Ergonomic Advice for Students Using Laptops (pdf)
An exploratory scoping study using an ergonomic framework to characterize the impact caused by the recent introduction of laptop use in educational settings. The study will firstly survey university and primary school environments to identify the possible influential factors. These will then be subject to analysis and more detailed follow-up with user groups. It is intended to use a holistic ergonomic model in exploring all possible areas of impact, to include workstation aspects (for both student/pupil and teacher), job design aspects, physical environment, social environment and pedagogical aspects. The study hopes to identify potential areas for the development of guidelines for teachers and young users of laptops, and to point up fruitful future areas for research in this field.
The use of the laptop computer has grown rapidly in the last five years. It is portable and adaptable, and with the advent of wireless computing, it has freed the computer user from the desktop. Originally, it was envisaged that laptops would be used where desktops were unavailable, eg during journeys or in peripatetic jobs. The current reality is that they have found a multitude of other niches; one of these is in education.
Computing has become an essential tool at all levels of education, for teachers and pupils. The use of computers is built into the National Schools Curriculum. Computers have been set up in schools and universities in installation rooms (ICT rooms, or Cluster rooms), and in the main, apart from single installed machines in some classrooms or staffrooms, use has been confined to those rooms.
However, there are observations of a recent two-pronged erosion of this position, in favour of the laptop. The first move has been for pedagogic purposes: a radical introduction by some schools and colleges of issued laptops for students (see for example, Simpson and Payne, 2004). Among other aims, this allows students to take the computer home, to use it in all parts of the school including in a range of teaching environments, and to network with other students and staff. Courses can assume distance or semi-distance learning, and students can be freed from geographical constraint. ICT rooms can be given over to other use.
The second move has been a voluntary one by students, in colleges and universities, to arrive equipped with a personal laptop for use in and out of class. Here, the teaching may not require the laptop, but the student with a laptop perceives they will have a facilitating advantage to their study resources, and they will not need to compete for space in cluster rooms.
Aside from the pedagogic debate, is this rapid takeover by the laptop a good thing? As ergonomists, we suggest there may be concerns. Most laptop designs still combine small screens and crowded input devices in inflexible combination, known to be ergonomically ill-advised (Griffin, 2001). Ergonomic guidelines recommend protracted use of a laptop should make use of a docking station to ensure optimal posture for the user. Anecdotal evidence suggests neither schools nor universities are supplying this required equipment to students, nor advising of the risks. Indeed, a previous survey by Harris and Straker, 2000, suggest 66% of the time school laptops are used anywhere but at a desk.
In schools, with the opportunity to use computers freely in the classroom, what are the practical challenges in an environment with no dedicated computer space? Are the pupils and teachers adapting the space along ergonomic lines, or are they constrained and limited in how they can use the laptops? How do young people cope with carrying the machines around? How do teachers cope with storage, distribution, resource limitations? What about security implications (for both machine and user)? Are risk assessments (under the DSE Regulations 2002) being completed and acted upon?
There are also anecdotal suggestions that the laptop is becoming an intrusion into traditional teaching environments. Teachers in university complain that students are looking at screens instead of attending to the teaching; even that students are surfing the net or playing games on the laptops during teaching. Other students complain of keytapping noise and computer fan noise. There are suggestions that university students are "taking notes" in a different way that may be less valuable for their learning.
There is a need to investigate these anecdotal problems in a systematic manner. This study intends to take an ergonomic approach to survey the educational use of laptops; the range of likely relevant factors is very wide, and the use of a holistic ergonomic framework (such as the Labyrinth Model, Naki and Benedyk 2001, or the Enhanced Concentric Rings Model, Girling and Birnbaum, 1988) will facilitate identification of such a wide range and suggest any inter-relations. The aim is to characterize the ergonomic impact of laptops on educational environments, with a view to identifying issues of concern that require attention. Possible areas of impact include workstation aspects (for both student and teacher), job design aspects, physical environment, social environment and pedagogical aspects.
Further work can then be proposed based on such a survey; such as the development of ergonomic guidelines for laptop design, or for laptop use, or the design of teaching space or lesson plans to accommodate laptops.