May 22, 2008
Professor Considers Laptop Ban After Reading About Distracted Student
Students may want to think twice before inviting their professors to befriend them on Facebook. Siva Vaidhyanathan, an associate professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia, reveals on his blog this week that when he perused the Facebook page of one of his students — who had invited him to become her “friend” — he came upon a message she posted that described the activities of a distracted student in his class.
Mr. Vaidhyanathan said he commented on her post, by writing on her Facebook page that he was amused.
“The student in question was not amused, and he apologized,” Mr. Vaidhyanathan writes on his blog.
The incident has led Mr. Vaidhyanathan to ponder whether he should ban laptops from his classes. The University of Chicago Law School, for one, recently removed Internet access in most of its classrooms because of concerns about students surfing the Web during class.—Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Thursday May 22, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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Ah yes, the banning. We must ban everything we cannot control. Yes, that is how we can stop all this freedom, all this behavior that is at odds with how we used to do things…
— Jeff McNeill May 22, 02:43 PM #
I don’t think laptops need to be banned from classrooms.
College is where people need to learn to become adults. Professors shouldn’t be holding students’ hands or telling them how they should or shouldn’t learn.
If someone can learn with a laptop, great, if not, they better learn to leave the laptop at home next time.
— Eliot May 22, 02:43 PM #
Students are not mindless people. If they can multitask, let them. Don’t eliminate Internet access “in the students’ best interest.” They are 18+ years old; they are old enough to make their own decisions.
— Kelly Sutton May 22, 02:46 PM #
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I think it’s rude to play with your computer in class instead of paying attention to the professor and your fellow students. Same goes for cell phones.
— William Doreski May 22, 03:12 PM #
Hi. Just to clarify a bit. I was amused, not alarmed, by the Facebook thing. It’s not a reason to ban laptops.
And I am not really considering it right now. In fact, I am not teaching this summer at all.
I was merely trying to spark a conversation about the sanctity of the classroom and the role of communication technology within it.
There are plenty of times when I find my students’ laptop usage valuable. Sometimes I can’t remember a name or date and I ask someone to look it up. Other times, students volunteer perspectives and facts that I had omitted because they had found them in Web discussions or Wikipedia.
However, I must assert that the classroom is an environment in which I have a tremendous amount of legitimate authority. My students are not my customers. I reserve the right to eject someone for sleeping (and have, on several occasions), being rude and disruptive, or for answering mobile phones in class (which happens more than you might think).
So I also reserve the right to require that they do not stare at screens instead of me.
Of course, if I don’t deserve their attention, I won’t get it anyway — laptop or not. But technologies have a way of creating temptations and expectations.
I am very interested in this question. Some of my students made a short video about the use of Facebook in class. And I want to learn more about how profs and students use laptops.
So no. I am not out to ban anything. I am out to learn.
— Siva Vaidhyanathan May 22, 04:39 PM #
1. I’m not at all sure that students multitask as well as they think. The material I teach (economics) is complex and difficult — it takes one’s whole brain in class, and even then most don’t “get it” the first time.
2. There is a large externality on laptops in the classroom. When I used to allow them (yes, now banned in my large classes) I’d often see several students looking at one student’s screen.
— BG May 22, 05:02 PM #
When you ban laptops, you’re not only banning someone’s distraction, you’re also banning someone’s truly useful note taking tool. I would be very upset if a professor told me I could not use my laptop in class to take notes. I simply cannot keep up when trying to write by hand, and making copies of the PowerPoint slides doesn’t cut it. Thanks Dr. V for keeping the laptops, despite the abuse by one or two. You probably have a multitude of students who appreciate you for it.
— Carlo May 22, 05:24 PM #
Somehow people have learned for centuries without laptops. In graduate classes where I am a student, people have done paperwork for their jobs, read and written e-mails, watched videos (with headphones), played games . . .you name it. In one class where every seat had a computer, people would even print out personal pages on the classroom printer near the teacher — during class!! Since a few people cannot control themselves or demonstrate good manners to their instructors or fellow students, I say — ban them. Classes can be hard enough without distractions and bad feelings among students. As far as being old enough to make their own decisions. . . that writer must not have been in a class where she was subject to such rudeness, or else she doesn’t care about other people who’ve also paid good money (or at the very least, substantial time) for their education.
— Pam May 22, 06:06 PM #
As both a student and a working professional, I’ve been in classes where the use of laptops by students is very distracting. It’s hard not to look at their computer screens. I am easily distracted, that’s why I don’t take my laptop to class. I need to be able to concentrate and laptops are not conducive to concentrating.
