To the hundreds of colleges that require students to buy or lease laptops, it may seem like a no-brainer: Supply a student with a portable computer, and surely he or she will reap some educational benefits.
But a laptop’s value isn’t so cut and dried, according to a study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.
The study, which is described as one of the first systematic efforts to figure out how students use their laptop computers, came up with the uncontroversial finding that the machines give users more flexibility in choosing where and when to study. But the researchers found no evidence that the computers improved students’ work.
In fact, a report on the study says, students with laptops tend to spend "significantly more time" working on assignments than other students do. But that extra time is not reflected in their finished products: Students with laptops get roughly the same grades as those who trek to computer labs. Instead of saving time, the report argues, laptop users are often killing it — firing off e-mail messages, sending instant messages, and surfing the Web.
What’s more, students with laptops may grow overly reliant on them, as instructors in one typography course at a Midwestern university found out. "Students reported spending long periods of time searching the Web for pictures rather than sketching and then scanning what they needed," says the report. "Instructors had to sometimes tell students to use paper rather than their computers to store ideas."
The research team, led by Anne L. Fay, director of assessment at Carnegie Mellon’s office of technology for education, observed several typography classes held at the unnamed research university. In some of the sessions, students were given laptops; in others, they got access to a dedicated computer lab. Students in the courses answered surveys, participated in focus groups, and filled out logbooks describing their experiences.
The study is not meant as an indictment of laptops, said Ms. Fay in a written statement. "It’s not that laptops are good or bad for learning," she said. "It depends on how they are used."
Students with laptops proved much more likely to work at home, and much less likely to use common spaces on campuses, than were students without the machines. And the laptop users were far more inclined to work alone.
On the one hand, that poses a problem for professors: how to build a sense of community among students who increasingly view course work as a solitary pursuit.
On the other hand, laptops presented the typography students with an interesting opportunity. Since they did more of their work in and around their dormitories, the students actually spent more time interacting with peers outside the field of design, a shift toward interdisciplinary thinking that has its own advantages.
By Brock Read
This article was taken from the Chronicle Of Higher education