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Professors vs. WiFi
murky.waters writes "The New York Times (free registration, profiling) has an article about the opposing views of teacher's demanding attention and students seeking distraction; the current trend toward wireless Internet access in the classroom has students surfing the web and checking their email from the backrow, while instructors are climbing up the ladder... to disconnect the Access Point." Makarand writes "University Wi-Fi networks are heavily impacting student campus life according to this
article on NewsObserver.com.
In addition to allowing them to keep working while not in their computer labs, the wireless networks allow them to keep in touch with their family, better organize time, complete coursework in shorter periods of time, collaborate
with other students and bring computing power into classrooms not available before."
If the professor can't keep the attention of his or her students with wireless in the classroom, it's likely or at least possible that s/he wasn't able to give an interesting lecture before the advent of this technology.
We have the same problem where work, people who sit in meetings and work their email, pounding away with their thumbs and not paying attention. Many of these people don't really contribute to the meetings anyway, so it's not that great a problem.
As for universities, grades are the answer. My guess is that these students want to work chat and email in class, yet pull an easy "A" at the end of the semester. When they get a "C", or fail a class, perhaps they will make the right decision. If not, it's evolution in action.
Call me old-fashioned, but I wish for the days when you had a chance of having someone's complete attention. These days of cellphones, PDAs and laptops mean that distractions are commonplace.
Sure, many classes are very boring and students will lose interest regardless of what toy is in front of them, but I think professors have a right to limit distactions.
SCO, Microsoft, P2P, what's your hot button?
If the class is interesting then the students will stay on task, not check their email and etc. At the university I attend they have wireless access in a number of buildings with plans to add it to others as well as outdoors in the major gathering areas. I find it helps out with class because you can download the class notes and follow along or look up a website the prof is talking about in his lecture.
On a funny side note one guy in one of my classes WAS looking up pr0n while in class, all the people behind him were wide-eyed looking at it... that's how he got busted.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
...it is that new technologies find OPPOSITION at Universities so often. It really makes you think.
of bashing the technology and blaming it for them being terrible and boring with their lectures they'd be fine.
Look, technology is good, WiFi is good, a smart teacher would use WiFi and the fact that all the students have laptops and AIM to their advantage, to get the students communicating better with each other through AIM, and to talk about the class.
The teacher could even bring his own laptop, add their AIM screen names to his AIM account, and talk to students via AIM.
This is college not highschool, a teacher cannot try to blame the students for lack of attention, students pay you with THEIR money so that you can get their attention, these people want to learn and pay to learn, if you arent doing a good job and they think your lecture is a complete waste of time they dont have to pay attention.
I've had great teachers give lectures and it doesnt even feel like a lecture, it feels like conversation because the teacher gets people involved, its even entertaining sometimes!
Then we have lectures where teachers read off a peice of paper going down a list of things they must talk about, perhaps some boring as hell subject like computer programmer, and the teacher is from india and cannot speak english properly, some people just should not lecture!!!
In this situation you'd be better off getting your information from the internet than listening to the lecturer guide you step by step on how to write hello world.
Wi Fi is good, schools need to learn to use technology to their advantage.
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Students haven't paid attention in class since the dawn of time. It's what makes them students. Whether you give them computers, wireless net connections, paper airplanes, books, or guitars to play with will make no difference.
Those who are surfing the net now would have been passing notes in class or listening to headphones years ago. If they really want to change this they could start kicking out students for apathy, but all that would do is make the schools go broke while professors spoke to near-empty rooms.
Don't forget, those apathetic students are paying to keep the school running for those who actually listen in class.
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
We had this problem at the university that I work at as the DBA. Professors were irked at students not paying attention to the class and instead chatting on IM or playing games. The solution that we came up with is a website that a professor can visit on our intranet and select the level of wireless blocking that he/she would like for a given class. The different levels are things like Web Access Only, Web & Email, Email Only, All, and None (the default of course is all access is allowed unless otherwise specified). The results are then stored in our central database. The second part of the program is a linux box that runs some perl code every minute out of cron. It checks to see if there are any blocks issued for any of the classes that are starting on this minute. If there are, it pulls out a list of all students that are enrolled in the given class from the database and then dynamicly creates a snort rule file which just blasts out TCP resets to the local user effectivly blocking them. This solution has worked well for us with of course the exception of students being angry. I personally agree with the professors on this one simply because if you are in one of their classes and you bother to show up, your on their time at that point. If you don't want to pay attention then simply don't go. Just an opinion :)
Quick google searches/FAQs would have helped me understand more of those obtuse subjects.
