engaging (this doesn't mean easy or funny, simply engaging).

[Purely anecdotal opinion based discussion] This is one of the reasons I think flipping the classroom does work; they can't tune out. But, if its purely them doing work, what's your purpose there? To babysit? There needs to be a happy median between work and lecture.

I like to look at the class time in an episodic structure. Pick a show and you'll notice there's a pattern to how the shows work. By maintaining a consistency in the classroom, the students know what to expect.

To tie it back to the article, the laptop is a great tool to use when you need them to do something on the computer. However, they should be looking at you, and you should be drawing their attention. Otherwise, you're just reading your PowerPoint slides.

quantum_magpie2• 9 years ago

That being said, you can't control them; however, I like to look at different performance styles. What makes someone binge watch Netflix episodes but want to nod off during a lecture. Sure, one has less cognitive load, but replace Netflix binge with anything.

I personally find that if the air quality is not perfect for my needs, I tend to go drowsy really fast. Since I hate the artificially dry air, in any setting where there is either excessive heating in the winter, strong AC in the summer or too many people in a classroom where you get excessive CO2 concentrations, the attention span plummets. A 15 min break every hour helps, where you can get outside for at least 5 minutes and get some fresh air. Also, rooms that have windows that actually open are a lifesaver.

tsumnia2• 9 years ago

Not to be a jerk, but that's a discipline matter - you need to do what you need to do to maintain attention. Too much heating in my car in the winter and I get drowsy as well; and that's a situation where I need to be VERY engaged! If I fall asleep at the wheel, I can't blame it on the car, that was my fault. I do try to practice mindfulness, so I never let myself fall into "auto-pilot".

Breaks help and are definitely needed, the classes I've taught have been anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. I'd typically do a 1 hour block, 10 minutes and finish (or 50 min then break depending on room vibe and natural progression of material).

However, I cannot control things like AC or number of people. AC in a large-scale building is an unsolved problem as-is, I have no control over every person's thermal comfort level (plus everyone's different). In that situation, I view it more internally as "What can I do to stay engaged?" rather than "What can they do to keep me engaged?"

With more students enrolling, all you can do is offer ways to let them receive the material outside the prescribed time. No one has a photographic memory and can remember literally everything - that's why I make Khan Academy-style videos of my lectures.

I'd love to mirror a martial art class, where I can rely on more experienced students to help others, as they may be able to offer another viewpoint I skipped over (since, I already understand the material, they just figured it out). However, in a college setting, it's a harder thing to do, given its hard to convince TAs attend the class again and act as an assistant.

Repetition is a very important tool for learning, but current Western education philosophy dislikes it. I could go on, but I'm starting to ramble on a tangent...

erikb• 9 years ago

I'd argue that students are better off without a classroom as long as they have a laptop (and internet, but that is often also better at home/cafe than in the classroom).

imgabe• 9 years ago

I went to college just as laptops were starting to become ubiquitous, but I never saw the point of them in class. I still think they're pretty useless for math, engineering, and science classes where you need to draw symbols and diagrams that you can't easily type. Even for topics where you can write prose notes, I always found it more helpful to be able to arrange them spatially in a way that made sense rather than the limited order of a text editor or word processor.

eduren2• 9 years ago

I went to a state engineering college that provided students with tablet-style laptops so that you could fold the screen down and jot notes+diagrams with a stylus. It was really nice because some of the professors were flexible enough to accept tablet-written homework (one even required it as everybody had the requisite device).

I knew plenty of fellow students that eschewed paper notes during their time there.

dyarosla• 9 years ago

Out of curiosity, what laptop model and software combo?

RaitoBezarius• 9 years ago

While your argument makes sense,

I just want to point out that laptops for maths, engineering and science are not useless if you type sufficiently fast [1] and "master" [2] LaTeX.

And I know of one person who actually does it in chemistry, his notes are stunning and complete (which makes him love to look at them and improve them).

