Ubiquity: Laptop Culture and the Demise of the Campus Computer Lab
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!
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?
links for 2009-04-01 - Kevin Bondelli’s Youth Vote Blog
April 1, 2009 @ 2:30 pm
[...] Digital Natives » Ubiquity: Laptop Culture and the Demise of the Campus Computer Lab [...]
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.
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.
Fitzroyalty
April 8, 2009 @ 9:19 pm
The social aspect is important. I loved working on my PhD in a postgrad only lab, where we’d chat, eat, write, and wonder if Anais Nin and Jeff Buckley would make a hot couple… doing that physically alone with headphones, facebook and laptop is not the same.
retirement communities
April 25, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
I second the social aspect of the lab. Maybe I’m old school that way.
David Husband
May 10, 2009 @ 1:47 am
I think getting rid of computer labs would ultimately be a short sighted maneuver designed for cost-cutting purposes. I make extensive use of computer labs, even though I own a laptop, because I find the social atmosphere congenial, the presence of a larger monitor and a computer keyboard useful, and the ability to print cheaply and easily a better alternative to using my own printer. At my school, the College of William and Mary, we have multiple computer labs across campus which are filled to capacity often throughout the day (30-40 computers in each lab), so that it is often hard to find an open computer. I think that computer labs fulfill a valuable social role by providing a place where students can connect to the internet and access the resources of the online community, while also having access to a community of students around them, as well as the resources of a library and research desk nearby as well. Many students, including myself, sometimes bring a laptop, and thus have two different computing stations, in order to access different programs, platforms, websites, and documents simultaneously…
Jaime S.
October 1, 2009 @ 6:23 pm
Interesting post! In addressing the issue of whether or not campus computer labs are still relevant it might be interesting to turn to international schools and “labs” in general to see what affordances these spaces provide for groups—students and other—in communities in both urban and rural international communities.
Beyond my personal experience with computer labs from undergraduate and now graduate school I do not know too much about how spaces of computer technology are utilized except a bit on the PC-Bangs of East Asia where the businesses have multi-functions and may enable the visitor to eat/drink/sleep/bathe all within the space of a “computer lab” . . .Throughout my studies, the idea that you would drink or eat at a computer was often forbidden and at best a policy that was overlooked but with shifting relationships between technology and users (I think on a basic level I would argue that we are becoming more and more familiar with mixed spaces) it may be interesting to think about how we may alter the construction of computer labs so that they are not, as you quite accurately say, “kind of dismal places to begin with.” Additionally, with the expanding adoption of social technologies, perhaps the computer labs of the future will become campus centers or, especially in urban schools, provide the similar utilities as a grassy quad area to gather and converse.
I too have always found labs one of the more productive locations to work on projects, despite personally owning the same technology. As commenter Fitzroyalty implied earlier, there is a social aspect that simply makes labs different.
Ken - Singapore Photographer
October 7, 2009 @ 11:31 pm
The virtual computer lab might work as well as the physical version, as long as collaborative tools (video/audio/real-time file sharing) are there to complement it….
The Review Site
November 11, 2009 @ 4:51 am
Good post congratulations.
Beer of the month clubs
November 12, 2009 @ 9:18 am
Computer labs are information centres and not just places for students without computers to go!
It is a nice thought you brought up, however. Out of what I see, a lot of students with laptops head down to the computer labs to work in a good environment, and where internet is fast and free!
Sincerely hope that the computer lab never goes out of fashion. Some of the best times of my student life were spent there!