Ubiquity: Laptop Culture and the Demise of the Campus Computer Lab
Comments: 3 - Date: April 1st, 2009 - Categories: Uncategorized
Last week, Ars Technica asked: When every student has a laptop, why run computer labs? The article reported on the University of Virginia’s recent decision to “dismantle the community computer labs” at the school, after discovering that in 2007, 3,113 out of 3,117 freshmen arrived on campus with computers in tow (the vast majority of which were laptops.) School administrators took a look around, and realized that the computer lab’s moment may have passed. An artifact of a time when colleges were working to integrate computers, word processing, and eventually the Internet into the curriculum, computer labs operated as a kind of talisman against protest: teachers could demand papers be word-processed, because even if you don’t own a computer, the lab meant you had no excuse. The project succeeded: computers, today, are an integral part not only of students’ education, but of their entertainment and social life as well.
As a cost-cutting measure, closing community computer labs on college campuses seems to make sense: unlike grassy quads, computer labs seldom encouraged student happiness or wellbeing; unlike campus health centers, they can now hardly be kept around out of dire necessity. In my experience as a computer user assistant at Harvard, it’s overwhelmingly true that most students arrive at school Harvard with a laptop. [In the comments, Kevin correctly points out that to extend this to all schools would be a massive overgeneralization, considering different degrees of personal computer ubiquity/scarcity at different institutions in the U.S. and indeed across the world. (In my eagerness to confirm the University of Virginia’s observations with my own, I slipped and effectively extended the observation to cover all institutions everywhere—certainly not my intention!) See Kevin’s comment below for a thoughtful discussion & links. I’m especially interested in his entreaty to somehow move beyond running in analytical “Participation Gap”/”Digital Divide” circles, to a deeper understanding of the variety of situations at hand.] And yet, in the many hours I’ve spent at the helpdesk in one of Harvard’s main computer labs over the past few years, I’ve observed that the lab is busy and bustling almost 24 hours a day. Students definitely make use of community computer labs when they’re there; if they don’t have to, and the labs are kind of dismal places to begin with, then what’s the deal?
Over the Digital Natives list this week, we discussed a few possibilities. Computer lab computers, for one thing, tend to have large screens and real keyboards; for certain kinds of graphics work, or prolonged typing, a desktop computer in place of a laptop can make a difficult project slightly less miserable. They also provide a source of overflow computing without the requirement of maintaining a separate distribution network—imagine a college’s IT department trying to loan out, and keep track of, a fleet of laptops for students whose computers have died during finals? Also, though modern Macs are capable of dual-booting Windows and OS X, few students actually do so. Computer labs make it possible for schools to offer students access to operating systems (and the attendant OS-specific programs) that they would otherwise be unable to run.
Computer labs offer a combination of connectivity and escape at the same time: they provide a location, a destination, where all of the necessary technological tools are assembled and maintained. They also establish in student’s minds the existence of a “computer place” on campus—the natural place to gravitate toward when your laptop has gotten a virus, or its hard drive has died, or you’re wondering how to set up your email client. Here, the IT helpdesk is right in the computer lab, reinforcing that relationship.
With laptops all but ubiquitous, community computer labs may seem frivolous. But that very ubiquity, and its inescapability, means that colleges have a responsibility to respect and support the relationship between students and computers. A computer lab sends a strong signal, offers an obvious location to honor and troubleshoot that relationship, and gives students an alternative to squinting at tiny screens. They may not be necessary, but campus computer labs are nevertheless good to have around.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on computer ubiquity, how campus computer culture has changed over time, and anything else that’s on your mind—comment away!
Comment by Kevin R. Guidry - April 1, 2009 @ 7:41 am
Diana, you wrote that “In my experience as a computer user assistant at Harvard, it’s overwhelmingly true that most students arrive at school with a laptop.” I respectfully submit that it is difficult or impossible to generalize rates of computer ownership across all institutions from observing only Harvard students. Although one could make the typical “they’re privileged Harvard students!” the same argument could (and should) be made for any data collected at just one institution. UVA’s reliance on single-institution data is defensible because their decision is narrowly focused only on that particular institution.
For individual students, I suspect that computer ownership is tied closely to SES. Even at the institutional level there is considerable variance depending on the mission and governance of the institution and the typical student that attends the institution (for example, Table 3-6 from the most current EDUCAUSE Core Data Service report shows the variance as a function of types of degrees awarded; see http://net.educause.edu/apps/coredata/reports/2007/, specifically Chapter 3). And, of course, merely focusing on computer ownership misses a lot of critical details. Must we continually rehash the “Digital Divide” vs. “Participation Gap” issues?
Comment by Graham - April 3, 2009 @ 4:59 pm
I can think of a few other good uses for the computer lab in my life:
(1) Printing. I don’t want to buy a laser printer and maintain it, yet some things do need to get printed out. Paying a few cents per page is way better. I am a heavy user of lab printers as a result.
(2) When you didn’t bring your laptop to campus. If a person only needs to check their e-mail once today, why carry the laptop all the time? There ought to be places for this. Kiosk settings are also good, but not so much if you want to spend an hour there.
(3) When the student’s computer is out for repair. Where are these well-equipped students supposed to go when their machine bites it the day before a paper is due?
I think cutting back on labs is reasonable, but keeping a few maintained is essential.
Comment by Andromeda - April 3, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
Like the above, I think this is going to depend a lot on the population. For undergrad populations at generally affluent schools, I think it’s going to be hard to maintain a rationale for centralized, general-purpose computer labs. But as a commuter grad student, even though I own my own laptop, I use campus labs all the time per Graham’s points 1 and 2 above. (I actually use campus computer labs more than I did when I was an undergrad and had a desktop machine, but lived on campus.)
I also think that generalized, central-purpose computer labs aren’t the only type. I expect department-specific computer labs, with specialized and likely expensive software, to stay important for a while, especially in disciplines where teamwork is common. And (as a library science student) I see more and more computers moving into libraries; this seems like a workspace where people don’t necessarily bring their laptop, expect computing resources to be available (some of which may be in-library-only), and, if nothing else, need to be able to look things up in the catalog. I suspect also that campus *printing* facilities will remain important, and those may migrate into libraries as computer labs close.