875. Hey, You! Pay Attention!
May 27, 2008
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The students sit in class, tapping away at their laptops as the boring old law professor mechanically plods through his lecture. Except one. Instead of hunching over a portable computer or a notebook, he's playing solitaire with a deck of cards on his desk. The professor halts his droning. "What are you doing?" he demands. The student shrugs. "My laptop is broken," he says.
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Posted by markep on May 27, 2008
875. Hey, You! Pay Attention!
May 27, 2008
Folks:
The posting below looks at a "problem" familiar to all of us with medium to large courses, i.e., students multitasking while in class. It by Andy Guess and is from the April 18, 2008 issue of INSIDE HIGHER ED, an excellent - and free - online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education. You can subscribe by going to: http://insidehighered.com/. Also for a free daily update from Inside Higher Ed, e-mail [scott.jaschik@insidehighered.com]. Copyright © 2008 Inside Higher Ed Reprinted with permission.
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Mean And Nasty Academics
Hey, You! Pay Attention!
The students sit in class, tapping away at their laptops as the boring old law professor mechanically plods through his lecture. Except one. Instead of hunching over a portable computer or a notebook, he's playing solitaire with a deck of cards on his desk. The professor halts his droning. "What are you doing?" he demands. The student shrugs. "My laptop is broken," he says.
It was a sketch, performed at a Yale Law School skit night some time ago, that sent a chill through the professors' section in the auditorium.
Ian Ayres, the William K. Townsend Professor of Law at Yale, remembers it well. Long a critic of giving students free reign to surf the Web during class, he's tried multiple approaches to discouraging laptop users from distracting themselves with e-mail, games (like solitaire) and gossip. Now his theories are being put to the test.
Late last month, as students returned from spring break, the University of Chicago Law School announced that Internet access would be blocked from classrooms. While individual professors at law schools have created policies banning laptops or allowing them only for specific uses - and while some colleges don't even have classroom Internet access, or mandate classroom-only use without any enforcement - the move by Chicago appears to be the first institution-wide directive of its kind. Already, there's been an uproar among students and even senior administrators, while some law professors have stepped up to defend the policy.
As first reported in the blog Above the Law, Dean Saul Levmore sent an e-mail message to students on March 25 announcing the change, which came as a surprise to many. Calling the policy "experimental," he said it would now be considered a "breach of our norms" to use the Internet during class time.
"A great many conversations and classroom visits have generated the perception, and I think reality, that we have a growing problem in the form of the distractions presented by Internet surfing in the classroom," Levmore wrote. "You know better than I that for many students class has come to consist of some listening but also plenty of e-mailing, shopping, news browsing, and gossip-site visiting. Many students say that the visual images on classmates' screens are diverting, and they too eventually go off track and check e-mail, sometimes to return to the class discussion and sometimes barely so. Our faculty (and I, as well as many of your classmates with whom I have spoken) believe strongly that we need to do everything we can to make Chicago's classroom experiences all they can be."
Further down the message, he continued: "Visitors to classes, as well as many of our students, report that the rate of distracting Internet usage during class is astounding. Remarkably, usage appears to be contagious, if not epidemic. Several observers have reported that one student will visit a gossip site or shop for shoes, and within twenty minutes an entire row is shoe shopping. Half the time a student is called on, the question needs to be repeated."
The solution, which has already been in place for over two weeks: Switching off most wireless access points and under-the-seat network jacks covering the law school's classrooms, a method that works only because they are located in a single building wing that can easily be isolated. But even Levmore conceded that there would be ways around the ban, such as using wireless cellular or radio cards that bypass the campus network.
There are also exceptions. The dean noted that one classroom would continue to have Internet access to "facilitate occasional computer training." At the same time, said Gregory A. Jackson, Chicago's chief information officer, one out of four classrooms - as well as all the podium areas - still has live connections available via network cable. He also added that depending on students' computers, they might be able to get online if they sit at the back of their classrooms. (Plus, Sprint has plans to launch its new WiMAX service in Chicago, which would provide a new, high-speed way to get on the Internet beyond the campus network.)
"I think now, the social norm is that people who have the equipment ... check their e-mail constantly, maybe even every 15 minutes," Levmore said in an interview, noting that those everyday norms seep into the classroom as well. Speaking of the policy, he added, "It's obviously paternalistic to a degree, and I wish it weren't. I feel quite libertarian in my own life," he said, but in this case he found that "intervention is worthwhile."
Levmore also said that many of the professors - as well as students - he's spoken with have expressed support for the policy. But others contest that view, saying he is painting a distorted picture of the opinions. It's "not terribly popular with anybody except the dean who requested it," said Jackson, the Chicago CIO who was ultimately charged with carrying out the policy. "I actually don't think it's a good idea and I don't think it will work." Moreover, he said, in conversations with senior administrators at the university, he found a "general consensus" that it wasn't a good policy.
