Review by: Reichert, Raimond (2004-08-09)

The authors report on a survey which explored student reactions to a campus-wide laptop initiative. The results demonstrate that expectations are not always fulfilled, and they provide a reality-check for making better informed decisions on such strategic matters. A 120-items survey was constructed to explore themes such as students’ reactions to the laptop initiative, impact on academic endeavors, impact on communication with peers and faculty. This review highlights some results found in the wealth of resulting statistical data.

The most important conclusion by the authors is that the major factor affecting student perception of the value of their laptops to their academic success is their perception of the quality of faculty utilization of the laptops for teaching. This is consistent with findings at other campuses. The problem is that 51% of respondents disagreed that faculty demonstrated how the laptops could enrich their experience. Also, 48% disagreed that teachers strongly encouraged the use of laptops outside of class, and one third of the students never experienced classroom use of laptops.

More than half the students felt their teachers did not incorporate laptops effectively in their teaching. This is reflected in the most common uses of the laptop which were writing papers and notes, accessing the Internet and the institutional website. There was no mention of laptops being used for computer-supported collaborative work or in settings involving interactive learning environments.

Even though one must not over generalize the results of any such survey (based on data from a small, religiously affiliated campus with mostly commuter students, where the demographic profile of survey participants differed somewhat from the student population), the results highlight that the biggest challenge in technology-based pedagogical innovations is developing new pedagogical patterns and getting faculty on board to adopt both the technology and the new pedagogy.