Some Georgetown Profs Want To Ban Laptops In Class

from the get-over-it dept

Some professors at Georgetown University, like some from other schools, are banning students from using laptops in their classes, blaming the devices for students not paying attention in lectures. Lots of students these days use laptops to take notes, and plenty use laptops to amuse themselves during class, particularly with the proliferation of WiFi on college campuses. But it's hard to see how this is really any different than previous generations, who were forced to allay their boredom without electronic devices.

When I was an undergrad, we only had the student newspaper with which to keep ourselves occupied, and the crossword puzzle was a popular pursuit, and I don't remember too many calls from professors to ban the newspaper because of that. If a student doesn't want to pay attention, they're not going to pay attention and be engaged in the class, with or without the laptop; that's no reason for professors to prevent students who use laptops for notetaking or other legitimate pursuits from doing so. Some professors seem really hung up on the idea of forcing people to pay attention and to care about the classes they teach, a feeling I've never really understood. Spending time playing games with uninterested students wastes the time of the interested ones, and if a student is really paying that little attention, it will come back and bite them at some point. Furthermore, if students surfing the web during class is such a huge problem, why are universities installing WiFi networks in classrooms?

Filed Under: georgetown, laptops. classrooms