As for myself, I use pandoc (Markdown + LaTeX + a long set of custom commands accumulated during lectures) to take notes of mathematics (and it can get ugly sometimes with matrices, which require me to resort to SAGE generating the good LaTeX instead of me.)

And, the advantage? I can actively listen and participate to proofs while taking complete notes quickly.

As for the spatial problem, I agree that for certain topics, it makes sense, but the cost / quality provided by a laptop was a lot higher, though I take the time to do some sketch on paper and work my drafts on paper because it's a lot faster than on a computer.

Second point regarding spatial organisation: You can use mental maps to build spatial representations, along the way, there should be some tool to build any kind of spatial representation.

tl;dr: It is actually possible to take notes on laptop for subjects like maths, engineering and science thanks to tools like Pandoc and LaTeX, though it's still preferable to use paper for drafts and problem solving or to organise spatially your knowledge.

[1]: depends on your lecturer's speed, in fact.

[2]: mastered for the stuff you have to type (e.g. diagrams, advanced maths, etc…).

e12e• 9 years ago

I think devices like the surface pro have shown that we have the technology needed for more advanced io now - we just need proper CAD programs and symbolic math packages that work well with pen/touch input - much along the lines of original Sketchpad[s].

In the same vein, I think "notebooks" of the Jupyter style for R, mathlab or Julia etc - could be a great addition to many classes - allowing interactive exploration etc.

It's an odd time to think computers won't be transformative to learning (also in the classroom) - because we just got useful hardware in affordable packaging.

True, the past decades, computers could probably help better with writing projects - but I know of few places that for example simply let students cooperate on writing up projects with their own wikimedia instance - rather than using crappy dtp/word processors.

On the other hand, I don't think I knew anyone that got top marks on essays in high school who worked only by hand - it's a slow process to work through two-three drafts of a multi-page essay by hand.

[s] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad

panda888883• 9 years ago

TBH Surface Pro, iPad Pro et al compared to paper is like NTSC vs 4K. The resolution and precision on digital writing surfaces are abysmal compared to paper. I tried taking notes on Surface Pro with OneNote and gave up because it feels like writing with crayons.

snakeanus6• 9 years ago

I still think they're pretty useless for math, engineering, and science classes where you need to draw symbols and diagrams that you can't easily type

I use latex for special symbols and some diagrams. I do the rest of the diagrams with some form of painting/vector program or ascii art.

rather than the limited order of a text editor or word processor

What do you mean by that?

ChiliDogSwirl• 9 years ago

Maybe it would be helpful if our operating systems were optimised for working and learning rather than to selling us crap and mining our data.

snakeanus6• 9 years ago

There are many OSes that don't do that.

Bearwithme• 9 years ago

They should try this study again, but with laptops heavily locked down. Disable just about everything that isn't productive including a strict web filter. I am willing to bet the results would be much better for the kids with laptops. Of course if you let them have free reign they are going to be more interested in entertainment than productivity.

vblord• 9 years ago

During indoor recess at my kids school, kids don't eat their lunch and just throw it away because of the chromebooks. There are only have a few computers and they are first come first serve. Kids would rather go without lunch to be able to play on the internet for 20 minutes.

emptybits• 9 years ago

It makes sense that during a lecture, simple transcription (associated with typing) yields worse results than cognition (associated with writing). So pardon my ignorance (long out of the formal student loop):

Are students taught how to take notes effectively (with laptops) early in their academic lives? Before we throw laptops out of classrooms, could we be improving the situation by putting students through a "How To Take Notes" course, with emphasis on effective laptopping?

It's akin to "how to listen to music" and "how to read a book" courses -- much to be gained IMO.

zeta0134• 9 years ago

Oh, okay, I thought the study was going to be on the benefits of attempting to use the laptop itself for classroom purposes, not for social media distractions. This would be more accurately titled, "Students Are Better Off Without Distractions in the Classroom." Though I suppose, it wouldn't make a very catchy headline.

