 "Photo: Michelle Connolly")
Lauren Dickens furiously stroked the keys of her MacBook Pro in her fall 2006 psychology class. But rather than take notes, Dickens usually either visited MySpace or Facebook or played "Gridwars," an online game she downloaded during class, which she said caused her grades to slip.
The ubiquity of laptops and wireless Internet in university classrooms, in which students may be attentively taking notes or shopping online, has caused many to question whether the technology is doing more harm than good when it comes to instruction.
UT professors have been observing a growing trend of classroom computerization as lecture halls and some small classrooms become filled with the chattering of keyboards.
"On Tuesday of this week, I mentioned to my [teaching assistants] that I have noticed a big increase over just the past year," said John Daly, a professor in the College of Communication.
Laptops on college campuses have become increasingly pervasive, and with universities spending millions to supply their buildings with wireless Internet, so has Web surfing.
William Green, director of telecommunications and networking for Information of Technology Services, cited an online report of Internet use within the University's wireless network and said that, according to last numbers from last spring, there were 41,000 users on the system.
These users, however, are split on how the Internet should be used in the classroom. Some students are annoyed by their peers' Internet use; others enjoy the freedom to multitask and get homework done.
It also irks professors who lecture and aren't sure whether their students are listening or scouring their friends' Facebook profiles.
A study published this month in Computers & Education, a psychology journal, found that laptop use had several negative effects on student learning, including lower overall performances of not only the laptop users but also their neighbors.
While academics continue to research the effectiveness of laptops, universities are having to determine what's best for their students.
The University of Chicago Law School has banned laptops from classrooms and is perhaps the only institution with such an expansive ban. Some universities, like Bentley College, have installed kill switches with which professors may turn off Internet access in their respective classrooms.
Liz Aebersold, director of communications in the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, said switching the Internet off would have legal repercussions at UT because the access points on campus are centrally owned, but the wireless spectrum is not. She said that switching off the Internet in certain classrooms would also be tricky because students would likely pick up signals from nearby classrooms.
"The stance that we take is that students have paid to come to college, so it's their choice to use technologies the way they want to," Aebersold said. "If students want to surf the Web rather than listen, it's their choice."
Green, the director of networking, said disengaged students are "an issue of classroom management and not technology."
Dickens, a studio art sophomore, was nearly put on academic probation, but after ditching her laptop, her GPA went up 0.5 points the following semester.
"I thought that by going to class, I was being a good student," she said. "But the reason we go to class is to listen and retain information."
