Laptops: Friend or Foe?

By Sami Ahmed

Laptop computers are becoming more integrated into different universities. Georgia Tech for example has a policy where all students are required to have a laptop. There are professors in multiple universities who argue that laptops should not be used in class due to they can be distracting. Laptops can be harmful if a student is misusing his laptop by getting distracted on non-class oriented things. However laptops have been proven to be more beneficial to a student. For example typing is a faster and more efficient way of taking notes, laptops help with organization and it is faster to find previous class notes through it, and students just have to take care of one laptop rather than having to keep track of multiple papers. Laptops are also very beneficial for classrooms due to the teachers have more options in alternative forms of teaching. The teacher can use the internet in his classroom as a source of information. The teacher can also put important files and documents on the internet for his students to download whenever they need it. These are just examples of how a laptop can be useful in a classroom, but there has been experiments done where classrooms where the professors used computers and allowed their students to use laptops had a higher grade then classrooms where laptops were not allowed. According to a controlled experiment done by http://www.educause.com/, “the average score on exams of students whose instructors used laptops in the classroom was 86.8 percent, while the average score on exams of students whose instructors who did not use laptops in the classroom was 83.5 percent. This difference was statistically significant (p <.05).”

That experiment and other experiments that involve the effectiveness of laptops will never prove the point laptops can be helpful due to the effectiveness of laptops depends on the individual student and the classroom he/she is in. Only the students have control over how wisely they wish to use their laptop. If they wish to get sidetracked from class by getting distracted by unnecessary things on their laptops, the only one paying the consequence would be themselves.