There is a lot of talk around college campuses – from the administration side of things – about the possibility of requiring students to have a laptop or a Netbook. Some of the arguments being thrown around for such a requirement are:
- With good wifi on campus, students could do work just about anywhere, not just in dedicated labs. This could save money on repairing library computers, managing the time spent on them (especially on community college campuses where the # of students attending is sky rocketing), and could open up square footage for classes currently designated for computer labs.
- If they’re required they would then be covered by financial aid. This then would give lower-income students a more even playing field with their more affluent peers.
- It encourages “portable academic study” which these skills will obviously be more and more necessary moving forward.
- All books could be purchased in soft-copy format, ultimately saving money for students – potentially a LOT of money.
Some of the questions being posed are:
- Netbooks often don’t have enough memory.
- What about students that only take one class? Would they have to pay for a laptop (if they don’t have one) and pay more for it than they did the class?
But, for me, I’m wondering if students would pay attention in class. My hunch is their Facebook profile would get much more traction than their Word doc or excel spreadsheet. Aren’t cell phones a distraction enough?
Any thoughts on this? Have you heard of this happening on campuses near you? Is this a good thing?
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Chuck Bomar is pastor of Colossae Church in Portland, Oregon and founder of CollegeLeader (
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I went to Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, MO. When I was a junior (04/05 school year) they added laptop rental fees to the cost of each class and then checked out laptops to each student. NW does things a little differently anyway – they charge a $5 fee for each class and then loan you the required text books. Workbooks and any other materials must still be purchased, but it did cut down on the out-of-pocket expense at the bookstore each year.
I do not think the laptops were any more of a distraction than anything else. If students are going to find something else to do in class, they don’t need a laptop to accomplish that. I feel that laptops really enhanced the learning in so many ways – it allowed everyone to be on the same page in class, meet and do work on projects anywhere on campus, and never have an excuse for not having work with them. Overall, I think that laptops are a great idea and making them part of the cost of each class so they can be paid for with financial aid is a huge help for many students!
stella, i’m not understanding your question. could you elaborate?
rachel, wow, that is a bit different. but i like it. i agree that the laptop itself isn’t the issue for distraction, but it seems like full internet access in every class could be. agree? i also agree that they can get internet other ways – like i mention in the post – but your point as to no excuses for not having work with them is interesting.
I went to Oklahoma Christian University and they kind of pride themselves on being at the forefront of the tech. movement on campuses. When I went there, we all got Dells passed out to us at orientation that we keep after we graduate. Beginning last year, they began giving away Mac Books accompanied with either iPhones or iPod Touch depending on the student’s existing cell plan.
The technology is really great in many ways. I know now, professors can offer quizzes and things of that nature on the iPhone and check for attendance that way, but I have to admit that it was often very distracting having that computer right there with me for every class. I started out there all honest and refused to succomb to the tendencies of many of my classmates, but it didn’t take long before I was playing Oregon Trail, surfing facebook, or any number of other things.
Knowing what I know now, would I do it again though? Yes. I just really enjoyed being able to do so many things with technology that other institutions weren’t. At some point students need to be able to take responsibility of their own education. If they don’t want to work and allow themselves to get distracted, then that is their choice, but they will pay the consequences for it.
I understand that putting that kind of access in each class is a HUGE difference for some people – I guess that it wasn’t all that odd for us because it wasn’t a new thing. Before NW started checking out laptops, there was access in each class if you had your own computer.
I wish I went to a college that would give me an iPhone! That sounds awesome – and a great tool if used properly!
I went to UCDavis and there are tons of students using their smartphones on facebook and twitter and online games and thousands of other things that they probably shouldn’t be for class, but that has become part of the learning curve, I think. We had to figure out ways to balance our studies and the world around us on a regular basis, just as members of today’s workforce do, and by having “practiced” with laptops or smartphones the balance is a simpler task, and we know what’s appropriate. More often than not, students who don’t learn to balance aren’t doing as well in their classes as their peers who are balancing. Finally I’d like to add that having internet access can be more helpful than harmful if used correctly. In college I used the internet to capture images for my notes that would help me remember things later, If I wasn’t sure what a professor was talking about I could IM a classmate and ask them what they thought the professor meant if they weren’t going to be letting us ask questions yet, I could look up words I didn’t quite understand, or I could go to webpages of organizations that we were talking about and I could bookmark them for later.
I think it’s important that college kids have laptops because professors are starting to require work to be submitted online, nothing is handwritten anymore (with exception to in class exercises), and I’ve seen far too many college students struggle because they don’t have a laptop, or they have to jump through numerous hoops and work a job 20 hours a week on top of an already heavy courseload in order to get a laptop, easily these students are at a severe disadvantage, and allowing financial aid to compensate for that would make it a more even playing field.
My name is Brandon and I am a college minister at Northwest Missouri State University, where the Rachel above said she went. (I don’t think we know each other…)
But yeah, each student is loaned a laptop. And I always hear about students surfing the web and spending a lot of time on Facebook during class. However, if laptops weren’t in the classroom, most students would find themselves distracted with cell phones and texting or any other number of things.