What the professor is really thinking is "Crap, this lesson is a one page 'for dummies' FAQ online, I better pad this with some bullshit."
Unlike highschool, people pay to go to college. Its not logical to pay for something you dont REALLY want.
So if you pay to hear them lecture and they just suck, its not your fault, you paid them, they just suck. Highschool is different, you dont really want to be there, you are just stuck there.
Professors need to earn their salaries, at my school the students actually EVALUATE the teachers, teachers who cannot give good lectures recieve poor ratings.
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I'm currently an online student. Everyone always uses the "Don't you get distracted?" line on me. The answer is no. There's been one class that I've had so far where I didn't pay attention, and that was due to a crappy professor.
God forbid that the college tuition we pay, that has topped the CPI for so long, be used to recruit better professors instead of funding projects that students don't use.
Phoenix
To all the professors climbing up the ladder: This wifi thingy is new to the students right now and only temporarily distracting them. They just need to get used to it, which involves exploring the possibilities. Be glad they have such an interest in new technology!
;) ) and you'll see everything gets back to normal.
Give it a few months(and some bad exam results
just my 2 cents...
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein
Because the professor cannot properly do their job they punish the students? Its not the students job to be interested in what you have to say, its YOUR job to keep their interest and give exciting lectures, its THEIR job to do the required work and pass the required tests as well as attend class.
There is no requirement to ENJOY the class or pay attention in the class, if the lecture is worthless crap they can read from the book or get on their own why should they pay attention.
If I take a class on C, and the teacher is explaining hello world and I already know C why the hell should I bother paying attention, and if the teacher has an accent when teaching this garbage like one of my teachers from india had, or a greek accent, forget it, I'm not even going to bother wasting my time trying to figure out what they are saying, Ill show up, and ill do what I want until the class is over.
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In my day :), we had no wi-fi, so I would sit in the back of unimportant classes and do the school paper's crossword puzzle. I was quiet and didn't bother anyone, and was just there in case something important came up like a test date or critical part of a lecture.
That seems reasonable to me for many of the undergrad courses I took, which I only took because they were requirements.
At any rate, professors were being paid with my money...they shouldn't care if I skipped class or did the crossword or surfed the net as long as I didn't disturb any of the other students.
My school is rather wired with WiFi everywhere. I agree with the article to a certain extent. There are always at least, say, half a dozen people on laptops doing stuff during a class of 100. Still, there have always been people like this. Some people skip classes entirely if they don't want to listen, the people with laptops are like these people only they don't realize it. I myself don't have a laptop since there are computers everywhere on campus and I wanted to build my own desktop. There isn't any real use to it in a lecture when the notes are posted online and I can have a notebook. I am perfectly fine with my desktop and a laptop in class would be distracting. I must say I am sympathetic to the claims of these professors.
"Put the laptop under your chair during class, or take an F."
.).
A laptop is a tool (and a toy). It is a tool that has NOTHING to do with learning from someone who is standing in front of you.
The only possible use would be taking notes. Is it condusive to a lecture to have 20-30 students all typing at the same time? Is there anything more than a marginal benefit over the students using a paper notebook?
I think you have made yourself a problem, and that the best solution is to STOP making that problem for yourself (doctor, it hurts when I move my arm like this . .
I guess it can be both a boon and a godsend.
I've had friends that cheated in classes on tests without professors that knew any better. Some of my other friends do nothing but IM during class - but at least it keeps them IN class.
And others, as pointed out, can work longer hours on their CS labs.
As long as any student can pull out a laptop in class, though, it stops the classroom from being an isolated unit.
