Of the eight college lecture classes I have attended thus far, seven have banned laptops. The realization that many Northwestern professors ban laptops surprised me; I had expected every class to be full of them. Of all the depictions of college I have been exposed to, almost all have emphasized laptops as necessities. After all, that is why I persuaded my parents to buy me one last summer.
During my first quarter I tried to take notes in class using my laptop, but I found that it was more of a hassle than it was worth. With the constant worrying about whether it was charged and the awkward feeling that I was being super loud, the old-fashioned handwritten method was right for me.
However, just because some people, myself included, aren’t too fond of laptops as a form of note-taking doesn’t mean that everyone in the class should be barred from using them. In my gender studies class, after our professor finished explaining her no-laptop policy, the girl sitting next to me said she relies on her laptop for note-taking because she struggles to keep up with the fast pace of most lectures. Though this may not be the teacher’s intention, banning laptops puts students like her at a disadvantage.
Those in favor of anti-laptop policies in classroom lectures say that, with easy access to the Internet, students will focus on things other than the course and its material, hurting their class participation and performance. They also argue laptops are distracting to others. If I were sitting in front of someone who was using a laptop, my eyes would be constantly drawn to their screen, especially if I saw something interesting, such as the Facebook logo. This would then put me and other students in my same position at a disadvantage.
Even with these concerns in mind, there is a solution. The one class I attended that did allow laptop use did so with one rule: Laptop users were asked to sit on the far side of the room, away from those who took notes by hand. This strategy eliminates the possibility of laptops distracting the students who aren’t using them by completely separating them.
Nevertheless, this strategy does not prevent laptop users from focusing their attention away from lectures. Fortunately, it is not the professor’s responsibility to keep a student focused. Just as I occasionally will get bored and distracted while taking notes the old-fashioned way, so too will students taking notes electronically. While the Internet can be more seductive and disruptive than daydreaming, it is ultimately a student’s personal decision as to whether the course material — and the money spent to access it — is important to him or her.
It is every professor’s responsibility to ensure that each student has the means to succeed in his or her class. Though students with serious disabilities can be granted an exception to use laptops in class, those students who simply write too slowly would not. This complicates the lives of those students, and this could be avoided if laptops were allowed for everyone. It is unfair to take away a tool that can genuinely improve a student’s performance in a class. Instead, instructors should allow laptops and hold students accountable for their decisions regarding them.
Katy Vines is a Weinberg freshman. She can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].
