The conclusions of the mentioned researches seem to be crystal clear. So I think we can take those for granted. But the question still is what we should do with all this information. Should laptops really be forbidden during lectures at Universities? Or should we just learn how to deal with them?
Professors have opposite opinions
What strikes me in the news report of Nieuwsuur is that even the professors have opposite opinions about the question of how to deal with this.
Full professor Dutch Philology Yra van Dijk of the University of Leiden decided to ban laptops from her classroom after she read this research. The reason for that is that she is of the opinion that it is her responsibility to teach the students how to study. The beginning of each learning process is according to her concentration. The University of Leiden wants to debate about this with several professors and students and doesn’t have a general policy on this yet.
However, Jeroen Janssen, assistant professor Didactics at the University of Utrecht has a totally different opinion. He says that in his classroom there are only adults and thus they have the responsibility to make sure that they study well.
Why are we only talking about students and Universities here?
The first question that comes to my mind when I read all of this is that why this discussion is about adults, students and Universities only. Pupils at secondary schools and at professional educational schools also need to be also to learn how to study well. And don’t forget all the adults who take a course.
I can imagine that pupils in all these other learning environments will start to use a laptop or tablet more and more often. In that case they should have the right to know too why it would be better to take notes on paper. So we should include all learning environments in this discussion.
Children learn that media is important in school, adults get a different message
When I say all learning environments, I also mean children, otherwise we’ll create an unnecessary difficult situation for them. At this moment pupils in primary school already learn how important media is because they do more and more assignments on tablets and other media are also more and more integrated in their lessons. So in this age children learn at a very young age that media is essential to learning.
But when these children grow older they should suddenly learn that media isn’t always helpful. We can wonder whether they would even believe it by then. So we need to teach children at a young age already that media can be helpful at some moments but not at other. Only then they can really make a deliberate choice about whether to use a laptop to take notes when they are adults.
So I think that Janssen simplifies the situation too much when he says that his students are adults and should make their own choices. For at this moment, most of them just don’t know better and thus they just do what is most convenient.
Make this part of the educational system
So I would say, this should be a part of the whole educational system. As a start they could integrate this in lessons on media literacy in primary and secondary schools. In primary school they could learn playfully that they remember better when they take notes on paper. In secondary school they can get more concrete information about this.
However, when the pupils only hear about this during media literacy but in other classes all kinds of media are still being used, we will be giving a mixed massage to the pupils. So also primary and secondary schools need to think about their policies on media in their classes in general. Then the pupils will really understand what this is about and then, when they are adults, they will be able to make their own choices when they are going to college, University or when they are taking a course.
What are your ideas?