Brief Ethnography Proposal

I would like to study the note-taking habits of college students, especially with consideration to taking notes on paper versus on a laptop. I would like to learn whether that stigma of laptop users spending their time surfing the internet is really true, as well as if they slack off in class more than people taking notes on paper. For two hours a week, I would just go to two other classes, perhaps on one MWF class and another TR class, (with the professor's permission) and observe the students' note-taking habits. Quantitatively, I would get numbers of people on laptops versus notepads or nothing at all, as well as numbers on how many surf the internet or draw on their notepads. Qualitatively, I will observe how many of them seem to be paying attention based on eye contact and how often they ask questions. While interacting with the students isn't technically necessary, getting interviews from them at the end of the experiment time might be helpful.