I've been out of college for a while now, but I seem to recall that in order to pass classes it was necessary to not only show up but to actually pay attention to what was going on. I suppose it's really a plus for students to have the ability to check mail while waiting for everyone else to settle in and class to get started, but I can't think of a legitimate reason outside of that why you would need net access during class. In the long run, the students who spend class time playing online instead of paying attention will end up being the C students rather than the A students. After 12 years in the Real World (tm) I'm beginning to see the value of GPA. If I have two candidates for a job and all else is equal, I'm going with the one who had the higher GPA, because they obviously worked enough and cared enough to not just coast by doing the minimum amount of work necessary to pass. I don't want to work with people who are going to coast.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
In addition to allowing them to keep working while not in their computer labs, the wireless networks allow them to keep in touch with their family, better organize time, complete coursework in shorter periods of time, collaborate with other students and bring computing power into classrooms not available before.
More like play games and download music all day... That's pretty much all they use the computers for when the offered them at my school!
And of course grades don't suffer, because there's always at least 2 or 3 people who actually do the work, and everybody ashares the credit.
If a particular teacher has a problem (and I can't imagine why) perhaps a penalty for using the devices would suffice. One of my professors had a thing about cell phones; if one went off, he gave the entire class an extra-hard quiz the next class (grade couldn't be dropped). He always made good on it, too. (Worked so good that everybody was checking everybody else before class to make sure all the phones and beepers were off!)
=Smidge=
They wouldnt have to block it.
Maybe if the professor actually got on IM and talked to students, maybe if the professor interacted more with them instead of just talking a boring scripted lecture students would have reason to pay attention.
Look, I wont pay attention to a lecture unless the lecture is teaching me something i didnt know, or the lecture is actually engaging in some way, that causes me to interact with the teacher or with other students.
If a teacher is just reciting a book, I dont need to pay attention i can just read the book.
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These professors should lighten up and get with the times.
I have taught several university courses in computer labs and can sympathize with the distraction of having to compete with email and the web, but this article is not about high school. University students are paying customers and instructors are employees. It may be rude to the instructor, but as long as they are distracting other students, then it is their choice. Of course, I am far less likely to assist a student who spent more time chatting (on line or off) than a student really working to master the material.
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
As long as the students aren't actually interrupting the lecture what's the problem?
I would have welcomed such distractions in some the lectures I went to back in the dawn of time (early 80's). We had to be satisfied with the lo-tech alternatives: paper notes and staring out of the window.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
It's quite an assumption to believe that a teacher yak-yak-yaking up in front of the students is necessarily better than a quick FAQ online. I've had to look up information such as this fairly often to suplement what the idiot up front of me was being paid to spew. If I could do it in class as opposed to heading to one of the labs, I'd be that much more efficient.
would it be hard for the tech guys to only allow intranet access from the wifi access points in class? you know, at NYU you can only surf nyu.edu domain sites from class? oh, and you can't check your school webmail ;) .
;).
that said, i do think if a professor is interesting enough or if classroom time is important enough, this problem won't exist. back in my college days i'd get distracted from classes too - but i'd just stay at home and surf the net
smd4985
So I can be a professor, I can say a bunch of words, blah blah blah blah for about an hour or two, and you the student are required to stare at me while I say "blah blah blah" for 2 hours, and if you dont stare directly at me, I get to keep your money but you get to pay me again to take my class again until you can stand my class for 2 hours of listening to "blah blah blah"
Who wins here? Why should I the student pay YOU the professor to give YOU the professor my attention? What do I get out of this deal?
I should be paying you to GET my attention, to EARN it by giving good lectures, not paying you just for you to show up, because thats bullshit.
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Sigh, the times we live in.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Kids surfing porn/slashdot/etc during class is not integral to the education process.
The teacher could even bring his own laptop, add their AIM screen names to his AIM account, and talk to students via AIM
Um, they're all in the same room, why on earth would that be of any use to anyone? They don't need their computer with them at all times to add someone to their AIM list unless they are incapable of writing it down on a piece of paper (a distinct possibility in our age of techno-worship).
