Finance the cost of the laptop program through tuition. Avoid creating unrealistic expectations. Give faculty members release time to develop Web-based teaching materials. And rely on student workers for laptop support only if the students are well trained and reliable. The college invites parents to the campus before summer orientation so they can work with the laptops themselves and learn how they will be paid for.
Officials also see to it that the parents know how to contact the computer help desk on campus.
The response, she added, should be to tell students and faculty members what is realistic. In developing a physics course to be taught in a laptop-equipped classroom and online, Mr. DeMuth at Crookston said he found it necessary to create custom software, which added as much as 20 hours a week to his workload of teaching three courses and several labs. The college's hiring of an adjunct faculty member has since freed him to develop new course materials using Java applets and sundry other Web tools that he said he enjoys using. Nearly all experts said that providing reliable computer support and maintenance is essential to the success of any mandatory-computing program. It is easier to fire a third-party vendor if the service does not meet expectations than it is to fire the laptop vendor, he said.