CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Gleaming laptops are everywhere at the
University of North Carolina this fall, the result of a new freshman
requirement to revolutionize education.
With teachers guiding freshmen to science databases and political
Web sites, several students click on those screens while others stay
busy with something else: e-mail, computer games, and online video
of TV shows such as ''South Park.''
''Someone's instant messaging,'' whispers Bailey Newkirk during
her English composition class, the teacher a few feet away, as an
e-mail icon blinks on the laptop on her desk.
UNC's laptop mandate, the first at a major public university, is
a test case for the power of computers to enhance, and pollute, a
student's education. While some small private colleges such as
Bentley College in Waltham and Wake Forest University in
Winston-Salem, N.C., have required computers for years, UNC has
catapulted the idea onto public campuses, which have far more
students, professors, and classes.
With UNC as a guide, Massachusetts has taken a major step toward
the electronic classroom: The state Board of Higher Education has
adopted a $123 million proposal to require all 175,000 public
college students to have laptops in the next few years. This week,
the board will vote on a $7 million pilot program to test the idea
at a few colleges next fall.
As colleges in Massachusetts and nationwide seek edgier ways to
engage students and prepare them for jobs, many see these
6-pound laptops as the answer.
UNC officials point out that businesses are heavily recruiting
students at nearby Wake Forest, an argument that deeply concerns
Massachusetts officials, who note that many New England private
campuses require or expect students to have computers. Computer
skills, it seems, may be more crucial to employment than graduating
with honors.
Yet many educators are perplexed that technology has been so
elevated, and decry what they see as a blow to the romance and
intellectualism of learning.
''Most of us are puzzled by the emphasis on technology,'' said
Edward M. Neal, director of faculty development at UNC's Center for
Teaching and Learning. ''It's simply another tool, like overhead
projectors. Sure it's a fancy tool, but it's just another tool.
Whether it's appropriate to require them, and have them in a
majority of classes, is really up in the air.''
Yet officials at UNC, UMass, and elsewhere said computer literacy
will be the new essential for generations. ''This thing is being
pushed into our lives to the point where it becomes your common
device,'' said Marian Moore, UNC's vice chancellor for information
technology. ''It's just a recognition of reality: You won't get
through a research university without having a laptop.''
But, some educators ask, what will this mean for education? Will
young students see Internet sites full of junk as having the
same value as peer-reviewed paper journals? The Web as good as the
library? The simple question for UNC students is whether laptops
improve their education. Several said at least half their time
online was recreational - saving money on phone bills by e-mailing
old high school friends, for instance. After a few months in place,
the laptop requirement becomes a huge convenience, instead of a
clear route to making them better students, many said.
In Bailey Newkirk's composition class, about 20 students use
laptops to analyze popular-culture writing and critique rhetoric on
Web sites, among other things. They download their own essays onto
Internet bulletin boards for classmates to see 19 copies, rather
than pass them out. Yet students in the class are still mastering
subject-verb agreement and are far from conquering persuasive
writing. At a recent class, the instructor, Nandra Perry, gave
writing advice for 15 minutes; two students took notes, while the
rest stared at Perry or at their laptops.
''Having a laptop doesn't make me a better writer,'' Newkirk
said. ''But I was completely computer illiterate before. It forced
me to learn my way around the Internet. Our first two units of
writing focused on the presidential election and the candidates' Web
sites, and it forced me to get involved in the race, too.''
Under the UNC initiative and the Massachusetts plan, students buy
the laptops, with financial aid or loans if they qualify. Chapel
Hill wanted as many freshmen as possible to use the same type of
machine, to standardize computer use, and to simplify
technical-support options.
IBM won the contract over Dell, Gateway, and Compaq, and is
offering two ThinkPad models, priced at $2,200 and $2,900, which
come with Pentium chips, a four-year warranty, a guarantee of parts
and servicing, a CD-ROM, and at least 64 megabytes of memory.