This is college not highschool, a teacher cannot try to blame the students for lack of attention, students pay you with THEIR money so that you can get their attention, these people want to learn and pay to learn, if you arent doing a good job and they think your lecture is a complete waste of time they dont have to pay attention.
Have you been to college? I knew many students who felt that since they were paying to attend, they should be guaranteed passing grades and shouldn't have to be bothered with things like homework or tests or showing up. My dad taught college for 30+ years and in the last 10 I can't count the number of parents who had the same attitude. "We're paying your salary, you have to give him a passing grade even if he never came to class."
this is getting old and so are you
blog
The people are getting paid to do a job and paid to go to those meetings, but say your job is to entertain your customers, say you are a COMEDIAN, and your only role is to keep their attention and make them laugh, and these people boo and ignoore you.
Do you get mad at the audience and say "why arent you cheering? stop booing me!! if you dont stop booing me I'm going to charge you TWICE!!!! PAY ATTENTION TO ME OR ELSE"
Or do you actually do your job and stop blaming the people you work for?
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It's nice to hear that you americans can finally do something that we europeans have done since 2000 and Japanese have done since 1998. Just wait until you got GPRS or even UMTS and you don't even need access point at the schools.
Reminds me of when I nearly flunked calc II because they stuck computers in front of us in the classroom. We didn't have web browsers but ftp worked just fine.
I remember downloading shareware quake from cdrom.com and playing a few multiplayer...
teacher walks over "what next?"
me "uhh derive it!" (always the best answer)
The funnest part was using something similar to winpopup (must have been netware or something) and typing "pay attention!" to people across the room.
my associative arrays can kick your hash - TCL
Students pay to go to college, and if they want to spend the money on goofing off, why stop them? The professors get paid anyway, and this way they can devote more time to the students who are actually interested.
Let those who want to learn pay attention, and the rest can browse for pr0n in the back of the room.
Sure, kids have laptops. But it doesn't mean they're going to use them to slack off if the class is interesting. In my compsci classes, about a quarter of the class brings laptops with them. When lectures are interesting, you don't see much on those laptop screens besides a text editor. The days lectures are boring, there are web sites, email, GTA3, etc. If they want to pay attention, they will. If they don't, they'll find a way to pass the time even without laptops.
As I see it any WiFi network in classrooms should only be connected to an internal LAN and the professor should be allowed to switch the Internet connection on and off. When I was taking my classes I have never used a Laptop and a PDA in class because I know it would be to destracting to me. And I see other students with the laptop and they are just browsing the Net with it. Although I am sure there are a lot of people who use the network and WiFi to improve their class. But I see it as more of a distraction then anything else. Just because techology is cool and you can get a lot out of it doesn't mean that it is always good for every situation.
Almost all my classes I took had TVs in the classrooms but the TV was rairly on. Why? because it would destract the class. TV could be used for a great sorce of information and many times it is but it dosent need to be on all the time. The same is true with Laptops and espectly with WiFi.
This distraction usually expands beyond just the sudent using it. Other students hear you clicking away, students behind you see those flashy displays, and if you are a real jerk you have sound on. Besides openly not paying attention in class is just plain Rude to the professor. She/He has spent a fair amount of time preparing for you class and having people just sit there and surf the net is just rude. A lot of time inorder for a professor to get the main topic clear will have to go over a lot of borring stuff to give a foundation to the point of the topic and with all this distraction the booring stuff (which may not be on the test) will be ignored and the students (the one using the laptop and the ones distracted by them) who are distracted will loose out on the material.
Use technology responcibility if not then they will take it away for everyone. That has always been true.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As for bad profs, I agree. The problem is the University makes a lot of money off of research grants. Hence, they're very interested in how much research money the prof will bring in, and not interested enough in how well the prof teaches. In my view, the priorities are skewed. I long for the legendary days before "publish or perish."
Okay, but you have to realise that wifi doesn't really add many possibilities to a lecture beyond what is capable with projectors and simple discussion. For instance:
As opposed to simply talking to them?
Agreed 100%. It's the student's responsibility to learn using the available resources - if they dick around instead of paying attention, then they won't get very far.
Been there, done that...
