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Story by Ekaterina Basilaia and Selma Skokic
Video by Ryan Buchan
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The university’s initiative on laptop usage, which requires upper division students, has led the SJSU students and professors to an uncertainty. Students are caught between university policy, which requires them to have laptops, and some professors, who are uncomfortable with students having them.
English professor Cathleen Miller has banned laptops from her classes, because students were not using them resourcefully, she said. Instead they were messing around the Internet, surfing the
Internet and answering e-mails.“I could tell it from the expressions on their faces,” she said. “A few people who abuse the situation can ruin it for everyone."
Professor Miller teaches creative non-fiction writing at SJSU, and thinks laptops are not of utmost importance for her classes.
“For small workshops it can be a distraction, as clicking sounds can disrupt the whole session,” she said.
Shantanu Phukan, a religion and literature professor, has also had problems with laptop use of his students in class. He bans them from his classes because it puts him in a position of policing students rather than serving as an academic, he said.
Phukan stressed eye contact as another reason for his classroom ban. He would rather have students glancing up from a note pad and making eye contact than focusing solely on their laptops while taking notes.
“The quality of the lecture improves with eye contact,” he said. “The computer screen is all absorbing in a way the notebook is not.”
His main reservation is people do all sorts of things other than take notes in class.
“It’s very hard to know who’s and doing what,” he said, adding that he has found people sending e-mail in class instead of taking notes.
Journalism professor Larry Sokoloff also limits laptop usage in his classes. By doing this he said, he achieved to create better learning environment for students.
“I came to that decision after feeling that students weren’t paying attention to the real activity into the class,” he said. “I just had a problem continuing to get worse.”
However, limitations did not affect the front row in the classroom. Students who manage to sit there have the possibility to take notes by using their keyboards instead of pen and paper.
“This is an experiment. I want to see how it works,” he said. “I can make changes from semester to semester.”
However, Sokoloff is willing to change the policy upon students’ complaint.
“I keep waiting for students to tell me that their education is suffering from the ban of laptops,” he said. “But it hasn’t happened yet.”
Jonathan Sandhu, a political science major, 26, said he had never had a professor ban laptop use in classrooms.
“We are college students and if you want to go to school and not do school, that’s your money to spend,” he said. “As long as it’s not disruptive like playing music or loud games and keyboard I don’t see this detrimental to anybody but to a student not paying attention to.”
Sandhu, like many students, was unsympathetic to professor’s concerns with laptops. Many students, like junior political science major Andrae Macapinlac, feel that having a laptop enhances classroom discussions by allowing students to look up subjects on the fly.
He said he uses his laptop helps him keep track of all his assignments and notes too.
“I think it would not be wise to ban the laptops at the classrooms,” he said. “Prohibiting laptops is pointless just because it is not enforceable.”
Tanner Parker, 21, journalism major said that it does not bother him much if the professor does not allow using the laptops for classes.
“But if I have to pay for one for this class, or for any other class,” he said “I want to know why I can’t use it.”
Aaron Miller, advertising major, 23, said he does all his work on the computer, at the class which does not allow laptops he has to hunt for pen and paper.
Even Professor Miller acknowledged the usefulness of laptops.
“It’s an unfortunate situation, because I know laptops can be an efficient way for taking notes,” she said.
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(Ryan Buchan and John Hornberg also contributed to the story.)
(John Hornberg, Selma Skokic, and Ekaterina Basilaia also contributed to the video.)