I found my laptop to be very beneficial in my classroom learning during college, but only when I made it so. My secret was to avoid even connecting to the internet. I opened up a word processor, focused my eyes on the professor's slides or visual aids, and typed everything I saw, adding notes and annotations based on the professor's lecture.

This had the opposite effect of what this article describes: my focusing my distracted efforts on formatting the article and making my notes more coherent, I kept myself focused, and could much more easily engage with the class. Something about the menial task of taking the notes (which I found I rarely needed to review) prevented me from losing focus and wandering off to perform some unrelated activity.

I realize my experience is anecdotal, but then again, isn't everyone's? I think each student should evaluate their own style of learning, and decide how to best use the tools available to them. If the laptop is a distraction? Remove it! Goodness though, you're paying several hundred (/thousand) dollars per credit hour, best try to do everything you can to make that investment pay off.

DINKDINK• 9 years ago

I opened up a word processor, focused my eyes on the professor's slides or visual aids, and typed everything I saw

There are studies that show that verbatim computer note taking is actually inferior to remembering the lecture content:

A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...

discreditable4• 9 years ago

I'd really like to see a comparison of written notes on a laptop vs paper. Many schools are moving towards tablet PC devices to enable handwritten notes on the computer.

ericcumbee2• 9 years ago

Maybe they aren't as effective as hand written notes. but in my case Neatly typed, well organized notes using OneNote 2003 were more effective than hastily hand written mostly illegible notes.

ksk• 9 years ago

There are studies that show that verbatim computer note taking is actually inferior to remembering the lecture content:

I think people should be careful when looking at such things. 'There are studies' is not really the same as 'there is scientific consensus with demonstrated repeatability'. Ultimately though, you can't tell someone they're doing it wrong when they're successful, so YMMV.

jerrylives• 9 years ago

It's almost as if people can live their own lives and figure out if note taking on a computer works or doesn't for them?

Bartweiss• 9 years ago

That's a pretty unrealistic experiment, though.

The full study is paywalled, but based on the SA article it had students take notes two ways, then tested them on retention and synthesis later - without any secondary study. That's not necessarily a good mirror for actual long-running courses.

I used both approaches in college. Longhand note-taking was vastly better for my retention of material, I don't dispute that. But computer transcription let me get everything, and sometimes that mattered more. I had to study more outside class when I typed, but I was aware of that and it was a worthwhile tradeoff for completeness.

Professors are not necessarily good, or even tolerable, at supporting effective learning strategies. They can click through dense Powerpoint slides faster than I can type or write. And they can refuse to release those slides, then test on material from them not available elsewhere. If writing means I get 60% and retain it, while typing means I get 90% and have to study further, typing wins without question.

More broadly, my take would be: many real classrooms are vastly less student-friendly than your average study environment. That changes what works.

joshvm2• 9 years ago

I took a two pass approach: hand written notes (I can write equations faster than I can LaTeX them) and then follow up by writing a LaTeX document for each lecture. I had a rule that I wasn't allowed to continue typing up until I understood how each step in the derivation was made. If it was non-obvious, I'd write textbook-style comments around things to explain how to get from line to the next.

Worked pretty well for most courses and meant I had explanations of everything come revise time. The only problem is it took about 4 years to really nail down the routine and by the time I had it perfect (I really wish I'd done it in first year), it was time to leave. Such is life.

porterrobertson• 9 years ago

Apparently writing in cursive is superior to non-cursive when it comes to remembering what you wrote down too. That being said I take notes on my laptop all the time just because I like having everything stored in one place, backed up, organized, etc..

observation2• 9 years ago

I believe that is true, but it is also faster to type than write so if you type twice as fast but remember 50% less it's a wash.

EA• 9 years ago

Speaking of inaccurate headlines: I know I was better off with a TI-85 in math class, so students don't necessarily have a problem with a computing device itself in a classroom environment as the headline would suggest.

legolassexyman3• 9 years ago

You'd probably be better off with something like a casio fx-115es plus (non graphing scientific calculator). For example: You'd have to remember your integration tables better on not rely on the graphing functions to pull you out of the bog.

