Despite the distraction potential of laptops in college classrooms, new research shows that they actually can increase students’ engagement, attentiveness, participation and learning.
To achieve this, however, the instructor must set the right stage, says Perry Samson, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences who has received honors for his educational technology work.
He has developed robust interactive student response system called LectureTools that utilizes students’ laptops. A paper about how students report that LectureTools affected their learning is published in the May edition of the journal Computers & Education.
“If you allow laptops in the classroom without a plan for how you’ll use them, you can potentially invite disaster. It’s unlikely that students will be so entranced by class material that they won’t wander off to their favorite social networking sites,” Samson says. “The key is to deliberately engage students through their computers. LectureTools does just that.”
LectureTools is an interactive student response system and teaching module. Instructors at more than 400 colleges and universities have set up accounts to use it.
Samson recently surveyed close to 200 students who, over the past three semesters, have taken his Extreme Weather lecture course that utilized LectureTools. Students reported that while they did sometimes stray from in-class tasks, laptops with LectureTools made them feel more attentive, engaged and able to learn, compared with classes that don’t use the system.
“Our surveys showed that while laptop computers can be a distraction, students of this generation feel that they are capable of productive multitasking,” Samson says.
Through LectureTools, laptops serve as robust “clickers,” providing drastically more interaction than the class polling that clicker-based student response systems offer.
“It is the first successful instance I’ve seen of dramatic use of information technology to augment the real-time classroom experience,” says John King, vice provost for academic affairs and the William Warner Bishop Collegiate Professor of Information.