Prohibiting laptops/ internet access is not a disservice to students.
— bm May 22, 06:15 PM #
I echo the comments on banning. I recall the ballpoint pen being banned in the late 1940’s in favor of the fountain pen and the calculator in the 1950’s in favor of the slide rule. I disagree totally with attempts to control what students choose to do to occupy their minds while sitting in a lecture. Such issues are part of my reasons for giving up on ‘traditional’ education methods – preferring instead to create my own online university.
— Will Jensen May 22, 06:21 PM #
Maybe it depends on your field. Maybe in some fields a laptop is a good tool but not all. In law classes, students could look up answers to questions just like in that TV commercial for some computer or cell phone service. In history classes, the laptop is just a distraction. People nearby see the screen, and everyone can hear the tapping of keys. If a student strongly prefers typing notes, I would allow it but ask them to sit to one side to lessen the noise for everyone else. And yes, it is rude behavior to come to class but be elsewhere intellectually or mentally; I don’t want to have to police students’ screens. I teach college level in great part to avoid the discipline issues of younger students.
— EW May 22, 06:51 PM #
I can type way faster than I can write. Sometimes teachers are talking so fast I would not stand a chance with a pen/pencil. I also use the internet during class sometimes to find something relevant to class discussion that I can not remember all the details from but I remember the website. I turn the screen off when I am not using it so it is less of a distraction. If i found out a teacher was banning laptops I would take the class with another teacher. If no one else was teaching that class I would give the professor lower ratings for degrading my experience.
— Matt May 22, 11:53 PM #
I taught Introduction to Management Information Systems in a hard-wired computer lab for several years. I had the ability to see what students were doing on all computers, and much of the traffic was IMs to each other. Even when they knew I was monitoring, the sophomores lacked the impulse control to stay away from the web. Sometimes students accessed images that caused laughter among the males, scorn from the females, and would have been a foundation for a sexual harassment complaint. Now that I am back to teaching accounting, anyone using a laptop in my class must sit in the back row where they won’t distract anyone with whatever they are working on. I have no hard data, but the students with laptops in class seem to do worse in accounting class, if only because they can’t juggle a laptop, and refer to a textbook at the same time. I think the most learning comes from students bringing completed homework problems to class in hardcopy, and writing comments and corrections on the paper.
— FS May 23, 07:20 AM #
I always knew that the one or two students in my class who had laptops open were doing something other than paying attention to me! But I didn’t realize what a problem it was until I had to walk back to a lecture room one day to retrieve something I had left behind. I got there too late and had to wait for the class that was going on to end. So I peeked in through the windows of the rear door. There were about 15 students in this class with laptops. Every single one of them was playing a video game, or surfing the net.
— Michael May 23, 08:28 AM #
>>My students are not my customers. >> Then just exactly who ARE your ‘customers’? If there was ever an example of the problem with tenure, this is it!! I would hate to be one of your students.
— Don May 23, 08:33 AM #
I’m old enough to remember when we (students) could smoke in classrooms. Nobody would complain about banning cigarettes, but laptops and cell phones are somehow sacred? What a crock.
“Multitasking,” btw, is a synonym for “screwing up more than one thing at a time.” It’s a pretty primitive classroom these days where notes, summaries, etc. aren’t available online. If I were, God forbid, still in the classroom on either side of the desk, I suspect it would an experience in anachronism all around. Oh, well.
— Dan May 23, 08:52 AM #
I am always amazed at the comments when this topic comes up. The naivete of some instructors is mind-boggling. How can you be surprised to find out that students prefer to search the web etc rather than listen to you? How different is this from the student who stands his textbook up on his desk to hide the magazine he is reading? Get serious. Ask yourself,“Does using a laptop help a student to learn better in my class than not using one?”
— Jim D May 23, 09:21 AM #
Multi-tasking is an excuse for selfish behavior; in the classroom, in the library and elsewhere. If students are too busy to pay 100% attention to the task at hand then they need to prioritize, rescale and restructure their lives. Laptop surfing, cheeseburger eating, newspaper reading and the rest do not belong in the lecture hall. It can be rightly interpreted as a big ‘f***-y**” to one’s professor and classmates. And if you don’t like it, take a hike on down the road.