Florin_Andrei• 9 years ago

not for social media distractions

But that is the main issue, isn't it? The social media machine with its hunger for "eyeballs" and its myriad of notifications and popups. Shallow entertainment in the form of Youtube videos, always just one click away. Heck, even hypertext with its going-off-on-a-tangent links to external documents.

If you really want to do a focused, deep study of something, turn off the Internet.

snakeanus6• 9 years ago

Or just log out of any social media. No need to turn off the internet.

saint_fiasco• 9 years ago

Why not take notes on paper instead?

omikun• 9 years ago

I took a class that basically covered a lot of papers. The lecturer spoke at a mile a minute and it was nigh impossible to write all the important info by hand and the really important parts are not on the slides. Typing on a computer allowed me to write all the juicy bits that made studying a breeze.

throwawayjava4• 9 years ago

I realize my experience is anecdotal

FWIW I'm not totally convinced that the paper isn't also anecdotal. They selected for people who would agree to have their internet activity spied on in exchange for extra credit, and then from that group selected only for people using the internet -- not their computers, but the internet! -- in more than half the lectures. And did all of this in a large enrollment undergraduate gen ed intro course with lectures that lasted two hours.

gambogi• 9 years ago

is there really any reason to expect the students who didn't take free points in exchange for privacy to outperform the observed group?

Sure, the results pertain more to excluding the internet from the classroom, but really that's just splitting hairs imo

steveo3387• 9 years ago

The paper is entirely anecdotal. It's a small, self-selected group who also selected when they would be tracked. I do believe that the group's worse performance was related to their laptop usage, though. So a third variable, perhaps a quality of the students, caused them to do the observed behavior (have a laptop, sign up, log into the process and then) and do worse in their courses.

Finally, doing slightly worse on two hour gen eds is also not the same thing as doing worse in general. Those classes are ones students are forced to take, often with professors who are forced to teach them. I know my gen eds were lower quality classes, with more people, less participation, worse teaching, and worse assignments.

anonymfus• 9 years ago

These processes are called a self-selection bias and a sampling bias. Please don't use the word "anecdotal" in such contexts.

zokier• 9 years ago

I love how any education-related topic brings out the armchair-pedagogist out from the woodworks. Of course a big aspect there is that everyone has encountered some amount of education, and especially both courses they enjoyed and disliked. And there is of course the "think of the children" aspect.

To avoid making purely meta comment, in my opinion the ship has already sailed; we are going to have computers in classrooms for better or worse. So the big question is how can we make the best use of that situation.

discreditable4• 9 years ago

I noticed that the article is speaking from a university perspective. I work in the high school realm, where teachers have more ability to reprimand students not on task. That seems to help students use computers more effectively, but at the same time it requires some effort on the part of the instructor.

partycoder• 9 years ago

I think VR will be the future of education.

snakeanus6• 9 years ago

How so?

polote• 9 years ago

Well it depends on what you do in the classroom, when class is mandatory but you are not able to learn this way (by listening to a teacher), having a laptop can let you do other things. And then use your time efficiently, like doing some administrative work, send email, coding ...

Some students are of course better with a laptop in the classroom

LaikaF• 9 years ago

My high school did the one laptop loan out thing (later got sued for it) and I can tell you it was useless as a learning tool. At least in the way intended. I learned quite a bit mainly about navigating around the blocks and rules they put in place. In high school my friends and I ran our own image board, learned about reverse proxying via meebo repeater, hosted our own domains to dodge filtering, and much much more. As far as what I used them for in class... if I needed to take notes I was there with note book and pen. If I didn't I used the laptop to do homework for other classes while in class. I had a reputation among my teachers for handing in assignments the day they were assigned.

In college I slid into the pattern they saw here. I started spending more time on social media, paying less attention in class, slacking on my assignments. As my burnout increased the actual class times became less a thing I learned from and more just something I was required to sit in. One of my college classes literally just required me to show up. It was a was one of the few electives in the college for a large university. The students were frustrated they had to be there, and the teacher was tired of teaching to students who just didn't care.

