Spring Break
Across the country, professors curb laptops in class
Ashley Reich - Daily Trojan, USC
Issue date: 4/25/08 Section: News
Laptops are beginning to be banned in business meetings and university classrooms across the country, as professionals and professors are becoming frustrated with students and co-workers making more eye contact with their computer screens than with each other.
This trend has begun to take hold at USC as well, with many professors, especially those in the USC Gould School of Law, banning their students from taking notes on their computers.
"It's a relatively new trend in law schools across the country," Scott Altman, vice dean of the Law School, said. "The view of the administration is that as with almost any teaching technique, faculty should have the discretion to set the general rules in the classrooms, and so we support different faculty members who want to experiment with different teaching methods and styles, including banning laptop use."
While the law school has no official school-wide policy against laptop use, students are discouraged from using the Internet in class because of the distractions it poses.
"There are many potential disadvantages regarding laptop use; some students are watching movies or playing games or are on the Internet and doing things that distract their classmates. They may be IMing each other so it's like a more systematic way of passing notes and that can be very distracting," Altman said.
Some professors have tried to discourage students from surfing the Internet during class by blocking Internet access inside specific classrooms.
"We got enough requests that they said they didn't want people surfing the Internet during class so we put them near our large lecture halls," Zazrin Len, a representative from the IT department at the Law School, said. "But it's very hit or miss, it's more like diluting the signal instead of blocking it."
The increasing amount of wireless access throughout the campus also makes this process more difficult, Altman said.
"We used to be good at blocking the Internet, but as wireless has become more pervasive throughout the campus, our capacity to block Internet in classrooms has become less," he said.
This trend has begun to take hold at USC as well, with many professors, especially those in the USC Gould School of Law, banning their students from taking notes on their computers.
"It's a relatively new trend in law schools across the country," Scott Altman, vice dean of the Law School, said. "The view of the administration is that as with almost any teaching technique, faculty should have the discretion to set the general rules in the classrooms, and so we support different faculty members who want to experiment with different teaching methods and styles, including banning laptop use."
While the law school has no official school-wide policy against laptop use, students are discouraged from using the Internet in class because of the distractions it poses.
"There are many potential disadvantages regarding laptop use; some students are watching movies or playing games or are on the Internet and doing things that distract their classmates. They may be IMing each other so it's like a more systematic way of passing notes and that can be very distracting," Altman said.
Some professors have tried to discourage students from surfing the Internet during class by blocking Internet access inside specific classrooms.
"We got enough requests that they said they didn't want people surfing the Internet during class so we put them near our large lecture halls," Zazrin Len, a representative from the IT department at the Law School, said. "But it's very hit or miss, it's more like diluting the signal instead of blocking it."
The increasing amount of wireless access throughout the campus also makes this process more difficult, Altman said.
"We used to be good at blocking the Internet, but as wireless has become more pervasive throughout the campus, our capacity to block Internet in classrooms has become less," he said.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Lonnie L
posted 4/30/08 @ 1:18 PM EST
I wish my co-workers would read this article so they don't get busted anymore.
Cindy C-M
posted 4/30/08 @ 1:23 PM EST
Yea, what Lonnie said...
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