Legal Research

Survey Gets Law-School Students' Thoughts on Laptops

By jlutz99

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article titled: Survey Gets Law-School Students' Thoughts on Laptops, Writing, and Ethics. The article discusses the role of laptops in law schools as well as writing and ethics and was based on a report titled: The 2008 Law School Survey of Student Engagement. Here's an excerpt:

Students who used laptops for class-related activities, like reading case briefs or taking notes, were more likely than students using laptops during class for other purposes to be engaged in classroom discussions, synthesize concepts from different courses, and work hard to meet faculty expectations, the survey found.

The trick for professors, of course, is to ensure that students are actually using computers to study law.

The survey, now in its fifth year, is administered by the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University at Bloomington and measures various aspects of the law-school experience, including how students spend their time and how well they have learned. Participating schools use the information to assess their performance and develop practices to better teach law.

Read the Chronicle article here.

There's more information on the report here.

The survey results are here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Full post as published by FSU College of Law Library Blog on January 07, 2009 (boomark / email).