In this situation, you'd be better off pointing it out to their superiors. If the lecturer is redundant, then it's a waste of money to employ them. If there is anything to be gained from having a lecturer, then their students are being cheated.
I don't see how "lecture notes available through the internet" translates to "wifi in lecture halls is useful" though. If the lectures aren't useful to you, skip them and download the notes from wherever you like.
Don't you remember ? AOL is evil.
They should use MSN. Oh shit.
Ok that yahoo thing then.
And what if the teacher doesn't like my screenname, fuckschool2 ?
N.B. Don't worry, this link really does point to CNN, no need to cover your eyes or to have a bucket nearby...
Resources are unlimited, colleges get money from tuition, not to mention they get money from the state.
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I can hit this from both sides, as I've been a participant in the good and bad side of wi-fi in the classroom. Granted, where I recently graduated from, there was no wi-fi infrastructure, other than what the students built in the dorms.
:)
However, my dorm was close enough to one of the academic buildings that if I sat near the window, I could pick up the signal from the AP in my room. I used my laptop in one class to pull/update files in CVS on my dorm server for a programming class I was taking. This was great for me, as I could get anything I needed from my computer back in my room, without worrying "did I put all the files on the disk for the professor?". Of course, I had another class that was so boring, my use of wi-fi allowed me to quietly chat with friends and do other work that needed to be done. Granted, it was a UNIX class, and there's only so much you can learn about vi, ls, cat...I just wanted credit for the course
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
I'm going to have to side with the professors on this one. I recall an earlier post that it's the professor's fault for not providing an entertaining enough lecture. I'm sorry, but I would never hire a person that I knew felt that way.
Life is not a constant stream of entertainment. The most rewarding things in life come from blood, sweat and tears and an education is one of them. While I think you should enjoy your chosen field of study, I don't think is has to compete on the same level as the latest Eminem video or an email of how your friend saw this really hot chick at Wal-Mart.
Besides, I don't even think it's possible to make all courses entertaining to all. Do you as, say a programmer, expect to really get into Classic Greek Literature 540 as a form of entertainment?
Does Sesame Street have a university?
The easy solution is to not have classroom LANs configured to passthrough to the Internet. They should be able to access all of the University's resources on the Intranet, but they could set it up so the prof can easily turn on and off the Internet passthrough.
With Rendezvous (ZeroConf), they'll never be able to kill the network. Kids will still be able to iChat peer to peer and do other things. Heck, with cached e-mail from the IMAP server they can read and respond to their e-mail offline in class.
mbbac
Instructor myself...I would just declare certain lecture times to be "computer's down". When I'm trying to get across a critical point, I would make people close their laptops, stop writing away on their notes and just listen to me.
When I'm confident that they've gotten the point or the majority of them had, I would then hand out an addendum to their notes covering what we just discussed.
This would be a commonplace event, happening most likely once per classroom day.
IM can be used so students who want to ask questions in private without annoying other students can.
I dont believe just by paying im required to get a passing grade but i do expect them to pass me if I do my part of the contract, if it says I have to pass test X and i pass it, I better get a passing grade.
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Must be rather annoying in history, litterature or philosophy classes, when teachers no longer can pull the wool over their pupil's eyes to push their own agenda...
It is the teacher's job to teach, not make sure that everyone is paying attention and doing their work. A good teacher will try to get everyone involved (it's especially funny when they call on a sleeping student to answer a question; that kind of embarassment solves a lot of attention problems). But it is not their job to assume the responsibility that ultimately belongs to the students.
Now in grade school, this is a little more complicated, but that's a discussion for another article...
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Ok, so studets are being rude and disrespectful, and teh solution is to unplug the network? Why not ask that students NOT use their computers during a lecture? You know, act like grownups?
Don't give me this "I pay your salary BS." If you don't want to listen to the lecture, stay in your room and surf porn. But, if I'm the teacher, it is my duty to deliver what you paid me to deliver. If I ask you to kindly treat me with a tad bit of respect and close the lid on your laptop, then just do it.
of the running gag in Real Genius which ends with an empty classroom and the teacher's tape recorder talking to the students' tape recorders.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I totally agree! At college students are responsible for their own learning so if the lecturer is failing to provide a suitable learning environment then they can't blame the students for not showing up or for doing other things whilst sitting in class and then getting their learning another way (if they choose to not show up and don't make up the learning elsewhere then they, the student, have a problem but that's a separate issue).
