A couple of comments from a Volokh Conspiracy thread. Commenters are responding to Eugene Volokh’s laptop ban experiment.
This semester, all three of my professors banned laptops in class. One of the professors did this via a two week trial period, and then administered a survey. The results were overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the ban in effect. Is it “paternalistic”? That definitely may be a fair charge to levy. However, as my one professor explained it (and I think that, 2 months into the semester, this is a very accurate explanation), the point isn’t to be protecting you and making sure you pay attention. Rather, it is to keep the class as a whole engaged, which is to everyone’s benefit.
Even if you’re on your laptop “properly”, you may still get distracted by other people’s screens, whether they are typing, checking e-mail, etc. People’s faces are also obscured by their laptop screens, and they create an artificial barrier in the classroom. Absent laptops, the class seems much more engaged in the discussion, making the classes much more interesting. Even if you turn off the internet, you will still have the second problem above. People staring into their computer screens blankly, pecking away at the keyboard for two hours, is hardly conducive to a good learning environment.
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If the arguments for laptops were true, the most efficient way to run a course would be to distribute full outlines at the beginning of the class, along with the course material and class transcripts, all in electronic form so the student could go through it all efficiently, and wouldn’t have to sit through classes over several weeks, taking notes and making outlines. But we don’t do that because students are not computers that you can just fill with information. To get things into your brain, you must engage with them. Brief the cases while you read them (info goes into eyes, through brain, out hands). Take notes by hand (into ears, through brain, out hands). Participate in class (in ears, through brain, out mouth). Make your outline from notes (into eyes, through brain, out fingers). The more your brain is involved when doing law school tasks, the better you will learn the material.