Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 54, Issue 2, February 2010, Pages 311-320
Computers & Education

Laptopers in an educational practice: Promoting the personal learning situation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2009.07.014Get rights and content

Abstract

In this article an ethnographical study of laptopers’ activities during lectures in a university milieu is analyzed as different kinds of involvements. Through interviews and observations we have focused on how these involvements influence the laptopers’ alignment towards the educational practice. The analysis shows the importance of separating the educational practice and the personal learning situation. Studying students’ learning intentions, rather than certain laptop related activities, we get a deeper understanding of the role the laptop can take during learning activities. Five general characteristics of laptoping are found. Negotiating the laptops’ different roles in the educational practice opens up for an understanding of the students personal learning situation as being more than just listening to a lecturer. Additionally, competent integration of digital tools into the learning situation extends the dimensions of the lecture beyond the lecturing hours and personal note taking. Such knowledge is vital for creating foundations for digital competency in a digitized society.

Introduction

According to the European commission it is clear that digital competencies play an increasing role in the way people learn and that ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is an important asset for nurturing creativity and innovation (European Commission, 2008). What we want to address is a discussion related to the change in the educational practices that is a result of an increased use of one ICT, the laptop, in schools and universities.

The increased use of laptops in schools and universities has not passed unnoticed. On the contrary, during the past years an intense debate has grown with arguments for or against the use of laptops (and other mobile technologies) in the educational practice (Fisher et al., 2004, Fried, 2008, Gardner, 2004, Graham, 2001, Kotz and Essien, 2002, McVay et al., 2005, Young, 2006). However, in discussions about laptop use in classrooms, debaters and practitioners tend to be polarized into an either or position. The Chronicle of Higher Education (Young, 2006), reports that some lecturers welcome the laptop, some ban it, while others allow the laptop as such but close down the network and the Internet access in the classroom. But few report on what measures have been taken, if any to integrate the laptop into the lecture. There are several studies reporting on how laptops interfere with learning in the classroom, how the laptop user use the screen as an interaction shield, how it becomes a focal point, a distraction for other students without a laptop (Fried, 2008, McVay et al., 2005, Prescod and Dong, 2006, Newman and Smith, 2006). However, it could be argued that these arguments treat and compare the learning situation as it was before the laptop was introduced. In most of these cases there has been no or little effort to adopt, or rather, design the didactical practice to take advantage of the new technology. Another striking theme in this literature is the insecurity and uncertainty about the role of the laptop, expressed by both lecturers and student. Neither lecturers nor students seem to have a view on what is appropriate laptop behavior during a lecture, thus they are unsure what actually constitutes competent laptoping during a lecture. By referring to the student and a laptop as laptoper and associated activities as laptoping we want to stress the mediation between actor and technology. It is not enough to analyze the agency (the power to act and have effect) of the human – in this case the student. It is the conjunction of a student and a laptop in action that has effects for learning, and it is therefore necessary to take the unity of human and the mobile computer, the laptoper, as the departing analytical unit for developing an understanding of the role of ICT for learning. With competent laptoping we thus refer to, for example, what is efficient laptoping, what is social accepted laptoping and what are suitable services to support this laptoping in a specific lecture situation. This connects to the wider frame of reference offered by the European Parliament when stating key competences for a lifelong learning. One such competence is digital competence:

Digital competence requires a sound understanding and knowledge of the nature, role and opportunities of IST in everyday contexts: in personal and social life as well as at work (Official Journal of the European Union, 2006, p. 16).

As a consequence of this we argue that it is more to the laptop than to forbid. What is at stake is also a sound understanding of the technology-augmented situation, the technology itself and the expected outcome and opportunities of such a situation, such as acquired digital competencies. As expressed by Young who quotes a teacher at the Loyola Marymount University who argue for the necessity that teachers adapt their practice to the lecture situation: “The laptop isn’t the problem, it’s teachers who refuse to engage students well enough and who don’t set proper boundaries as to what is and isn’t acceptable behavior in their classroom” (Young (2006, p. 27).

To nuance this debate about the pros and cons of mobile technology in educational practices this paper argue that laptoping is a complex and multi-dimensional practice in itself that must be explored in order to understand the alignment between laptoping and the educational practice. Laptop-focus during a lecture cannot be assumed to be good or bad for the students’ personal learning experience. It has to be explored if and in what situations it is supporting or distracting from learning. The question, whether the laptop is a support for or a threat against the educational practice, is not a simple question of either or. The research question is consequently: What characterizes laptoping within an educational practice, such as a lecture, from a student perspective?

