cmu laptop study: student laptops bad….

Spotlight News – Carnegie Mellon University:
Despite the portability of laptops, only a minority of students used them off campus, accounting for only 2 percent of the overall time spent on assignments. The exception was the strong tendency to work at home. Students reported preferring the comfort of working at home even though they recognized the greater educational value of working with other students on campus.

Working at home was also associated with negative social and psychological effects, such as loneliness and the erosion of a sense of community. Even when students did get help from peers, it was often online rather than face-to-face. This is something for educators to consider when designing optimal workspaces for learning, which should include features that provide physical comfort, such as comfortable furniture, access to food and lighting control. Researchers say comfortable, functional learning spaces can foster the sense of community that students reported they lost when using their laptops.

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well there is more to it than that, but i’m not sure if their findings are actually representative of laptop use of subcultural differences amongst students.