Chicago Pulls Internet Access Out Of Its Law School Classrooms

U of C Law School Takes Classrooms Out of the Internet Age (Chicago Daily Law Bulletin), by Jerry Crimmins:

The University of Chicago Law School has removed Internet access in most of its classrooms because of a growing problem of students surfing the Web on laptops during lectures.

"Every teacher underestimates the amount of Internet surfing going on" in his or her classroom, U of C law Dean Saul Levmore said in an interview Thursday. ...

In a recent e-mail message to students and faculty, Levmore wrote, "Remarkably, [Internet] usage appears to be contagious if not epidemic" during law classes. "Several observers have reported that one student will visit a gossip site or shop for shoes and within 20 minutes, an entire row is shoe shopping. "Half the time a student is called on, the question needs to be repeated," Levmore added. ...

Some students also thought Levmore should have consulted them more about the move. But Levmore said the question is, "How do you best learn? That's for the faculty to decide."

Whether to allow computers at all in the classroom is a continuing debate in law schools. When Levmore proposed to the faculty in early March that the school might cut off Internet access in most classrooms, some faculty responded that computers should be banned, he said. Some professors believe that students who take notes on laptops during lectures interfere with their own learning. "Back in the day when we took notes by hand," Levmore recalled, "some people took fewer notes and learned more."