Overall I left college burnt out and pissed at the whole experience. I went in wanting to learn it just didn't work out.

marlokk2• 9 years ago

Students are better off with instructors who don't bore students into bringing out their laptops.

njarboe2• 9 years ago

This is a summary of an article titled "Logged In and Zoned Out: How Laptop Internet Use Relates to Classroom Learning" published in Psychological Science in 2017; The DOI is 10.1177/0956797616677314 if you want to check out the details.

Abstract: Laptop computers are widely prevalent in university classrooms. Although laptops are a valuable tool, they offer access to a distracting temptation: the Internet. In the study reported here, we assessed the relationship between classroom performance and actual Internet usage for academic and nonacademic purposes. Students who were enrolled in an introductory psychology course logged into a proxy server that monitored their online activity during class. Past research relied on self-report, but the current methodology objectively measured time, frequency, and browsing history of participants’ Internet usage. In addition, we assessed whether intelligence, motivation, and interest in course material could account for the relationship between Internet use and performance. Our results showed that nonacademic Internet use was common among students who brought laptops to class and was inversely related to class performance. This relationship was upheld after we accounted for motivation, interest, and intelligence. Class- related Internet use was not associated with a benefit to classroom performance.

throwawayjava4• 9 years ago

...Students who were enrolled in an introductory psychology course...

Ugh.

Also, from the paper:

Five hundred seven students enrolled in an introductory psychology class in fall 2014... Each lecture lasted 1 hr and 50 min with a 10-min break in the middle.

Alternative headline: "500 person intro courses with meat-space lecture periods lasting TWO HOURS are stupid, and everything else is water under the bridge"

edit2: Also from the paper:

Participants who logged in for less than half of the sessions were excluded from analysis

Why?! You don't think that frequency of use could correlate at all with type of use?! It's like they're willfully introducing unnecessary threats to validity...

And it keeps going like that for the entire paper. I smell experiment design hacking.

swiley• 9 years ago

This is one of the classes I CLEPed while in highschool. I don't think I spent more than a couple of hours actually studying for it.

quantum_magpie2• 9 years ago

And it keeps going like that for the entire paper. I smell experiment design hacking.

This sort of thing is exactly what pops up in my mind as well. I think they just looked at complete set of data, which might have shown that there is low-to-moderate correlation (assuming most people only use laptops when there is a part of course that is completely irrelevant/boring/already known); once they dropped the most significant use-case, all was left is the butt-in-seat users.

Also, I don't know why they never produce figures of a scatter plot for the data they are analyzing. A simple grade vs laptop time (academic, non-academic, total) figure would explain the results so much better than the raw tables. Maybe I'm just used to other kind of articles though.

P.S. There is also a really funny correlation in table 3, showing negative grade influence from playing games, where table 1 has 0 minutes spent for that across the board.

njarboe2• 9 years ago

I believe that we may know a lot about how students at top western universities that take introductory psychology courses think and behave. As for the rest of us, who knows.

zitterbewegung• 9 years ago

When I was in College I would take notes using a notebook and pad and paper. I audited some classes with my laptop using latex but most of the time I used a notebook. Also, sometimes I would just go to class without a notebook and get the information that way. It also helped that I didn't have a smartphone with Cellular data half of the time I was in school.

free_everybody• 9 years ago

I find that having my laptop out is great for my learning, even during lectures. If somethings not clear or I want more context, I can quickly look up some information without interrupting the teacher. Also, paper notes don't travel well. If everything is on my laptop and backed up online, I know that if I have my laptop, I can study anything I want. Even if I don't have my laptop, I could use another computer to access my notes and documents. This is a HUGE benefit.

Fomite• 9 years ago

Just personally, for me it was often a choice between "Laptop-based Distractions" or "Fall Asleep in Morning Lecture".

