Laptop

Laptop

Michelle Longley, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Definitions and background

A laptop is an electronic notebook (Barak, Lipson, & Lerman, 2006) that can be used as a mobile device (Kay & Lauricella, 2011).

During the 1990s, several schools within the United States experimented with laptop programs (Russell, Bebell, and Higgins, 2004). These programs had a strong allure to educational administrators seeking to promote the kinds of thinking, learning, and creativity required in the 21st century (Suhr, Hernandez, & Warschauer, 2010).

Decreased prices, wireless access, and increased convenience created popularity in this device (Kay & Lauricella, 2011). Approximately 65% of students bring their laptop to class (Fried, 2008). There has been a movement in many districts toward one-to-one laptop instruction, in which all students are provided a laptop computer, but there is concern that these programs may not yield sufficiently improved learning outcomes to justify their substantial cost (Suhr, Hernandez, & Warschauer, 2010). The use of laptops in higher education is a recent phenomenon (Lindorth & Bergquist, 2010). Preliminary evidence indicates that effective use of laptops is generally associated with courses that are traditionally associated with technology (Kay & Lauricella, 2011).

Affordances

After investigating and comparing beneficial behaviors of laptop use in higher education classrooms, Lindorth and Bergquist (2010) reported positive findings such as note-taking activities, in class laptop-based academic tasks, collaboration, increased focus, improved organization and efficiency, addressing special needs, and researching for supplemental resources. In addition to these benefits, laptop computers offered students with disabilities an opportunity for success that may not be otherwise offered by providing an additional visual representation of learning material (Cengiz Gulek & Demirtas, 2005).

Furthermore, Barak, Lipson, and Lerman (2006) observed that working with subject-specific software programs was a benefit of laptop use in class. Increased learning across a variety of curricular areas was directly related to full access to laptops on a permanent basis, according to Russell, Bebell, and Higgins (2004). Kay and Lauricella (2011) concluded that actively integrating meaningful and structured laptop activities into the classroom would increase the frequency of beneficial laptop behaviors. Through active approaches to teaching, laptops have been shown to assist learning (Finn & Inman, 2004) and in-class laptop use was identified to increase satisfaction, motivation, and engagement among students (Fried, 2008) Laptop use did not impair the overall achievement of surrounding students (Aguilar-Roca, Williams, & O’Dowd, 2012).

Suhr, Hernandez and Warschauer, (2010) completed a study on the effectiveness of 1:1 laptop use for improving teacher and student outcomes. Their findings reported that laptops might have a small effect on increasing literacy scores, with particular benefits in the areas of literary response and analysis and writing strategies (Suhr, Hernandez & Warschauer, 2010). Nicol and MacLeod (2005) studied how technologies in a project design class could support resource sharing within and across project groups. Their inquiry found that laptops helped improve group sharing of resources, supported different kinds of group collaboration and that laptops provided a focal point for the face-to-face discussion of these resources (Nicol & MacLeod, 2005). Finally, Lindorth and Bergquist (2010) concluded that regarding communication, they could observe benefits such as better student-faculty interaction, improved peer collaboration, and instant messaging to peers about concepts covered in class.

Links

User page http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/User:Michelle_Longley