In Jackson's view, students today are adept at multitasking and they expect to be connected in "sophisticated ways," and any attempt to circumvent those tendencies will eventually fail. If students aren't paying attention, he said, it's "not the fault of whatever is distracting them" but the lecturer who isn't captivating their attention. Levmore's idea to create some sort of "on-off switch" that would enable Internet access between classes, or give professors the ability to allow students online for specific classroom purposes, was also a non-starter, Jackson added: It "won't happen," he said.
Law lectures aren't necessarily more susceptible to the capricious attention spans of Web-surfing students than those of any other discipline, but they do tend to have the greatest concentration of laptop owners. Some law schools, such as Chicago, require students to take all exams on laptops - among other reasons, so that they can upload or e-mail their work on the spot. But as student technology use continues to evolve, even laptops are starting to be supplanted (or augmented) by smartphones such as BlackBerries, Treos and other devices that can access the Internet through cellular networks. Students using such devices would not be affected by the Chicago law school's policy.
Whether or not most Chicago law professors agree with the dean's view on Internet use, prominent academics have come out in favor of limiting it in the classroom setting. "I think that surfing the Internet is qualitatively worse than daydreaming and doodling in a couple of senses," Ayres said. "One, I think there's fairly strong evidence that it's a more addictive activity, and independent of that it has more of an externality, more distraction [to others] than many of the alternatives."
Ayres has tried different ways of regulating students' Internet use and has dreamed up even more, such as one scenario in which students who wanted to surf during class would sit in the back row (so that no one else would be distracted) or another that would require all applicants to law school to check a box pledging not to misuse the Web during lectures.
"I wholeheartedly applaud the move," said David D. Cole, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, in an e-mail. "I've barred students from using laptops in my classes for two years now, and it has manifestly improved student participation and the level of engagement and discussion. And no wonder - allowing students access to the Internet is like putting several magazines, a telephone and a television monitor at each students' seat and inviting him or her to tune out and browse, talk or watch TV anytime their mind starts to wander. It is corrosive of an engaged classroom."
Not surprisingly, many students don't hold the same view, and most who responded to requests for comment did not want to be quoted by name. "Surfing the Web was widespread in class, but to be honest, class discussion hasn't changed much since the ban," wrote one in an e-mail. "People now play chess, solitaire or just go through their pictures in class." Another suggested that some students even save Web pages to their hard drives to read later in class.
The number of students who spend all of their class time on the Internet is relatively small, suggested Chicago Law student Hadi Nilforoshan. Another group, probably bigger, doesn't use the Internet at all in class. "The rest of the students probably fall into a middle range," he wrote in a Facebook message. "This group is usually paying attention to the professor, but will occasionally check their e-mail or chat online. The only time this group of students uses the Internet excessively is if they feel that the professor does a horrible job of teaching, and know that listening will be of no use. This is very rare, however, given that we have mostly phenomenal professors."
Levmore said that other law deans had contacted him about the policy, many of whom were enthusiastic or at least interested in the results. Yale Law, which had been reported to be considering a similar move, said through a spokeswoman that no such discussions (to the chagrin of Ayres and others who share his views) were under way.
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Comments about this article: [10]
If a student can pass the course while surfing, why not let them? If they fail instead, why not let them? If some are distracted by others' surfing, they can move to the front, pushing the surfers to the back.
The students must be responsible for their own choices- good or bad.
Posted by: K. S. Manning on May 28, 2008 04:17 PM
Good! It's about time. Students are not "multi-tasking"; they are INATTENTIVE. Since they have proven that they prefer bad choices (and being rude to the professor and other classmates IS a bad choice) then proper classroom decorum MUST be enforced since students no longer seem to have sufficient and correct self-discipline.
VJM
Posted by: Vincent Marchionni, Jr. MBA (seme retired) on May 28, 2008 09:37 PM
One of my teaching assistants reported to me about, not just the laptops, but the mobiles. Apparently some of my esteemed colleagues are in the habit of using the entire set of diagrams from standard books copied on to CDs and directly use them for teaching. The students have one of them on the lookout who sends messages across the room f where the material is lifted from. Once the source of the lecture is identified, the students completely switch off from the lecture (which is a repetition of the book any way) and preoccupy themselves with sending sms messages, surfing etc.
I was surprised and asked why I have not noticed that. The answer was simply that I use only a blackboard and don't use any aids and, on the rare occasion I do use, it would be from research papers only.
Since I chat rather than teach, the students could not find a way to expect the contents of the lecture though it is part of the syllabus.
In fact, for a good number of us, where teaching is directly from the research lab, inattention is not much of a problem. But I did not realize the problem existed till it was explained to me by an assistant who , herself, was terribly amused about the whole thing.
