In recent years, there have been a number of high-profile programs that provided laptops for all students within an education system, some of which have equipped an entire state's student population with portable computers. With laptop prices plunging in recent years, college students have adopted the laptop as their platform of choice at the same time that many universities have been rolling out campus-wide wireless Internet access. Recent studies of the educational value of in-class computer use, however, are suggesting that it's difficult for these programs to improve classroom performance, and there are some signs that a backlash may be brewing.

Mixed results in primary education

The most obvious use of laptops in the classroom has been the adoption of state-wide programs that are intended to create a 1:1 ratio of laptops to students in the classroom. These programs are intended to do everything from improve technological literacy to raise standardized test scores, but a recent analysis of the published literature on the topic suggests that the results are mixed.

The 1:1 laptop programs do seem to help with the students' ability to use the technology they're exposed to, and a variety of studies show what might be an unexpected benefit: improved writing skills. Apparently, the ease of using a word processor, along with the ability to go back and modify things that would otherwise have been committed to paper, helps students learn how to write more coherent and persuasive text.

Outside of these areas, however, the benefits of 1:1 laptop availability are mixed. Different studies have found changes in math and science test performance that were inconsistent. In general, the authors argue, the benefits of laptops come in cases where the larger educational program has been redesigned to incorporate their unique capabilities, and the teachers have been trained in order to better integrate laptop use into the wider educational experience. Both of these processes are resource-intensive, and the degree of their success may vary from classroom to classroom even in a single school, which is likely to explain the wide variability in the results.

Distractions on campus

Similar things are likely to apply at the college level; unless the use of laptops is focused on providing a relevant portion of the lesson plan, they'll (obviously) wind up being irrelevant at best, and a distraction at worst. A description of the use of laptops at the US Military Academy at West Point bears that out. Even in an environment where the students might be expected to be disciplined, the authors describe how instructors learned to identify when students were distracted by surfing the web or engaging in online chat.

Of course, given their popularity with college students, laptops are showing up in classrooms where they have nothing to do with lesson plans at all. The primary justification is obvious: most computer users can type faster than they can write. As long as a class isn't too symbol- or diagram-heavy, a laptop is an efficient note-taking device. Since many campuses now sport ubiquitous wireless access, a laptop can be helpful for looking up relevant information, a process that has the potential to enhance the academic experience.

That's the theory. The reality is that everything from IM chats to online shopping excursions take place over the in-class ether, distracting everyone involved: the student, his or her neighbors, and potentially the professors, who may watch their grip on the classroom slowly slipping away. It's not much of a surprise, then, that a backlash appears to be brewing.

The report, in the Boulder Daily Camera (via the Chronicle of Higher Education), describes how even students are becoming irate about being distracted by their fellows, with one reporting that his classmates were watching movies that competed for his attention. Some professors have instituted total bans on the use of laptops in the classroom. Although these stories all come from one campus, the experience is clearly not unique; in one class I helped teach, a guest lecturer ended his talk with an extended complaint about the regular laptop-notetakers, who he assumed were working on something else.

What's to be done? Outright bans are unlikely to be a long-term solution as students' reliance on digital technology is only likely to increase. One alternative—wandering the classroom to monitor what students are doing (used both at the University of Colorado-Boulder and West Point)—isn't going to work in all contexts.

At CU, one professor is taking a fairly simple approach to dealing with the problem of in-class distraction. She simply registers who the heaviest laptop users in her classroom are, and then tracks their grades. If there are signs that it's a distraction that's reflected in their grades, she points that out to them, and suggests they consider changing their habits. Our own Jacqui Cheng suggests a variation on this: make all laptop users sit in the back, so that they only distract each other, and let them figure out whether their grades are suffering on their own.

In any case, whatever solutions are found now are likely to be a temporary fix, and the shrinking of laptops and rise of smartphones are going to provide the next generation of students with a wealth of new, and harder to manage, distractions.