Miracle or Menace: Teaching and Learning with Laptop Computers in the Classroom

Abstract

10 All freshmen at the United States Military Academy at West Point now have laptop computers to use in class. Several instructors for the General Psychology course that all freshmen take are currently incorporating classroom learning activities and strategies to leverage the technology tools available with laptop computers. The purpose of the study reported here was to examine teaching techniques, lessons learned, and student performance during the integration of laptops in teaching and learning psychology in the traditional classroom. The goals behind introducing the laptops were to enhance teaching practices and efficiency and positively influence student learning and attitudes toward psychology. We initially attempted to integrate laptop technology into the classroom during our summer teacher training sessions. We soon discovered that the returning faculty members participating in these training workshops were not very motivated to integrate the technology. Many instructors felt uncomfortable teaching students who were actively pounding keyboards to take notes. Additionally, many faculty members believed that students would engage in activities not related to the class. Giving up this control in the classroom was not acceptable to some faculty. One faculty member stated outright, “My students won’t be using those laptops in my classroom.” Initial faculty attitudes had an adverse impact on our attempts to get students using laptops in the classroom. Another critical limitation influencing faculty adoption of laptops was whether faculty members actually owned a laptop. During our faculty training, we used loaner laptops, returning them before classes started. We soon discovered that faculty members were much more likely to attempt using laptops in the classroom if they actually had a laptop. Fortunately, we acquired four laptops for the four instructors who participated in this study. Subsequently, when we issued laptops to the six new instructors on our faculty this year—the semester after this study was conducted—all six aggressively worked to integrate laptop technology into their classroom strategies. The students provided another hurdle to laptop integration. Because this was the first year that the academy had laptops in the classroom, the students also were quite dubious about the utility of this technology. They definitely saw advantages to doing e-mail and instant messaging in class, but the advantage of using the laptop as a tool for learning was not evident at first. Several students simply resorted to taking notes with paper and pencil, a closed laptop beside them. What follows is an overview of our quasi-experimental1 study examining Miracle or