Catherine Dunham has a word of advice for law school professors fretting over the growing use of laptop computers by students in their classrooms: get used to it.
Dunham, associate professor at the Elon University School of Law, writes about the changing landscape of law school classrooms in a new article, titled “Stretching Toward the Future: A View of Laptop Computers from Both Sides of the Screen.” The article was recently published in the Spring 2007 edition of The Law Teacher, a newsletter by Gonzaga University’s Institute for Law School Teaching.
Today’s students use laptops in class not only for note taking, but a variety of other activities that aren’t always related to the lecture, Dunham says. “The modern student culture includes a certain amount of, as one student called it, electronic doodling,” Dunham writes. “Where you and I might have filled the margins of our notebook paper with kilroys, Star Wars characters, or the insignia from rock bands, these students fill their margins with sports scores and CNN.”
Dunham witnessed this phenomenon recently when she was enrolled as a student in several law classes. Students sent instant messages to each other, surfed the Internet and played computer games during class, but also managed to take good notes and participate in class discussions.
“My forty-something self wonders how that can be,” Dunham writes. “How can they be betting, playing, and talking online while engaged in an active discussion? The answer, I think, lies in the inevitable differences in generations.”
Dunham says she and most of her faculty colleagues are “still in the ancient world of ‘turn off the television while you do your homework.’” From an early age, they were taught that academic work required complete focus on the task at hand; distractions were to be avoided at all costs.
“Not only did my peers and I lack the constitution for some mental multi-tasking, we were taught not to do it by our well-meaning parents,” Dunham writes. “Concentration was the byword for academic success.”
Conversely, today’s students have grown up with an electronic smorgasbord that has programmed them to multi-task to a degree older generations are unable to comprehend. A student in one of Dunham’s law classes told her he needed multiple windows open on his computer screen to keep him alert and paying attention during class.
“He said that if he had to sit there for 75 minutes with just a piece of paper and a pen, he would not take notes well; in fact, he thinks he would just tune out and go to sleep,” Dunham writes. “I would be more skeptical but I sat behind this student for 12 weeks and he took great notes. I even borrowed his notes once and they were not only thorough but also full of insights and questions he jotted down as the lecture progressed.”
Apprehension about laptop usage in the classroom is also related to the professor’s need for affirmation, Dunham says.
“We need to like the sound of our own voices, in print and in person,” Dunham writes. “And we need others to like it too. When students are engaged with their computers instead of with us, we are slighted.”