Legal Commentary

Among those who want to ban laptops because of a dislike of stenographic notetaking, any proposal always includes some mechanism to enable students to obtain mostly-stenographic notes. Eugene Volokh's new policy provides that one volunteer student in each class will take notes that will be made available to the class. I am experimenting this semester with recording and providing audio files for each class (when i can get my MP3 player to work). Others make PowerPoint slides available, etc. Two common themes in all this.

One is an assumption that banning laptops will not break students of their (what we believe problematic) addiction to verbatim notes, which is what we are using to justify prohibiting each student from taking (verbatim) notes on her own. Is the assumption that forcing students to take "better" notes (danger quotes intentional) will not work and they will need to get their transcripts some other way? And the only way to sell a no-laptops policy is to ensure they get their stenographic fix another way? If so, I think the paternalism objection falls away somewhat--we no longer are doing iit "for their own good" (i.e., teaching them how to take notes the "right way"), but only to create the discussion environment we (as professors) want, which we can do however we think best (through our choice of classroom styles or through our choice to look at faces and not laptop backs). The assumption seems to be they are not going to learn to take notes any differently.

Second, as an e-mailer noted about my use of audio recording, these alternatives create the perverse incentive to skip class. Students need not go to class to get the notes they need--they can just download the audio file or get the common notes from the designated notetaker. I believe (and hope) that some combination of grading class participation, rigorous attendance policy, and my conducting an interesting and entertaining class on an interesting subject takes care of that. But it is an interesting example of unintended consequences--in taking steps to enhance the quality of the in-class experience, we give some students a reason/justification not to show up for the experience.