Opting for laptops over cheaper desktop PCs, Chapel Hill
officials said they wanted to give students maximum flexibility to
use computers anywhere. Yet they have had to deal with occasional
thefts, and more often, laptops that are dropped and broken. (IBM
loans out machines when others are under repair.) Money was a major
factor as well: With colleges spending hundreds of millions of
dollars to wire buildings for technology, Chapel Hill hopes to be a
wireless campus in 10 years, relying on cellular transmitters in
each building to link students' laptops instantly to the Web.
''The desktop is dead,'' said Moore, UNC's technology chief, as
she sat beneath a hollowed-out Domain PC that hung on a wire from
her office ceiling.
Describing herself as ''an evangelist'' for wireless laptops,
Moore spoke at lightning speed about the wonders of technology, at
one point holding up software for ActivStats - a multimedia
statistics program - and declaring, ''This is the future!''
That only a few dozen colleges nationwide now require laptops
does not deter her from her vision of a wireless campus.
''Universities are inefficient,'' she said, arguing that presidents
and boards of trustees had to be the prime movers behind such
initiatives.
Stephen P. Tocco, chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Higher
Education, said the business community is crying out so strongly for
skilled workers that ''affordable computer access'' will bring
payoffs for students. He said working adults, especially some in
community college, would have an easier time with education and job
training if they could learn anytime, anywhere, on a computer.
But Tocco added that he is waiting for more advice from business
and education leaders - and the results at places like UNC - to make
a final decision on laptops. Cost is a chief concern, he said,
noting that other computers can be less expensive and that he would
have to build an airtight case for laptops to win funding from the
state and private sources.
''As we walk down this road, we'll be doing what the marketplace
demands,'' Tocco said.
The intersection of corporate needs and academic pedagogy,
however, unnerves some on the faculty at Chapel Hill. While they are
not required to stipulate the use of laptops in their courses, they
report feeling pressure from UNC officials, and through the grants
and accolades given to professors who innovate with laptops. IBM,
for example, is providing $250,000 a year in grants to professors
and graduate students to use technology in teaching.
''We're not being forced to use it, but we're encouraged
strongly,'' said Paul Jones, a journalism instructor who also
oversees a UNC digital library.
Laptops, even indirectly, have changed professors' lives. Some
say they exchange e-mail with students in the midnight hours (as
Jones sometimes does, after walking his dog).
Others are training students to do high-tech PowerPoint
presentations, or using graphics programs to walk through physics
and math experiments in the classrooms. Sarah Shields, a history
professor who teaches a freshman seminar on nationalism and
identity, is having her class create Web sites and presentations on
international conflicts.
''Students are corresponding with Hutus and Tutsis to get their
side of the story,'' Shields said. ''Students can scrutinize
polemics on Web sites and look at conflicting accounts, just like
historians do.'' In her wired classroom, each student recently
logged onto a laptop and went to work: One went to the Napster Web
site and downloaded songs by U2 and other Irish bands for a project
on Northern Ireland. A group edited its 43-screen
PowerPoint presentation on Chechnya: The 200-year tale of conflict
was simply told, with dates and events, and bits of analysis. The
presentation was impressive, while the content tilted more to the
basic. ''This is giving us a lot more opportunity to learn,'' said
Tiffany Gillan, who built the Web site on Chechnya.
Her classmate, Doug Wolfe, who worked mainly on the PowerPoint
screens, said the added value of laptops depended on students'
ambition. ''It's not a cure-all for education,'' he said. ''Just
because you have a computer and look sophisticated, it doesn't make
you sophisticated.''
One freshman in Shields's class, John Carter, said the laptops
added only technological exercises, not intellectual ones. He called
computers ''a total distraction'' in the classroom, arguing that
friends of his e-mail or watch video like ''South Park'' instead of
taking notes or joining in discussions. ''This project's just about
setting up a Web page,'' Carter said. ''It's nice for presentations,
but what do we learn?''
