It’s five minutes into a lecture class. The student in the front row clicks away from their class notes into their Messages app. Next to them, a student is playing today’s New York Times crossword. This scene is unremarkable — it has become the hallmark of the lecture. But should we accept it as such?
The relationship between laptop use and class engagement is deep and well-documented. As early as 2003, a Cornell study called “The Laptop and the Lecture” found that as students multitasked on their laptops more during class, they performed worse on tests related to the lectures. The researchers concluded that “sustained distraction … appears to be the nemesis of the multitasker.” In 2013, a separate group of researchers found that students did worse on tests just by sitting near a computer user during lecture.
At a Brown lecture, whether it’s an economics, art history or physics class, students are more likely to be playing Wordle or browsing Instagram than listening to their professors. As online diversions continue to permeate the classroom, we believe the time has come for a greater number of professors at Brown to seriously consider adopting no-electronics policies.
In a large humanities lecture, a student may not experience any immediate repercussions for texting or browsing the web during class — and they might even be able to complete assignments like quizzes and papers to a satisfactory standard.
But disengagement from lecture, even unintentionally, degrades the quality of the classroom experience for nearly everyone in the orbit of a peer who is texting, online shopping or completing work for another class. In the New Yorker, Professor Dan Rockmore, who teaches mathematics and computer science at Dartmouth, diagnoses the underlying issue as the intractable and “ill-conceived union of twenty-first-century tools … with nineteenth-century modalities.” The tools aren’t going away anytime soon, so professors must change their classroom rules to better serve their students.
Remember that no-electronics policies are nothing new — at Brown or elsewhere. There is precedent for a campus-wide ban on laptops in classrooms at Lander College for Men, which enrolls just short of 400 students. New York University’s Stern School of Business has a similar policy in place. This all-campus approach would run counter to the high degree of autonomy granted to professors at Brown. But that does not bar faculty from governing their classrooms as they see fit — including by setting terms on the use of laptops or other devices in the classroom.
The syllabus of the history seminar HIST1963Q: “Sex, Power, God” asks students to turn off all electronic devices in class and take notes on pen and paper instead. Certain large lectures, such as POLS 0110: “Introduction to Political Thought,” also have no-electronics policies — even though laptop use is more common in such class formats. Oftentimes, these policies are accompanied in syllabi with a written rationale citing the researched benefits of limiting internet usage in class.
What makes these policies so powerful is that they are put in place and enforced by the will of individual professors. They often come as a part of a concerted effort to curate a class’s specific learning environment. Students may end up appreciating these kinds of efforts, whether they know it or not. Thus, we hope to convince faculty who are afraid of upsetting or degrading the functionality of students’ notes to lean into whatever type of uncomfort they are trying to avoid. We encourage professors to continue exercising their discretion as to what policies make the most sense for their courses and teaching goals.
As students, a “no electronics” policy on a class syllabus can be a tough pill to swallow. But a classroom without phones and computers does one important thing: It makes students feel like they’re actually learning. We cannot forget that a large part of our education depends on connecting with the people we’re learning from and learning with. Professors, we hope you’ll take the leap of faith to bar electronics and get your students’ engagement back. Worst comes to worst, if some students complain, you can blame us.
Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board and aim to contribute informed opinions to campus debates while remaining mindful of the group’s past stances. The editorial page board and its views are separate from The Herald’s newsroom and the 134th Editorial Board, which leads the paper. This editorial was written by the editorial page board’s members Paul Hudes ’27, Paulie Malherbe ’26,, Alissa Simon ’25, and Yael Wellisch ’26.