One of the things that suprised me, not having attended a US college, about Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the attitude exhibited to the students by the lecturers, dissmissive or even downright hostile. At first I thought it was just the fact that it was fictional but what suprised me even more was talking to friends who had attended, and were still attending, US colleges and being told that that was normal and expected. Seriously, if a UK lecturer tried any of those things then, based on my own experience at University of Keele in North Staffordshire (1989-93), they would be on academic disiplinary charges within days.
I did have some crap lecturers, one's 'lectures' consisted of him reading out the handouts verbatim in a dull monotone. In this case by the 4th week the entire class were just showing up to pick up the hand outs then disapearing off to read them in the Student's Union bar. By the 6th week we had got into the habit of getting together for informal bull sessions after reading to work out what the heck it was all about, leading to a discursive learning method, one of the best courses I ever did actually!
In another course I stopped attending after the 3rd session because it was an area I already knew a lot about. In the exam I got the best grade out of the entire group for that course.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
As a former student, soon to be teaching, I'm torn on this one. The difference between my best and my worst classes has often been student engagement. When half the class is zoning out, I find it that much harder to be interested in the material. When everyone around me is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (whether it be because the material is interesting, or because they know their performance depends on their absorbing the material), the attitude is contagious. In-class teaching is valuable, and very often provides more than any textbook. And for god's sake, you didn't pay $n,000 dollars to get the same education you could get from a video-correspondance course.
I wish more professors moved from dry lecturing to a slightly more socratic class style. In the absence of that, they might at least making the material important enough that you can't afford to miss it (ie, not a re-hash of the textbook chapter.) At very least, it's not unreasonable to make attendance non-mandatory and demand that the people who don't want to be there go check their email somewhere else.
The chance of an education. You get to turn up, and either absorb or ignore the information you're being taught. Which of those you do is entirely your choice. The fact that you're paying is utterly irrelevant. If you expect University staff to behave differently because you're paying their wages, then you fundametally don't grasp how education works. Personally, I approve of blocking WiFi access. If you want to access the net, then do so (outside of the lecture theatre). If not, go to the lecture and learn something. Again, your choice. From the University's perspective, it makes sense to encourage people to pay attention, as that has a bearing on pass rates, which will affect student numbers, and hence income, for future years.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
This is this week's version of staring out of the the windows.
But...
1. Students ought not to be able to pass unless they pay attention in class.
2. Teachers ought to say something not available elsewhere.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
What a stupid idea, a teacher using IM *in class.* They're in the same room, they should talk! I can concoct scenarios in which that's not stupid but they almost never happen in real life.
You really aren't asking professors to be interesting, you are asking them to be entertaining, more entertaining than what students can find on a 'net connection. That almost never happens and isn't really a plausible goal anyway.
Even if the students are paying for school themselves, they're not buying the right to be rude, to the teacher or to their fellow students. Students can't properly judge whether a lecture is a waste of their time while it's going on, only when the course is over or maybe after their next assignment.
There are certainly many people who do not teach well, especially in a "sage on the stage" setting, and schools could use less of that format but that's no excuse for being so disrespectful and a distraction to your classmates.
When are we going to stop conveying to children (and yes, I mean mostly-grown ones too) that it is not the world's job to keep them entertained? My brother really isn't far off when he calls television the "electronic teet".
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I attended a summer program for high school students last year, and we were given laptops with wireless access throughout campus. Sure it had some benefits, but overall it was a terrible, terrible idea.
The main use that the laptops received was Kazaa and various Gnutella clients. This was mostly for downloading full length movies, pirated software, MP3s, and also for pr0n.
During class a lot of people would just watch movies they downloaded, or play UT. Nothing like seeing a multiplayer deathmatch in the middle of class. IMing was also big, and it was always funny when someone forgot to turn off sound on their laptop.
