In the News: Laptops Are Great. But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting.

In the New York Times, Susan Dynarski reviews the research on the use of laptops in classrooms.

A growing body of evidence shows that over all, college students learn less when they use computers or tablets during lectures. They also tend to earn worse grades. The research is unequivocal: Laptops distract from learning, both for users and for those around them. It’s not much of a leap to expect that electronics also undermine learning in high school classrooms or that they hurt productivity in meetings in all kinds of workplaces.

She describes research conducted at West Point that found that students taking an introductory economics class where laptops or tablets were allowed performed substantially worse than students in classes where electronics were not allowed.

That study, “Should Professors Ban Laptops?” by Susan Payne Carter, Kyle Greenberg and Michael S. Walker, appears in the Fall 2017 issue of Education Next.

— Education Next

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