The former was definitely the superior of the two options.

izacus8• 9 years ago

Just stay at home and sleep in then instead of distracting everyone around you and taking up space?

fatso784• 9 years ago

There's another study showing that students around you with laptops harm your ability to concentrate, even if you're not on a laptop yourself. This is in my opinion a stronger argument against laptops, because it harms those not privileged enough to have a laptop. (not enough time to find study but you can find it if you search!)

shahbaby• 9 years ago

"Thus, there seems to be little upside to laptop use in class, while there is clearly a downside."

Thanks to bs articles like this that try to over generalize their results, I was unsure if I "needed" a laptop when returning to school.

Got a Surface Book and here's what I've experienced over the last 2 semesters. - Going paperless, I'm more organized than ever. I just need to make sure I bring my surface with me wherever I go and I'm good.

- Record lectures, tutorials, office hours, etc. Although I still take notes to keep myself focused, I can go back and review things with 100% accuracy thanks to this.

- Being at 2 places at once. ie: Make last minute changes before submitting an assignment for class A or attend review lecture to prepare for next week's quiz in class B? I can leave the surface in class B to record the lecture while I finish up the assignment for class A.

If you can't control yourself from browsing the internet during a lecture then the problem is not with your laptop...

exodust• 9 years ago

That's a sensible and practical use of laptop that I wish I had back when I was at Uni (nobody had a laptop in the 90s). I wonder how many students today make efficient use of their computers like this? I guess it's a mix of good and bad.

It occurs to me that educating younger students about "how to use a computer" for organising and the like, would be essential in early education before bad habits set in.

jessepage1989• 9 years ago

I find taking paper notes and then reorganizing on the computer works best. The repetition helps memorization.

kgilpin• 9 years ago

It sounds like what students need are better teachers. I haven't been to school in a while but I had plenty of classes that were more interesting than surfing YouTube; and some that weren't.

The same is true for meetings at work. In a good session, people are using their laptops to look up contributing information. In a bad one... well... you know.

exabrial• 9 years ago

Students are best of with the least amount of distractions

thisrod• 9 years ago

First, participants spent almost 40 minutes out of every 100-minute class period using the internet for nonacademic purposes

I think that I'd be one of them; in the absence of a laptop, I'd spend that time daydreaming. How many people can really concentrate through a 100 minute nonstop lecture about differential geometry or the decline of the Majapahit empire?

BigChiefSmokem• 9 years ago

I'll give you no laptops in the class if you give me no standardized testing and only four 15-20 minute lectures per day and let the kids work on projects the rest of the time as a way to prove their learning and experiences in a more tangible way.

Trying to fix the problem by applying only patches, as us technically inclined would say, always leads to horribly unreliable and broken systems.

alistproducer2• 9 years ago

"Duh" - anyone who's ever been in a class with a laptop.

wh313• 9 years ago

Could it be that the intermittent requests to servers by running apps, say Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, be tracked as social media use? Because they all use HTTPS I don't see how the researchers distinguished between idle traffic vs sending a message.

aurelianito• 9 years ago

Even better, just remove the surrounding classroom of the laptop. Now we can learn anything anywhere. Having to go to take a class were a professor recites something is ridiculous.

qguv• 9 years ago

Internet access, especially to Wikipedia, did wonders for me whenever the lecture turned to something I was already familiar with. That alone kept me from getting distracted and frustrated as I would in classes whose professors prohibited laptop use.

brodock2• 9 years ago

Any research that takes students as an homogenic group is flawed. People can be (more or less) in about one of the 7 different types of learning styles https://www.learning-styles-online.com/overview/.

So making claims like "doing X works better than Y" is meaningless without pointing to a specific learning style.

That's why you hear people defending writing to paper, while others prefer just hearing the lectures or others have better performance while discussing with peers (and some hate all of the other interactions and can perform better by isolating and studying on your own... which is probably the one who will benefit the most of having a laptop available).

agentdrtran• 9 years ago

Learning styles are have been debunked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#...

brodock2• 9 years ago

debunked is a hard word for "hey, lack of peer review":

"... Coffield's team found that none of the most popular learning style theories had been adequately validated through independent research." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles

sounds more like lack of funding than pseudoscience.

mark_l_watson• 9 years ago

In what universe would it be a good idea for students use laptops in class?