— Bob May 23, 09:21 AM #
Don;
It would seem that declaring students analogous to customers oversimplifies the issues involved. What, exactly, are students buying? Are they buying “learning?” How do you give grades to your customers? If a student gets a “C” has she/he not received the product they paid for?
Other analogies can highlight the problem. Who are the “customers” of the police? They “serve and protect” the public; what if a member of the public doesn’t want that service? What about the military? Are civilians their customers? While the market model has its value, it doesn’t fit cleanly in all situations—and education (especially higher education) is one.
And on the laptop questions—-if a faculty member finds them disruptive, they can ban them. Laptops aren’t a right—they’re a tool. They can be useful, but if they’re being abused they should go. It’s not a complicated question—no one’s arguing for institution-wide bans. It’s the pedagogical choice of individual teachers.
I allowed them for a semester. It didn’t work. Now they’re gone. No big deal!
— JCWT May 23, 09:24 AM #
Laptops in the classroom are a great educational tool and a colossal distraction. When the student is fiddling with email and more, it is rude and distracting to everyone. But banning them? Wrong approach. Consider some alternatives that I use: (1) Find websites and post materials to servers for students to access during class—give them something productive to do with their computers; (2) teach from the back of the room—when you can look over their shoulders, the clatter of distraction slows; (3) occasionally require everyone to stop, close the computer, and let’s talk about the issues—a little like grade school, but it works! You cannot defeat technology, you have to adapt and work with it.
— Kenneth Crews May 23, 09:26 AM #
If a university doesn’t want to have students surfing the Web on their laptops in class for more entertainment, just don’t provide WiFi access to that part of the building. Of course their favorite games are already loaded on the laps.
The only other problem is that student laptops are being rapidly replaced by smart phones with text capability to flirt, watch sports, see movies, and to make off dog track bets on their cells. Poor profs. The death of a droning stand up salesperson.
— Thomas May 23, 09:30 AM #
Don #15 — Professors and teachers do not have “customers”. We have students. We offer educational opportunities; we do not offer a “the customer is always right” services or commodities available for purchase. We should be respectful to students, yes, but education is dependent on the student’s efforts and acheivements in ways that a customer’s “right” to purchase something is not. Go into a store with $, and you can buy what you want, no matter how ill prepared you may or may not be to use that product. Go into my classroom ill prepared and unwilling or unable to learn the material, and you fail the class. Students aren’t customers. They are supposed to be learners. The prof’s job is to design a good learning environment with sensible, effective teaching materials and strategies. If laptops are contraindicated in a class, ban them — just as many other things are forbidden in classes (pets, cooking, listening to the radio, extensive private conversations). There’s no justification for routine in class behaviors that are not educational —- the classroom is not a place for customers who have a variety of preferences for how they shop; it’s a place for learning.
— Marc May 23, 09:30 AM #
Surfing in class is a deliberate act of disrespect for colleagues and instructors. My classses are interactive – someone on their computer is not engaged in the class. As for letting them grow up, get a low grade, blah, blah, is fine with me, but the lack of respect is still disconcerting and annoying.
Reading a newspaper in class is the same thing, just a different kind of technology. Finally, I can’t ban them and feel right about it. So, I guess I get to feel crappy about the students who are blowing off the class and focus on the ones who appear to want to learn. PS. DO NOT BS ME ABOUT THE MULTITASKING etc. They are either on task for one’s class or they are on task in entertaining themselves on YouTube.
— John May 23, 09:43 AM #
Neurologically, the multitasking argument appears to be unsound, ESPECIALLY for college-age humans. Check out this article on the topic appeared in the Business Section of the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/business/25multi.html
— Dana May 23, 09:58 AM #
It seems there is confusion about “customers” of higher-education. Our students are definitely not our customers. Our customer is the society into which we disgorge our students. If we do a poor job with the raw materiel we are given — our students, our customers will not be happy with our product and will be less accepting of them in the roles that we prepare them for.
It is our job to form the often-times poorly prepared raw materiel we receive into engineers, accountants, musicians, etc. When we’re finished with them, they take their place in society. It’s our job to do the best we can with the materiel we get and the measure of the final product is a function of our skill and the initial quality of the raw materiel — better students in yield better students out. If we’re great artisans, we can produce masterpieces from rather mundane raw materiels. Our students reflect our abilities but they are not our customers.
— Jerry May 23, 09:58 AM #
We did a study last year – those who took notes by hand, rather than by laptop, got higher grades on the test questions when they took notes by hand. This study is was prompted by brain scan studies concerning learning and others concerning learning and multi tasking that suggested the results we got (prompted they study). This paper is out for consideration right now at a management education journal.
