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Classes set to hit the ... laptops
By MAUREEN BYRNE
© St. Petersburg Times, SEMINOLE -- Buying textbooks for college can be pretty darn expensive. Yet students enrolled in three popular classes at the St. Petersburg College Seminole campus won't have to spend a dime on books. All they'll need is a laptop. In the campus' latest attempt to blend technology with a traditional classroom setting, students will attend regular classes but will access all assignments, class materials and course work through the Internet. "We try to offer people all sorts of options," said campus provost Jim Olliver. "I thought this would be a great concept of blended learning where you give students the opportunity to meet face to face and also learn Internet skills. It teaches them not only the subject matter but how to use this tool in their information gathering." The "laptop" classes are Composition I, American National Government and Western Humanities II. Students can register for one or all of the classes but are encouraged to enroll in all three. SPC has offered alternative styles of learning for years. In the 1970s, the college began providing some of its classes on television, allowing students to learn from their own living rooms. In the mid '90s, the school welcomed the computer age with an assortment of online courses. But in these classes, students still use textbooks for their primary resource material. Not so with laptop classes. Students will look at Web sites rather than read chapters in textbooks. For example, the students in the humanities class will visit Web sites where they can listen to Bach or walk from room to room in the Louvre. "With the growth and sophistication of these sites, they really engage the students," said Kevin Morgan, a professor of humanities who has been teaching online classes at SPC since 1998. Leslie Conery, an executive with the International Society for Technology in Education, a non-profit organization working to integrate technology in the classroom, is a strong supporter of computers in the classroom. "Wireless portable computers as college productivity tools are a step in the direction of allowing students to benefit from any time, anywhere learning," she said. "Face-to-face courses designed to make the most of online access to shared materials, discussion areas, data, and analysis and productivity tools provide students with the best of both traditional and online learning environments." The fall session at SPC begins Aug. 20. So far, 29 students have registered for the laptop classes, which will meet Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, said Bernadette Weir, an executive staff assistant at the college. Students will meet in a classroom with flat-top desks. "They can come to class and literally just plug right in," Morgan said. "They'll have each other, but they'll also be linked to the Internet. It's the best of both worlds." Christopher Hollander, a freshman at the Seminole campus whose major is computer science, enrolled in Morgan's humanities class. "Overall, you get the learning atmosphere of a college classroom combined with the professional abilities of a teacher and the infinite and ever-growing knowledge of the Internet," he said. The college's long-term goal is to offer enough laptop classes so the savings from not buying any books would equal the cost of a computer, provost Olliver said. But Hollander doesn't think textbooks should be completely eliminated from the classroom. "Personally, I find it easier to read off a computer screen," he said. "But there is now, and will always be, a need for textbooks. They provide access to the material when someone isn't able to get a computer." Critics of technology-based learning say computers and other electronic teaching aids are expensive to maintain, replace human interaction and diminish the importance of a faculty. But Morgan, the humanities professor, embraces the idea of giving students a variety of sources from which to learn. "I'm all for sharing my authority," Morgan said. Students are required to supply their own laptops. There's little danger of the dog eating any homework assignments, but in the event a hard drive crashes, a student can rent a laptop from the college. And students who aren't linked to the Internet at home can get online in the school's Information Commons. As in traditional classrooms, students in the laptop classes will be warned of plagiarism. With such convenient computer features as "copy" and "paste," the temptations to duplicate another's work may be harder to resist. That's why the role of the instructor is so important in these classes, said Kathi Rodi, project manager of the CEO Forum on Education & Technology, a Washington, D.C.-based organization founded in 1996 that issues an annual assessment of the nation's progress toward integrating technology into American classrooms. "As a basic idea, (the laptop classes) are a great idea," Rodi said. "When students enter the work force, having an education on the computer gives them a solid foundation for 21st century skills."
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