Why would people go to a program/pay for college just to watch pr0n and play games? I don't know. However, this just shows that wifi in class is a bad idea. One in ten will use it for education, but nine in ten will use it for Kazaa and AIM.
Also, the class I remember the most from is the one where the professor made us turn off our laptops.
We've considered working with wireless access technology in lectures for our students. The problem - battery life. Friends tell me that when you've got a wireless card talking away you might get an hour or so of battery life. Someone coming to a lecture with a half-charged battery is going to be in trouble when asked to download the homework questions at the end...
The solution? Well, why not put power sockets in the desks? So much for wire-less. Might as well put network sockets in as well and give the kiddies 10Mb each instead of sharing an AP or two.
Baz
People should read history and philosophy more and realize we are still struggling with the same damn problems for thousands of years.
Why the hell do we need professors then? If they are paid just to show up and force you to look at them, what exactly is it that they do if they dont give good lectures?
Hard work is one thing, but we are PAYING them, they arent free, they arent giving up anything here, we pay them to do what we want them to do, and thats give an exciting lecture.
I dont think you'll find alot of college students who agree with your opinion that lectures should be boring and dull, people want their moneys worth.
All courses can be entertaining to the majority of the people if the courses are interactive and engaging.
You want to make a boring course like C programming fun? Find someone who can speak REALLY well, not someone from india with an accent.
Find someone who can communicate the basics of programming but in a unique way, complete with jokes, and very detailed explainations including visual.
The good lectures usually arent 100 percent focused strictly on that topic, they drift off alittle bit but the lecturer makes sure to get the point across, students get to talk and ask questions, talk about personal things, so that it feels more like group discussion instead of just blah blah blah blah where students just sit and listen.
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of bashing the technology and blaming it for them being terrible and boring with their lectures they'd be fine.
Look, technology is good, WiFi is good, a smart teacher would use WiFi and the fact that all the students have laptops and AIM to their advantage, to get the students communicating better with each other through AIM, and to talk about the class.
The teacher could even bring his own laptop, add their AIM screen names to his AIM account, and talk to students via AIM.
Wow. $100k+ worth of technology to enable a group of people sitting in the same room to communicate with each other! Why didn't they think of this before? We wouldn't have to bother with such pesky things as talking, taking turns or other aspects of organized civil behavior.
I experienced several lecturers that were dead boring, but my friends who are professors and are good at and want to teach say that the problem isn't so much with them -- although they acknowledge their own academic tendency to run on about tertiary issues -- but with institutions of higher learning that are more interested in being research engines.
Professors that spend a lot of time making interesting lectures don't do as much research, don't get grants, don't advance, and don't get resources. Unversities spend their money building lavish facilities for research and money-making activities, not hiring undergrad instructors. They cram hundreds of students into lecture halls that resemble large movie theaters -- and we wonder why the lecture seems boring or there's little student interaction?
And then the Universities claim they *need* to get research dollars since its what gives them prestige and status, that means more tax dollars and alumni contributions. Political correctness demands they admit thousands of unprepared or incapable students who require two years of essentially remedial instruction (cf crowded, boring lecture halls), draining resources for small-class professor-class interaction.
I think that many academics are low tech and some revel in being so, but being pissed off at the University for spending money to enable students to nullify what little classroom experience they can deliver isn't at all surprising. It's simple, easy and dead wrong to lay all the blame on professors. I won't even start on the spoiled, ignorant students and their massively misplaced sense of entitlement...
Nothing is just plain good. Everything has at least a minor flaw.
:-)
Now to your posting:
Students aren't just dumb listening to lectures. Many students (at least the creative ones) have funny ideas during lectures and make fun of the stuff to ease listening. This is not bad and may be fun if everyone gets to know it, but let the students communicate via AIM isn't something for a 'live' lecture. Why doesn't you just get a videofeed from the lecture and stay at home?
You haven't have to use technology only because it's available. If I am in a room with someone I prefer talking to the person instead of using my notebook to chat with him. Most people can also talk faster than write.
