Teknoids

Since I seem to be quoted in the ABA article, I will respond on Duke's behalf.

Although the article suggests that Duke did away with its ownership requirement because "so many profs had some ban on laptops that students began to question why the machines were required," our requirement was actually removed because it was no longer necessary to facilitate students' ability to obtain financial aid for laptop purchases, and because since the students all owned laptops, they felt it was no longer necessary to tell them to do so.

Our students had expressed concerns about the ownership requirement because of faculty restrictions on laptop use in the classroom, but after doing a survey of courses offered in fall 2005, we learned that, while about half of the first year instructors restricted use (not all were outright bans), laptops were allowed without restriction in about 72 percent of upperclass courses. Classroom restrictions were not a significant factor in the decision to remove the ownership requirement, which was made upon the recommendation of a faculty/student committee.

Ken Hirsh, Wayne Miller, or I will be happy to answer any questions about our practices at Duke.

Thanks,
Dick Danner

Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2007 08:10:52 -0500
From: Elmer Masters
Subject: [teknoids]
To: Teknoids
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Seems the ABA Journal has seen fit to publish a rather inflammatory
piece on the growing bans on laptops in the classroom. The gory details
are here: http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/profs_kibosh_students_laptops/

According to the article, Chicago-Kent is questioning the utility of
laptops in the classroom and Duke dropped its laptop requirement because
of increasing faculty pressure to ban laptops in the classroom. Is this
true? Anyone from Kent or Duke care to comment?

Being the curious guy that I am, I'm wondering what is going on here.
Are faculty really revolting against the use of laptops in the
classroom? Is this just tabloid journalism? Is faculty pressure on the
use of laptops in the classroom really affecting law school computer
requirement policies? Is there a fire behind all this smoke?

As a guy about to roll out a mess of cool web tools that would be neat
to use in the classroom, I sure like to know if I'll be feeling the love
or the wrath of the faculty at AALS in January:)

Finally, let's do a poll: http://www.teknoids.net/poll/laptops2007 Let
teknoids know if you're school requires laptops or not. The poll is
open for the next 2 weeks.

Thanks,
Elmer.
Yes, this was written on a laptop, in my kitchen...