Students can be so engaged in their laptop they don’t even notice you talking directly to them by name.
It is distracting to have typing going on by the student playing on the computer when no one else is typing.
Like any other form of rudeness, people who aren’t polite need prompted, and in some cases taught, how to be polite.
While I agree that students need to learn to control inappropriate laptop use and self monitor this, they also need guidence when they don’t do it on their own. I also ban cell phones, side conversations unless the class is working on something together or it involves on task conversations at appropriate times.
— annon May 23, 10:06 AM #
I think prof. Vaidhyanathan meant that students are not customers, period.
Re: banning or allowing laptops in class — why all this emphasis on an all-or-nothing approach? If students are adults, so are professors, and it’s possible to control the expectations around laptop use in class. Put them in the back, if necessary; disallow printing or any other activities that are distracting; disallow web browsing if the classroom task demands more in-room attention (“OK, we’re doing X now so please put laptops away until we’re done”). If the expectations are neglected or abused, then follow up with appropriate consequences. But better yet: design activities in which the active use of laptops is integral in focused classroom activities.
— Jeff Drouin May 23, 10:51 AM #
I don’t have a problem with turning off internet access, or with requiring students to sit in a designated area to avoid distracting others, but I have a problem with banning a device that can be a necessary accommodation for a person with a disability.
My niece uses a laptop (issued by the school) in her high school classes. For her, handwriting is both slow and virtually illegible — and extremely painful. With the laptop, she’s able to keep up with her notes. She is carrying a full load of AP, pre-AP, and college-level engineering courses. She is a straight-A student who lettered academically last year, and will probably be in the top five of her H.S. class again this year. I doubt this would be possible without technology.
I am alarmed that she could be refused access to her accommodation, or marked by special treatment as being “an exception,” because someone else isn’t behaving properly.
— Kate May 23, 10:54 AM #
I think we should ban DESKS at schools. After all, many students doodle on their desks rather than listening. Better yet, we can ban the PENS!
— Ray May 23, 10:58 AM #
As an undergraduate in the 1970s, I certainly wasn’t missing anything by not having been born later and attending classes in which everyone is in his/her own disengaged little world. In my classes we were all engaged and interconnected as teachers and learners. The better students were teachers too. We enjoyed lecture classes as much as dialog-type classes. This is what we thought a university should be like. I would hate to go back and do it over again with a bunch of sealed-off automotons with their cell phones, Ipods and video games siphoning off most of the prof-student-student communication we enjoyed and benefited from so much.
— Scott May 23, 11:01 AM #
I’m an instructor, and I have two comments. First, to Jim: “The naivete of some instructors is mind-boggling. How can you be surprised to find out that students prefer to search the web etc rather than listen to you? How different is this from the student who stands his textbook up on his desk to hide the magazine he is reading? Get serious.” If a student is more interested in reading a magazine (or surfing the web) than participating in class, he/she shouldn’t be in class. Period. Get the notes from someone else, fail on your own time… but don’t clutter the classroom with your non-participatory body. (And why would you want to spend four years and $$ on an education and not get anything out of it?) Having said that, the prof should offer a classroom experience that is engaging and exciting. That’s our job…
For Kate, who was concerned that her niece with the challenging handwriting would lose out on the ability to take notes, in most universities there are means for registering students with disabilities so that profs know what special tools they need. In our school it’s handled very discreetly. That’s a legitimate need for that tool, just as a hearing-impaired student may need additional technology. I don’t think she would be denied that in any case.
— Sharon May 23, 12:28 PM #
What about discussing laptop use with your students at the beginning of class? Maybe if students are made aware of some of the dangers that go along with bringing a laptop, but also get a better sense of how to use the laptop productively in class, they will learn better, use this tool more effectively.
— Wiebke May 23, 05:12 PM #
Isn’t the onus on the student to learn and the responsibility of the teacher to stimulate engagement in the course content? If a student prefers coming to the class to surf the net rather than doing it in their room, who cares? Perhaps if the lecture was more interesting, surfing for the sake of surfing wouldn’t be so tempting.
Why take classroom internet access from the students who are actually engaging in the course materials and doing active research on the subject matter just because someone else in the room is catching up on Facebook updates? Banning access to free flowing information is ridiculous! Particularly for an institution that is supposed to be facilitating the learning process.
— Katherine Pisana May 25, 06:23 AM #