May 15, 2008
Web Surfing in the Classroom: Sound Familiar?
Over at the New York Times’s Freakonomics blog, Yale Law School professor Ian Ayres praises the University of Chicago Law School’s decision to eliminate Internet access in some classrooms. But more importantly, he recounts an amusing sketch from the Yale’s “Law Revue” skit night, which is worth sharing in full:
One of the skits had a group of students sitting at desks, facing the audience, listening to a professor drone on.All of the students were looking at laptops except for one, who had a deck of cards and was playing solitaire. The professor was outraged and demanded that the student explain why she was playing cards. When she answered “My laptop is broken,” I remember there was simultaneously a roar of laughter from the student body and a gasp from the professors around me. In this one moment, we learned that something new was happening in class.
—Catherine Rampell
Posted on Thursday May 15, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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This Doonesbury strip presents a different version of the internet-access-in-class problem. Although Trudeau is clearly making light of the situation, he illustrates how network access in the classroom presents new avenues for learning and collaboration. It would have been exciting if the U. of Chicago Law School had addressed this new way of learning and integrated it into their classrooms, instead of excluding it.
— John Jones May 15, 01:07 PM #
From my experience, some classes can benefit from technology, but we should not force technology in all courses considering not all courses need technology to facilitate the delivery. These particular courses with wireless enabled seem to aid to the profits found by J.Crew, Facebook and the like.
— Jackie K. May 15, 01:27 PM #
Technology merely provides another tool in the tool box. Any tool when used incorrectly can do more damage than good.
— Bill F. May 15, 06:05 PM #
The anecdote is a wonderful example of educators not growing with the times. Worse, it indicates a level of cluelessness among the professoriate that leaves our universities failing the educational needs of the students who are paying big bucks to attend the classes. Since they’re paying, they might as well be there. But it doesn’t mean they have to pay attention to a summary of the material they’ve already reviewed for class. What an endorsement for online classes!
— Eleanore M. May 15, 06:53 PM #
Yes, let’s force students to listen to professors drone on, that’s the ticket! How dare they choose to do otherwise. Heh.
— Jeff McNeill May 15, 07:03 PM #
Curious that the prof is rooted to the podium, can’t occasionally walk by students….
But more significant is the assumption that lecture can’t be combined with student use of computers. By the luck of the draw one of my smaller size classes ended up in a computer teaching class room. Every student had a computer before them. Recently I had begun using MINDMEISTER, a web-based collaborative mind-mapping tool, so I experimented with its use in class. Students were able to participate in branching the maps with significant concepts from the text and their own insights. They were more fully engaged than in a straight lecture and than my projecting pre-made maps. In addition they could access the maps on the web afterward for additional participation and review.
In my classes I ask the students to explore Gardner’s ways of learning. One place is, believe it or not, at drspock.com under tools and then Pathways of Learning. There they may take a self-test of their strengths and challenges in learning styles. It also provides suggestions for using their strengths to address their challenges.
Unless we recognize that learning skills are diverse we will fall back (and usually do) on the ways we ourselves learned best. Since academia is primarily linear and textual we will limit our teaching and hence not claim the learning styles of the students. That said, I require all students to outline each chapter of the class text(s) and use that as a diagnostic/teaching tool. Their outlines (or un-outlines) signal areas where they may need help. Good outlines, used also within the class by adding notes from lecture and discussion, provide them with ready review for tests. I also encourage students to mindmap if they prefer.Whether there are computers at the desks or not (and I would say “get that one student a computer and use the medium”) engaging the students in ways they can see the subject’s significance is the critical foundation to their learning. I begin each of the three areas I teach with significance statements: “Philosophy is fundamental.” “Ethics are everywhere.” and “Religion is for real.” Cutesy, perhaps, but evaluations show most students catch the concept.
One more comment: my own learning style after 5 years of graduate work has come to include the use of my computer to mindmap lecture notes at conferences. My course development begins with brainstorming by mindmapping and converting to outlines, powerpoint, and other visual media.— be! May 15, 07:43 PM #
In my graduate education class, I encourage students to multi-task on their computrs. This is what they do. If I cannot command their attention, who’s fault is that? I walk around and attempt to create dialog over monologue. Those who stay with the “sage on the stage” model are in trouble.
