UW-Madison Professor Bans Laptops

By Deborah Ziff, The Wisconsin State Journal

Jun. 25–When first-year UW-Madison law students arrived in Anuj Desai’s constitutional law class last semester, he told them to shut their laptop computers and next time, leave them at home.

The directive may have come as a surprise to students who are used to having a keyboard — and the Internet — at their fingertips in class.

Whether to outlaw laptops in college classes is a question many professors face as the technology becomes ubiquitous and distractions a click away.

“In some ways this is kind of an inevitability we’re facing because of how wired our students are,” said Aaron Brower, vice provost for teaching and learning at UW-Madison. “The issue is, are they using the laptops in a productive way or not?”

Most professors still allow the technology. But the question of their value has arisen, most frequently in law schools, where professors expect their students to participate in classroom discussions rather than bury themselves behind a computer screen. A random survey of 1,246 UW-Madison students in 2007 found 77 percent owned a laptop.

Desai, an assistant professor in the law school and the School of Library and Information Studies, decided to ban laptops in his 50-student introductory course for the first time last semester after becoming frustrated with a sea of Apple and Dell screens.

Because rooms across campus are outfitted with wireless Internet, students could be using the computers to take notes, play games, shop online or even watch movies.

“If I were lecturing for an hour and a half, I wouldn’t care a wit if students have laptops,” Desai said. “But that’s not really what I do in my classrooms. I’m trying to generate discussion. I want students engaged with not only what I’m saying but with what other students are saying so they can respond.”

He doesn’t prohibit laptops in all of his courses, allowing them in smaller classrooms. Ironically, he said he was the only student in his 1991 law school class to own and use a laptop computer. Unlike computers today, it only had word-processing abilities.

Desai, who says he is not a “Luddite,” called the experiment to ban the computers a success.

“That’s my job,” he said. My job as a professor is at times to make an assessment about what is pedagogically good for you.”

But not all professors feel that way. Ann Althouse, another UW-Madison law professor and blogger, said law students are adults and should be able to make their own decisions. She argues students have always found ways to distract themselves, although in the past it may have been with a crossword puzzle rather than Minesweeper.

“Whether there’s a computer or not, some students will be disengaged and bored,” she said. “The best remedy, if you think people aren’t paying attention, is to be as interesting as possible.”

She also points out that students today have adapted to typing on a computer and can take notes quickly that way.

UW-Madison requires law students to own a computer, and on its Web site, strongly recommends that students buy a laptop to take notes. Students may feel cheated if they’re not allowed to use them in certain courses.

When a law professor at the University of Memphis wanted to forbid laptop use in class, students reacted by filing a petition against the policy and a complaint with the American Bar Association.

Arthur McEvoy, a UW-Madison professor in law, history and environmental studies, has kept his courses laptop-free for four years. He argues laptops distract not only the student using it, but others around that person.

“I just remember one student in particular,” he said. “You could tell when she was switching back and forth to solitaire. It was so contemptuous to me and other students.”

McEvoy said he asks students about the no-laptop rule in their course evaluations and “overwhelmingly, the response is either ‘I love it’ or ‘I like it a lot.’”

He recently took a position at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and will be taking his no-laptop policy with him.

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