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Raghu Rau was braced for a hostile reaction when he made a radical change to his MBA course at University of Cambridge Judge Business School late last year. He was so frustrated with the distraction of his students that he decided to ban laptops.
“You just see the backs of their computers but it’s obvious they are multitasking, checking emails or buying things online,” he says. “I was tired of putting a lot of energy into the class and getting nothing back. Teaching is like stand-up comedy: if the audience is engaged, it’s easy. If there is no reaction, it’s tough and exhausting.”
His new policy mirrors efforts by a number of professors in higher education — and some students voluntarily — to put digital technology to one side to help improve their learning, social life and mental health. Studies appear to support the trend.
Much recent debate has focused on the risks of artificial intelligence in enabling cheating or in fostering “cognitive offloading”, as people delegate their critical thinking to computers. But less attention has been paid to reduced concentration or retention when students engage too much with digital technologies.
In Rau’s case, the laptop ban paid off. Despite a few disgruntled comments, he says his students were overwhelmingly positive. They gave him a strong overall rating for his teaching, and good feedback.
“Didn’t realise this at beginning of term but it really helped me and the rest of the class focus and encouraged discussion,” said one. “Most engaging class by far. Amazing what happens when students are not scrolling on their LinkedIns during class!” wrote another.
Rau is far from a Luddite: he recognises the importance of AI in the workplace, and encourages his students to use the technology elsewhere in courses and even assessments. But he is concerned about digital distraction.
One study of undergraduates showed that even when a mobile phone was turned off and put away in a bag or pocket, students suffered a “brain drain”: they were less focused as they subconsciously reflected on the possibility they were missing posts and texts.
If laptops distract, the effect is likely still more powerful for those who study or attend class online, when the energy and communal experience of the classroom is replaced by a small two-dimensional screen image.
Aside from distraction, some studies suggest that using devices directly in learning has broader drawbacks compared with pen, paper and print. Geetha Murali, head of the charity Room to Read, which produces and distributes children’s books in multiple languages, argues that reading in print is a powerful stimulus to comprehension.
The same is true for more mature readers. Naomi Baron, professor emerita of Linguistics at American University and author of Reader Bot: What Happens When AI Reads and Why It Matters, says: “I earned a dubious reputation by saying to my class: ‘We’re not going to use laptops. We’re going to talk with each other.’ I’ve gone into some classes where I think I’m in the Apple store. I hope there is a growing recognition that all this digital stuff is not necessarily helping.”
She points to work around “screen inferiority”, including brain and eye scans that suggest greater efficiency and better recall and understanding when participants read on paper rather than digitally — albeit marginal. One study suggested that even when students believed they better understood when reading digitally, tests found that in fact they recalled key points and other relevant information better when engaged with print.
Explanations may include a greater facility for absorbing new concepts when reading on paper than when scrolling through information online. The broader range of senses and stimuli involved in reading a book including turning pages or even smelling the paper, could also be important.
However, Baron points out that publishers have increasingly switched to digital formats, and some professors argue that because they are lower cost, they improve accessibility. “There may be greater equity but less learning,” she says.
A final area where computers may hinder learning is in note-taking itself. Students have long used their laptops to transcribe lectures, and increasingly are turning to AI to help. But a study on students at Princeton led by Pam Mueller suggested that while those who type take more notes, they engaging in more “shallow processing”. They are less effective at summarising ideas and perform less well when tested afterwards on the concepts discussed.
Mike Barnett, professor at Rutgers Business School, says that while he has always banned phones in the classroom, the presence of electronic course materials makes it difficult to exclude laptops. “It’s a difficult balance, as once the electronic genie is out of the bottle, it is infeasible to fully contain,” he says. “[I’m] pondering a return to paper only.”