Use of digital devices should be limited because the very use of digital devices separates us from what is going on around us. Students should listen and take notes (in a notebook) as necessary.

Zpalmtree• 9 years ago

I like having a laptop at uni just because I can program when the lectures are boring, I find the material is too easy in UK universities in CS at least, dunno about other courses or countries, but the amount of effort you need to get good marks along with the amount you're paying is a bit silly, and mostly you'll learn more by yourself...

That said, if you're in a programming class, having a laptop to follow along and try out the concepts is really handy, when we were in an C++/ASM class, seeing the different ASM GCC/G++ and Microsoft's C++ compiler spat out was quite interesting.

bostand• 9 years ago

If its too simple and boring for you, why don't you leave?

jon889• 9 years ago

I have had lectures where I have had a laptop/iPad/phone and ones where I’ve not had any. i did get distracted, but I found that if I didn’t have say Twitter I’d get distracted for longer. With Twitter I’d catch up on my news feed and then a few minutes later be back to concentrating. Without it I’d end up day dreaming and losing focus for 10-20 minutes.

The biggest problem isn’t distractions, or computers and social media. It’s that hour long lectures are an awful method of transferring information. In my first year we had small groups of ~8 people and a student from 3rd/4th year and we’d go through problems from the maths and programming lectures. I learnt much more in these.

Honestly learning would be much more improved if lectures were condensed into half an hour YouTube videos you can pause, speed up and rewind. Then have smaller groups in which you can interact with the lecturers/assistants.

dalbasal• 9 years ago

I think there is a mentality shift that may come with digitizing learning which might help here.

The discussion on a topic like this can go in two ways. (1) Is to talk about how a laptop can help if students use it to xyz and avoid cba. It's up to the student. Bring a horse to water...(2) The second way you can look at this is to compare outomes, statistacally or quasi-statistically. IE, If laptops are banned we predict an N% increase in Z, where Z is (hopefully) a good proxy for learning or enjoyment or something else we want. IE, think about improving a college course the same way we think about optimizing a dating site.

On a MOOC, the second mentality will tend to dominate. Both have downsides, especially when applied blindly (which tends to happen). In any case, new thinking tends to help.

Radle• 9 years ago

If students thing the class is boring enough, they'll watch youtube whether on the laptop or on their mobile is no really important.

_e• 9 years ago

Politicians are also better off without a laptop during legislative sessions [0].

[0] http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/solitaire.asp

Shinchy• 9 years ago

I've always find the idea of taking a laptop to a lecture pretty rude. I'm there to give the person teaching my full attention, not stare at a laptop screen. So personally I never use them in any type of lecturing / teaching environment simply as a mark of respect.

catnaroek• 9 years ago

This is why I like to program in front of a whiteboard rather than in front of my computer: to be more productive.

jonbarker• 9 years ago

Students need a GUI-less computer like a minimalist linux distro.

dorianm• 9 years ago

Pen and papers are the best. Also chromebooks are pretty cool

calvano915• 9 years ago

Just putting in my 2c that as a senior in dual BS and a minor, technology has allowed me to be more successful than paper ever will. I can get more notes written, can draw (I've used a tablet from day one, upgraded to an SP4 recently), import everything to keep it all organized, etc. These arguments about tech vs. paper are the same about learning styles. People are different, and what works for them will be different. Professors should allow any tools that are effective for some to be used, as long as a student is not abusing the privilege by distracting/harming other's learning. I've let my mind wander (by means of browsing facebook or some other distraction) in maybe 10 lectures max over the last 3 years of school. The rest of the time, I had OneNote open and was fully engaged. When students aren't engaged, they will find distraction be it on paper or tech. STOP TELLING ME THAT A COMPUTER WILL LOWER MY GRADES. I have a 3.84 and rising, and I refuse to change what makes me successful.

Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

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