— Lawrence G. Miller May 16, 07:38 AM #
While I understand and appreciate the comments about students using wireless access effectively in class, I realize that for every student working on class-related computer tasks, there are several others in my courses who have totally tuned out the class and are chatting with friends or playing online games. And this isn’t a lecture class, but one that regularly includes group work and discussion. Some want to chalk this up to students being able to multitask and my being behind the times, but I usually see it as students who aren’t engaged in learning and tend to fail the course. Falsely praising students’ multitasking skills and ignoring unproductive behavior not only sets them up to fail, but also leaves them socially unprepared for future workplace situations. Just turning off wireless probably isn’t the answer to the problem, but neither is blaming the teachers for boring techniques and letting students do whatever they want online.
— GregS May 16, 07:57 AM #
I agree with GregS. There will always be students who try not to be involved in class. This is similar to students standing their texts up on the desk and putting a novel inside so they appear to be actively involved in class. I worked for the Army doing research when personal computers were just becoming available. From the outset you could tell those who were playing solitaire, they would turn the monitor away so that no one could see what they were doing. Human nature is what it is.
— Jim D May 16, 09:06 AM #
It is high time that educators begin to examine their pedagogy in light of technology – laptop use in the classroom. Why must this always fall back on the students, when are we going to ask why the instructor’s material did not engage the students in active learning? It is too easy to blame the students. Education is a partnership between the student and the teacher.
— Tom Hanley May 16, 09:32 AM #
Explain to me why it is that institutions tout their wireless overlays and then ban students from using such tools in the classroom? In my personal experience as a grad student I have taken Stats courses. In each case the faculty member has lost many of us in explaining various concepts. In one course, where wireless access was available, the students found ourselves surfing the web for alternate explainations. At first the professor was annoyed by this intrusiont o his lecture time but soon came to appreciate (and even expect) that the students would offer clarification for each other (and him).
— Daniel Berkowitz May 16, 10:42 AM #
It has become way too easy and way too fashionable to blame “boring teachers” for students’ irresponsibility. At what point did it become the job of the teacher to entertain students? Are some classes boring? Yes. Do students still have to adapt? Yes. Has it not occurred to anyone that when these students hit “the real world” they will not have developed work ethics, coping mechanisms or other social tools to equip them to function in less than ideal settings?
I would also posit that immature students are not in a postion to judge what is boring or irrelevant. Presumably the professor knows what the required knowledge/skills are for their area of study. The 19 year old sitting in the back row doesn’t! If the student chooses to disregard what the teacher has to offer then presumably there will be some sort of penalty—inability to complete an assignment, pass a test, pass the course…
I can remember sitting in those same classes in college (way before laptops!) and finding other ways to occupy my time—writing letters to friends, making to do lists, etc. There will always be students who are not engaged. Technology may have given them many more ways to behave inappropriately but one has to assume that at some level, some day, they will pay the price for their inattention. If not, in the scheme of things did it really matter that they weren’t hanging on the teacher’s every word?
— bil May 16, 10:57 AM #
I teach at a college preparatory private high school that has, for at least a decade now, advertised itself as a “laptop school.” Each student is required to purchase a computer upon admission, and our wireless network is accessible from every corner of the campus. The faculty is strongly encouraged to integrate technology into the curriculum whenever possible, and many wonderful collaborations and innovations have occurred as a result.
But things have gotten much more complicated here since our students discovered social networking sites. Many of our kids are addicted to these sites, and are inclined to check for updates as often as ten times a day. The most wonderfully exciting intellectual discussion taking place in their midst cannot compete with this compulsion. Such students may still “participate” in class, but with one eye on the latest gossip posted to Facebook.
I have begun to discuss these developments with the students in my classes, and they readily acknowledge the consequences of these habits. They admit to being distracted from school work and increasingly obsessed with social lives that unfold online. And they blame themselves for their behavior— not boring subjects or teachers.
We have an Honor Code at my school, and we are not usually inclined toward outlawing and policing, but we are beginning to entertain taking some more drastic measures to restrict students’ access to the Internet.
We very much appreciate the need to prepare our students for a workplace that values technological skill and multitasking ability. We also understand, however, that students need to learn to dedicate undivided attention to challenging intellectual work— work that is rewarding if not always “fun.”
We’re all for giving them rope, but not the length with which to hang themselves.
— erin May 16, 01:13 PM #