National Collegiate Honors Council
Date of this Version
Fall 2002
Abstract
For the past two years, the University Honors Program at NC State has co-sponsored with the College of Engineering a wireless laptop program. Incoming students in the Honors Program are offered the opportunity to purchase specially-configured and specially-priced laptop computers with wireless cards. Students then enroll in Honors seminars and other classes that meet in rooms with wireless access to the Internet. In the first year of this program, about 40 students participated. This year the number of participants has almost doubled.
The program is viewed as a pilot, with potential for expansion across the campus. NC State does not have a laptop or computer requirement at the moment. We believe that before we ask students to invest in computers we should understand how to make them worthwhile for the educational mission of the institution. The Honors/Engineering Pilot Program is a way to discover whether and how the use of computers in the classroom can enhance learning.
Comments
Published in Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council 3:2, Fall/Winter 2002. Copyright © 2002 by the National Collegiate Honors Council.