Diane Sieber, an Associate Professor University of Colorado at Boulder, believes that laptops do harm grades. According to an article in the Daily Camera, she told 17 of her students who used their laptops "intensely" that they performed an average of 11 percent worse than classmates who were not using laptops. After making this announcement, "the number of students on laptops eventually dwindled to a half dozen, and the test scores of students who stopped using their computers during class shot up."

Seventeen is hardly a scientific sample, and not everyone involved with higher education agrees with Sieber's conclusions. A Chronicle of Higher Education blog post on her experience produced a lively debate.

"Why are professors so afraid to enforce a no-laptops policy if they choose to do so?" asked David S. "I've had a no-laptops policy in my UG and MBA classes for about two years due to the abuses and discourtesies noted in the above article." A survey of his students showed that "about two-thirds liked the policy and thought it was a good idea. Very few were strongly opposed."

But another professor, Don, argued that "a fair number of my students are more skilled at typing notes than at hand-writing them and are more comfortable (and more efficient) searching through a pdf than flipping pages...All I ask in my classes is that the laptop users stay out of the way of the non-laptop users by sitting in the back of the class or well off to the side, and that they turn off their wireless capability."

A student with the handle live_your_passions agreed. After taking notes by hand for two years, "I made the switch to the laptop. Since I type much faster than I write, I found that using a laptop allows me to spend more time listening to the lecture and synthesizing the information presented while taking notes...It is unfortunate that some students abuse the use of laptops in class by surfing the net, but it is equally unfortunate that some students who use their laptops responsibly have lost access to this useful learning tool due to a full stop laptop ban."