Erin Dillard - Q & A Format

Many professors have an opinion about whether or not laptops are useful for individual students in the classroom. With the Internet providing access to a multitude of distractions, some professors have begun to wonder whether students are engaged in class. In the Q&A below, UGA faculty question if this is a problem, and if so, what should be done about it?

Sonya Collins, a freshman composition instructor who has been at the University of Georgia for a year, and Richard Neupert, a film studies professor who has been at the university for 16 years, weigh in on how they feel about laptops in the classroom.

Question: Have you noticed students paying more attention to the laptop in front of them than the lecture during class time?

Collins: Students in my class were required to use a website called EMMA to hand in papers and do most of their work on. But with one particular class, I noticed that everyone was on Facebook or Instant Messenger the entire time.

Neupert: Really just in the last three years, since the University went wireless. I had a student win an online poker tournament one time. I was in the middle of lecture, when all the sudden a group of students in the back began to cheer. They were just all watching this one student, rather than paying attention.


Question: So you have never thought to have any rules against it?

Collins: When it became too much of a problem, I attempted to fade out laptop usage. I told them to close their laptops when they didn’t need them. I hated it, because I felt like I was patrolling. I wanted it to be a room full of adults; I felt like a high school teacher.
Neupert: I am just not really sure it’s my job to patrol it. I can remember when students still asked if it was OK to use laptops in class. The only time I don’t allow it is during films. No electronic devices can be used during movies or the student will be dropped from the class.

Question: So do you think laptops are ever useful in class?

Collins: I think it’s a shame on the student side, because there are a lot of advantages to having laptops in class. The class I had trouble with was freshman class, and those students may be better about it now.
Neupert: Some things are great, some students are just too dependent upon. People are so constantly interwoven. It becomes too much of a distraction.

Scott Shamp, the director of the New Media Institute at UGA, understands why this can be a problem, but he also knows that it cannot be beat. He has his own opinion on how to deal with it.

Question: Have you noticed students paying more attention to the laptop in front of them than the lecture during class time?

Shamp: I don’t believe that you can make people focus. Young people today live in a totally different environment. Technology has made the walls to class more permeable, it’s not a sealed environment.

Question: So you have never thought to have any rules against it?

Shamp: I do not suffer under an illusion that students are paying more attention to me. There is no way to do away with it now. Professors are fighting a losing battle against technology. They are not put in there to be hall monitors. It’s not successful to tell them to shut their computers. It alienates them.

Question: So do you think laptops are ever useful in class? How can you make them more useful?

Shamp: I have had students stop me in lecture because I had gotten something wrong. They had been doing research on it while I was lecturing. I think the faculty has to up their game and create a more exciting, stronger visual environment. Instead of fighting it, the best professors find a way to use it.

Edited by Amanda Duvall