Posted by: sitaramam V Prof. Retired from Univ Pune on May 29, 2008 05:11 AM
I'm afraid I have an entirely different take on this problem - it's not the Internet that's at fault, but out-dated, unimaginative, and often unskilled teaching. Rather than chastise students, my strategy is to present a more compelling story, so that even those who are on the Internet will often use that resource to find additional information for those unusual questions I've not had the foresight to anticipate. In fact, I usually keep an open Internet browser in class for just such opportunities, myself.
There will always be students who "zone out" in classes, whether we are restricting their access to technology, or are working with them one-on-one. The way to educate students is to engage them.
Posted by: Ken Cousins, Western Washington University on May 29, 2008 11:56 AM
I'm afraid I have an entirely different take on this problem - it's not the Internet that's at fault, but out-dated, unimaginative, and often unskilled teaching. Rather than chastise students, my strategy is to present a more compelling story, so that even those who are on the Internet will often use that resource to find additional information for those unusual questions I've not had the foresight to anticipate. In fact, I usually keep an open Internet browser in class for just such opportunities, myself.
There will always be students who "zone out" in classes, whether we are restricting their access to technology, or are working with them one-on-one. The way to educate students is to engage them.
Posted by: Ken Cousins, Western Washington University on May 29, 2008 11:58 AM
While there are still examples of "old", professors and mechanical lectures, I tire of that worn characterization of instructors generally. Most instructors I know work very hard to engage their classes. Responsibility for learning also lies with the learner. Most students come to participate in the lesson and are as annoyed as the instructor with the distractions. However, considering it is not uncommon for people to voluntarily pay a high price to (voluntarily) attend a concert , play or presentation and talk constantly through it, in spite of urging from those around them to shhh. I am aware of one class where the class made an agreement at the beginning of term, (based on the acknowledgement that many students are using their computer to take notes), that those using computers sit at the front and if they are using their computer inappropriately, all the students can see it and, as per the collective agreement, the computer is taken away. DMR
Posted by: D Redenbach/UBC on May 29, 2008 04:22 PM
Like some comentators here, I also don't think this is a problem. I also don't agree with other comments here (and some parts of the original posting) that a student's innatentiveness is necessarily a sign that the instructor is weak. As long as a student is not distracting me or other students, let him or her take responsibility for his/her actions. A student may well decide to attend a lecture just to ensure that (s)he is exposed to the material that (s)he finds difficult. So I think it's childish for instructors to look for ways to block laptop use in a lecture.
Having said that, I would definitely find it distracting if a student really did play solitaire or read a newspaper in class. And I could imagine that once the number of laptops tapping away exceeded some threshold, it would also be distracting to me and/or other students. But only in such circumstances would I forbid the practice.
Now, will somebody please invent a gender-neutral pronoun that does not include the ugly use of the plural "their" for a singular noun?
Posted by: reuben Kaufman, U. Alberta, Edmonton, Canada on May 29, 2008 06:55 PM
Surely the responsibility for learning has to rest with the student. We provide students with multiple resources, including the benefit of our personal guidance at lectures. As long as a student is not distracting me or the other students, I don’t understand the motivation for actively inhibiting internet use, or any other non-disruptive activity, in class.
It’s important to remember that for many students, much of what we say in class may not be difficult to grasp, and so they don’t require 100% attention to the lecture. Those students attend lectures primarily to hear about information that they may find more difficult to understand by consulting the written resources alone.
Having said that, I would find it distracting if a student were reading a newspaper or playing solitaire during my lecture, and would ask such students to stop the activity or to leave. Perhaps I’m fortunate, but I’ve never yet been in such a situation.
Posted by: reuben Kaufman, U. Alberta, Edmonton, Canada on June 3, 2008 08:24 AM
What a loaded topic and its ramifications for education at all ages!!! I agree with Ken Cousins. I believe that it is the instructor’s responsibility to engage the students and it is the student’s responsibility to learn. I would think that in the education of lawyers, the direct application and concreteness of information would lend itself for a classroom that would necessitate computer usage. To bar students from using laptops (and to progress, the use of cell phones to surf the net) is archaic. Education in general needs to embrace technology as well as addressing direct application of knowledge for engagement of students. Students in the future will multitask and will bring with them to the classroom characteristics related to multitasking and, therefore, educators need to consider WHAT and HOW information is delivered.
Posted by: Traci Van Prooyen - Heartland Community College on June 30, 2008 10:08 PM
What a loaded topic and its ramifications for education at all ages!!! I agree with Ken Cousins. I believe that it is the instructor’s responsibility to engage the students and it is the student’s responsibility to learn. I would think that in the education of lawyers, the direct application and concreteness of information would lend itself for a classroom that would necessitate computer usage. To bar students from using laptops (and to progress, the use of cell phones to surf the net) is archaic. Education in general needs to embrace technology as well as addressing direct application of knowledge for engagement of students. Students in the future will multitask and will bring with them to the classroom characteristics related to multitasking and, therefore, educators need to consider WHAT and HOW information is delivered.
Posted by: Traci Van Prooyen - Heartland Community College on June 30, 2008 10:09 PM