The school of the future

By Carl Bialik

While the Yale School of Management innovates, Yale College watches.

In the fall of 1996, the Yale School of Management started requiring every incoming student to own a laptop that meets certain minimal specifications.

One year later, the SOM has changed, but not dramatically. Students do benefit from the flexibility laptops provide by using them for group projects, checking e-mail , and completing class assignments. But they do not bring laptops to every class, or even most of their classes.

Whether SOM classes will someday fully incorporate laptops into classes is uncertain. For now, Yale College is watching the results of this policy carefully, as it is considering instituting a similar one for its own students.

Business warriors wielding laptops

SOM Deputy Dean Stanley Garstka wrote in a recent e-mail to The Yale Herald Online that "the main impetus [for the laptop policy] is the extensive use of computers in the corporate wor ld," and more practically, that the School of Management had to remain competitive with other business schools.

But these seem more like reasons to require students simply to own computers; requiring laptops in particular implies that they are somehow integral to the way classes are taught. And some classes do use laptops extensively. Professor Will Goetzmann teaches an Investment class in which students download information from the Internet, then use that data to construct portfolios in class. Laptops "really bring the process...alive for the student," he wrote to The Yale Herald Online in a recent interview.

However, the SOM currently has only two classrooms with electrical outlets and Ethernet jacks at each seat. Students mostly use their laptops outside of class to retrieve class information via e-mail or from class web sites, complete class assignments, and work on group projects.

Some students believe that laptops are helpful only due to the inadequacy of SOM's public computing facilities. "If the lab were staffed with enough computers as some schools have, there would be no need to purchase one for yourself; it would then be optional with perhaps a `strongly encouraged' note," Lisa Pollina, SOM '98, said.

According to Goetzmann, the SOM plans to add data wiring to more classrooms. He believes that as more classrooms become wired and more professors brainstorm innovative ways to use the wiring, use of laptops will increase in class. "We always have the option of not using the [technology] until an application is developed, but not vice versa," he said.

The future of Yale College

Yale College will soon be in a position to test wired classrooms for itself. Linsly-Chittenden Hall (LC) is being renovated for the first time in 50 years, and Information Technology Services (ITS) is taking advantage of the opportunity.

LC will be equipped with state-of-the-art technology and upgradeability. LC 101, one of the lecture rooms, will feature Ethernet jacks at every desk, and will have professional-quality video and audio systems. The other lecture room, the two classrooms, and the seminar rooms will be equipped with the capability to have wireless transceivers added, so that laptops, once equipped with special adapters, can connect to the network without wires.

But Information and Technology Systems Director Dan Updegrove said in a recent interview that he does not believe the wiring will necessarily be used when the new LC opens up next fall. Instead, ITS is planning for the future. "It is dramatically cheaper to do things while the walls are open instead of after," Updegrove explained. Philip Long, director of Academic Computing Services, said that it is critical that the technology in LC have a life span of 20 to 25 years.

However, some professors have already thought about how to incorporate LC's new capabilities into their classes. William Kelly, Chair of the Anthropology Department, said, "If I were teaching in a classroom that was wired, I would walk in with my lecture notes on my laptop, and give them to students electronically, rather than staple and collate."

Updegrove, while stressing that there is no "cookbook" on how to use such technology in a class, as it has never really been tested, mentioned a few possibilities. In one, a professor would present a theory, and then students would be given fifteen minutes to use information from anywhere in the world to disprove the theory. In another, students would answer a short quiz to satisfy the professor that they understood the first part of the lecture before he moved on. These possibilities are exciting, but would they mean a mandatory laptop policy like that of SOM?

According to Updegrove, increasing numbers of students are choosing to bring laptops to college with them, and there may soon be enough uniformity of computers on campus without mandatory measures. Still, in order to ensure that enough students in a particular class have laptops that support the proper software, a mandatory laptop policy would likely be necessary.

For now, though, ITS is watching SOM closely. Long and Updegrove regard SOM's laptop policy as an experiment that may reveal how best to use wired classrooms.

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