The empirical focus of this paper is students’ everyday use of laptops in a Swedish IT-university milieu. The university educates in information technology related programs and courses, and has incorporated laptop use as a natural part of the learning habitat. During four years (2003 to present) the first author has conducted ethnographical fieldwork, including participant as well as non-participant observations and interviews among students performing everyday activities at the department. The main focus has been on the laptopers everyday life at the university. The first author has followed them during situations such as lectures, group work, lunch etc. in order to study the use related to different situations. Our delimitation in this article is the lecture, and this we refer to as an educational practice, a practice with a great deal of historical heritage as well as other expectations from students as well as lecturers. We argue that this more or less institutionalized practice may be seen as separate from the individual students’ learning situation, during a lecture. While the lecture as such, and its related activities, is shared among lecturers and students, there is always an individual learning situation for each student. This situation is affected by the use of laptops. It is developed differently in various situations depending on the role the laptop may take during a certain activity. The laptop, with its different applications and possibilities, its mobile character and of being connected to the Internet through wireless networks, can create a multitude of learning situations for each individual student. In this paper we analyze how this can be understood as different forms of involvement in relation to different learning situations. Thus, this article does not deal with the actual learning outcome or long term consequences of the additional cognitive load that the laptop may introduce onto the student. It is what the student say and do and its relationship towards the content of a certain lecture that is in focus.

The next section gives an overview of related research within the field of laptop use and learning environments. This is followed by the theoretical framework that will guide our view of the relationship between the students involvement and the educational practice. A section on methodology follows, introducing the ethnographical fieldwork and how the study was conducted. The Results are organized around different kinds of involvement, where each section describes a transcript from the fieldwork and puts it into context. In the Discussion the transcripts are related to the concept of alignment in order to understand the complexity of how involvements are aligned in educational practices.

Section snippets

Related research

The first attempts from universities to provide laptops to students may be traced back to 1988 at Drew University (Gardner, 2004). The research within this area has primarily focused on three aspects: (i) the administration and organization of introducing laptops ranging from how to handle finances the importance of use policy’s (e.g. Elliott and Hall, 2002, Gardner, 2004, Kalbert and Rosner, 2003), (ii) if and how the laptop increase the students learning (e.g. Fried, 2008, McVay et al., 2005,

Theory

In order to actually understand the alignment between the laptoper and the educational practice, and its role in the social interaction, we use a framework developed by Ervin Goffman. It is used as an analytical lens to conceptualize the empirical material from a social interactional perspective. Here Goffman’s classic conceptualization of involvement is used to investigate how the students divide their attention between different activities competing for attention. Goffman’s notes on unfocused

Methodology

This study applies ethnographic methods, i.e. an ethnographic perspective on the empirical material (Anderson, 1997, Clifford and Marcus, 1986, Forsythe, 1999, Van Maanen, 1988). The research has been ongoing during four years, studying laptop use among students at an IT-university. The presented excerpts are taken from the first author’s written field notes and interviews with students. The ethnography was conducted from five main perspectives: (i) through interviews with the students; (ii)

Results

The result section is structured around the two overarching involvements, the dominant and the subordinate. Each involvement is represented by a group of related observations that deal with each involvement’s alignment and serve as base for further discussion. Under each involvement, interview quotes and observational excerpts are presented together with a short analysis. These excerpts from observations and interviews give examples of a typical alignments and as such representing the larger

Discussion

In the introduction, we argued for the importance of developing a nuanced view of how to understand the laptop in use – laptoping – during lectures. Laptop use tend to be ubiquitous and therefore it becomes difficult to separate “bad use” from “good use” in relation to the educational practice, as it is traditionally understood. In order to develop an analysis of different kinds of laptop use, we took a starting point in Goffman’s reasoning on different types of involvements. What we saw was a

Conclusion

This article has dealt with the use of laptop computer in an educational practice and how the discussion about laptops during lectures, in recent studies have focused more on students attitudes towards the laptop rather than studies of actual practice. We set out to nuance the debate by giving empirical examples of use patterns, from lecturers at a Swedish IT-University. By applying Goffman’s framework on involvement we have broadened the picture, showing how surfing, chatting and other

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