Colleges look at alternatives to computer labs
Thanks to a campus–wide wireless network, laptops are becoming standard equipment for students at the U of S, and some colleges are taking advantage of the trend.
According to a 2009 IT survey conducted in the College of Arts and Science, 83 per cent of respondents own their own laptop while only three per cent admitted to not having a computer of any kind. The Campus Computer Store alone sold 850 laptops to students in the fall of 2008.
Some law students write final exams on their laptop
Photo by Mark Ferguson
The University Library has laptops available for loans of up to six hours for those students who do not have access to their own, and between May 2008 and March 2009, the 52 available units were borrowed 4,392 times.
But according to information from the Information Technology Services (ITS) Student Computing office, by far the biggest laptop users on campus are students in the College of Law.
“If you look around, it seems that all students have laptops,” said Norman Zlotkin, associate dean, academic. “And for that reason, we stopped having (computer) labs. It’s a better use of space.”
After phasing out labs over the past few years, the college has only a few stand–alone desktop workstations left in the students’ lounge. Taking the trend one step further, the college is now giving students the option of using laptops for exams. About one third of its 340 students have registered with a program called Examsoft, which basically shuts out the laptop’s operating system and uploads exams, turning the laptop into nothing more than a glorified typewriter, says Zlotkin. Unfortunately, Examsoft is not compatible with Mac operating systems.
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