What's on your screen?

Conversations die down to low murmurs that fade completely as the professor starts to speak and class begins.

The lecture hall is filled with students; some are slumped in their seats, others are rapt with attention and several are half-hidden behind the low wall of their computer screens.

Laptops have many uses in the classroom. Students whip them out to take down notes that they can actually read later. They use them to pull up articles referenced in class, or to look up terms that they don’t understand. But they also use them to update their Facebook statuses, check the scores from last night’s game and chat with their friends.

Standing at the front of the room, staring out at a sea of faces, more and more CU professors are breaking down that low wall and addressing the way students use laptops in class.

Professor Nicholas Schneider of CU’s Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics said he adopted his policy on limited computer use in the classroom when he visited a colleague’s class where laptops were allowed.

“Of 200 students in the classroom, about 20 had laptops,” Schneider said. “Since I sat in the back, I could tell how students were using them. Only 10 to 20 percent of the laptops were doing anything class-related, and the rest were playing games, reading e-mail, downloading music, updating Facebook. One student watched a live soccer game during the whole class period.”

Schneider said it is clear students using laptops in class are mostly multitasking.

He cited “Cognitive Control in Media Multi-taskers,” a 2009 study made by professors at Stanford University that claims the insufficiency of multitasking and its ultimately detrimental effects.  A video summary of the study can be found here.

“Multi-taskers think they pay attention in class while doing other things, but research increasingly shows that multitasking doesn’t really work,” Schneider said.

He went on to say that these multitasking students distract the more serious students around them, and effectively lower classroom standards.

Valerio Ferme, associate professor and chair of the French and Italian Department, also said he finds laptops to be disruptive during class, and doesn’t allow them for this reason.

“I find them distracting for students, because they often end up using it for e-mail and not for course materials,” Ferme said. “I have let students take notes on their laptops if they can pretty much show that they are doing that, instead of checking e-mail.”

Some say, however, that students are only as distracted as they want to be.

Katelyn Smith, a 21-year-old senior English major, said she uses her laptop to take notes in about half of her classes.

“I don’t really use it for the Internet as much as I used to,” Smith said. “I started getting bad grades—started not paying attention.”

Smith also said it can be distracting when people are playing games and doing other activities unrelated to the classroom, but that these distractions are avoidable.

“It really depends how motivated you are,” Smith said. “You definitely could get distracted if you wanted to.”

Elizabeth Williams, a graduate student and part-time instructor in the theater department, said she agrees with this idea of student accountability.

“I expect students to take responsibility for their experience in my class,” Williams said. “If they’re not experiencing the class the way they want to, they have the agency to chance their experience.”

Williams said she previously tried to enforce not having laptops in her classroom, but that there were students who wanted to use them to take notes or who needed them for disability services. She said that trying to police laptop use often wasted valuable class time.

“I’ve got enough to do without being an enforcer,” Williams said. “My sense is that that kind of enforcement is grade school stuff.”

Williams did say, however, that if students complained to her about distracting laptop use, she would make sure to attend to their concerns.

Collin Stellmacher, a 20-year-old sophomore psychology major, said he uses his laptop in all of his classes to stay organized and on top of things.

“I take notes and if the teacher’s talking about something I don’t know about, I look it up,” Stellmacher said. “It’s kind of a useful tool.”

Schneider said he recognizes the genuine desire to use laptops for note taking, and that he honors this by allowing computers within the first two rows of his classroom.

“I really do respect the interests of those serious students who really do use them to take notes,” Schneider said. “Since my teaching style has me wandering around the room a lot, it’s easy for me to see who’s not playing by the rules.”

He went on to say that he appreciates the usefulness of technologically aided learning, but that there is a certain time and place it should be utilized.

“My class has a lot of online interactive homework outside of class, so I’m a big fan of computer-aided learning,” Scheider said. “But it has to be self-paced and is fairly time consuming, so it’s not a good use of class time.”

Ferme said he also acknowledges the benefits of technology in education.

“I think that technology, like other things, can have useful and not-so-useful uses in the classroom,” Ferme said. “It has to be used sparingly because I do believe part of what matters in the classroom is interacting with faculty and fellow students, not with a screen in front of you. That said, I think there are ways that it can produce some helpful findings.”

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Kaely Moore at Kaely.moore@colorado.edu.