Laptop Discipline--Controlling Laptops in the Classroom

Laptop Discipline

I suggest three quite different strategies to use in controlling the way laptops are used on your classes. You can find other discussions of using the laptop as a learning facilitator and that is the way to think of laptops, but the discipline issue is constantly there, so here are some tips.

1. The small child. Think of the laptop as a small child. In a formal situation the child will fidget, fuss, and fool (the 3Fs) around—think of kids at churches, speeches, restaurants. This is the kid who will bother their neighbor and try to get them to fool around too. Then think of the same child engaged in an art project cutting out shapes, gluing them together, creating a final product, perhaps a card for a loved one.

The laptop is like a small child. It will fuss, fidget, and fool around unless you engage it. When I teach if I have my students use their laptops for a focused strategy, all the surfing and 3Fs stop. If I just let my students sit there with their laptops unfocused, pretty soon they and the laptops will be 3F. The key, then, is—focus the use of laptops on course activities. This focus may cause some shift in what you do in class, but it will minimize the 3Fs considerably.

2. The back row crowd. One instructor, Ilse Hartung of Speech Communication, Foreign Languages, Theater and Music, solves her laptop discipline issues by sending those that insist both on coming to class and surfing, etc, to the last two rows of the class. The goal is to move the distraction of the constant screen motion out of view of the people who want to pay attention to the instructor. She says that after a while a number of people leave the back rows and move up front.

This is a brilliant strategy. At first, I know, it sounds horrible, like you are simply "caving in" to laptop misbehavior and acknowledging that you can't do much about it. But actually that is not the way to look at it.
First, you have made a statement of support for the many students who do want to focus on the class.
Second, once you "give permission" to fool around and, at the same time, set up a place for it, you take away the traditional "sneaky not pay attention" scenario. In one way the fun goes out of it.
Third, people who are in the last rows can be down a way, or off, your let-me-give-you-special-help list.
Fourth, as one teacher's experience shows, the act of being sent to the back to fool around often causes students to rethink their presence in class, and the way they want to hang out with their "laptop buddy."

3. Turn off a few programs. Another thing you can do is ask students to turn off their IM program while they are in class. You could also ask them to close their Facebook/My Space tab. If they eliminate just those two sources, a lot of the 3 Fs will end.