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Connecting in the classroom

It began in 1983 when the military academies began putting desktop computers in every cadet's dorm room. Ten years later it was followed up by the little-known University of Minnesota-Crookston - a university with an enrollment of roughly 2,000 - which required that students to own laptops. Today 100 colleges and universities require that students own laptops for use inside the traditional classroom settings besides for just the usual research and word processing uses. Even while the requirement is difficult to implement, integrating laptop computers into the classroom environment is perhaps the single best way colleges and universities can prepare students for any life after college.

Colleges and universities where the laptop requirement stands offer one primary and persuasive argument in its favor: computer literacy is an integral part of a balanced liberal arts education. However, it goes further than that. Computer literacy is an integral part of any type of education - the hard sciences, the social sciences or even the fine arts. Imagine graduating from college and then doing something for which there is absolutely no reason to be computer literate. That would be a rare situation indeed.

There is a second argument for laptop computer requirements: full classroom integration enhances the learning experience. Teachers argue that the computers allow them to teach to a variety of learning styles. Teachers and students also have vast amounts of information at their fingertips, making it hard for either to be unprepared for a lecture. Additionally, computers facilitate learning because students can chat with or email each other about the lecture as well as answer the teacher's questions on a virtual chalkboard. Students also do Internet research in class to supplement lectures and use software that tailors syllabi and homework assignments to the individual. Finally, it seems that students are less likely to skip classes which implement laptops because even if the class is boring students can do other things which are sometimes useful and sometimes solitaire.

Correspondingly, there are two major arguments against laptop computer requirements. First, and less serious, is the distraction laptop computers can pose. There is the distraction from equipment failure and user inadequacy - hopefully to be overcome with practice and patience - and there is the more insidious distraction. There's solitaire, e-mail, online auctions, purity tests, porn, news, chat rooms, other classwork, sports coverage; the list is endless. However, there is more potential for doing something useful with a laptop than there is with a pencil and an empty notebook margin. Admittedly, students could do anything besides learn with laptops in front of them, but they can and they do learn as well.

A more vital argument against laptop requirements is cost. It costs a lot of money to equip classrooms for full laptop integration, and it costs a lot of money to buy laptops. Most schools have increased tuition by $3000 so that students receive a fully-loaded laptop upon enrollment, which may have been covered by financial aid anyway. This has the added benefit of uniformity, helping to ease software and technical support problems which may arise. Colleges and universities have also looked into wireless technology to cut down on the costs of outfitting classrooms.

Solutions such as these are imperfect, tending to work well for the small colleges such as Seton Hall, Wake Forest and Sonoma State that have tried them, but still leaving problems for larger, public universities. Despite, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Michigan State University and University of Florida-Gainesville have all recently approved computer requirements. How these universities work out these problems is crucial to the feasibility of this enormously important requirement, and other large universities should keep an eye on these programs, taking diligent notes and offering assistance where possible.

Interestingly, the one argument that has not been made is that computers in the classroom decrease personal interaction. Either no such effect has occurred, or it is not noticed or missed. There can't be any less personal interaction than in a traditional lecture format where people sit in rows of seats facing the front of the classroom, staring at the backs of other people's heads. In fact, teachers and students have praised the increased interaction via email and online discussion groups which may include experts in the field or important alumni.

Myriad difficulties bar the full implementation of laptop computers into the classroom, and cost is chief among them. The benefits, however, for the institution as well as the individual students outweigh them. The University of Arizona would do well to learn from other large, public universities which require that students own laptops so that we could see if the requirement would work here. We should hope that it does.