Another point is that not every student worries about the money. In some countries education is almost free. There are always people who just want to meet their fellow students instead of listening to the lecture. Besides that, lectures aren't equally interesting to all listeners. We have a 'How to use the university's un*x system' lecture here and a lot of people think this lecture is a waste of time, but you have to listen to it. (Most of them will learn their 'lesson' later.
These not interested students don't have to come to the lecture, because no-one checks if everyone is there. But they come to the lecture, play ut2003 over the wlan and just annoy the students who want to listen to the lecture. Even if they mute their notebooks, the occasional curse or success cry is irritating.
We have WiFi in some, but not all of buildings at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My finding has been that professors generally don't have to compete with wireless internet, regardless of how good their lectures are. The students who are proned to pay attention and take notes will do so with or without distractions, and those who are a bit less, err, academically interested will generally find some other way to pass the time, whether this involves a different distraction, sleeping, or not attending the class at all. Professors who lecture generally only have this problem with students who don't care anyway. If the class involves participation, then the student doesn't have an option to goof off. I found that in my introductory computer science courses, which were not attendance mandatory, were almost completely free of WiFi users because the only ones who were attending were those who needed to learn the material, or otherwise enjoyed the lectures. (I fell into the latter category - there's a reason my COMP114 professor was North Carolina Professor of the Year.) The bottom line, WiFi misuse in the classroom is not a problem, but an indicator of a deficiancy with the way the class is taught.
- Shadow, the Laughing Orc
http://bomns.sf.net/
that the Wifi had been turned off for most of the ./ community's English 101 class. Jesus Christ! then/than your/you're has/is ... stuff they taught me in 6th grade! And these are the people screaming right here, right now, that it's the profisors(sic) job to intertain(sic) them!
Put identity in the browser.
On a funny side note one guy in one of my classes WAS looking up pr0n while in class, all the people behind him were wide-eyed looking at it... that's how he got busted.
:)
:) Had they retained him, the paper could have been liable to other employees for condoning a hostile atmosphere, but I hope remedies short of termination were properly considered. Again, we can surmise he was an idiot.
A rare example of legitimate social Darwinism.
A manager at a major newspaper (I knew the general counsel) got canned for watching porn at work -- in his glass office. To me, it would have been perfectly fair to fire him for being an idiot.
This comes down to the teacher's ego being hurt that someone wasn't listening to them, or what they have to say isn't really adding much to the required reading. I slept through half of college. I would go to class, put my head on the desk, and wake up at the end of class, nary the worse for it most of the time. Most teachers weren't doing all that great of a job explaining material above and beyond the textbook.
The only teachers that hassled me about sleeping were those whose egos were personally diminished by my choice to ignore their lecture.
I don't see sleeping in class as bad, or playing on one's laptop. If I had laptops in college, I could have done homework for one class in another!
From my experience there are two types of students. (1) Those who want a degree and (2) those who want an education.
Usually, those who want an education are those who are paying attention in class.
I recently saw a sticker on a window in London (dentist's office I think) for http://www.dont-go-online-here.com/. Not much of a site but the fact that people are actually thinking about 'No Surfing' areas is significant.
How can a prof's lecture compare to playing a nice game of WarCraftIII or Age of Empires?
... so this wasn't hard to do ...
... on the other hand ... I have given pleantly of lectures myself to college students ....
.... and one day, I did catch a kid playing a game on his PC during one of my talks (I was giving the talk in a PC lab). I was pretty pissed off, but I understood ... he didn't want to listen to that any more than I wanted to talk about it ... it was a BORING topic! I tried to spice it up and ask people questions so that they didn't fall asleep, but nothing could have saved that talk ...
... and since they paid for the course, you'd think that they'd want to get what they paid for by listening to the information being passed from the professor to them. However, if it is convenient for them to screw around and day dream (or play on a machine in this case), then they will!
... this is an easy one that only requires prof by observation ... QED.
...
I have been on both sides of the coin, so I think I have a very unique perspective on this.
I was in a class with a boring prof, and I will (reluctantly) admit that I played Age of Empires in the back row of class one day. What can I say, I wasn't learning anything new and it was BORING! And to top that off, the prof had two hearing aids and is half blind
I pride myself on giving very interactive presentations, but sometimes you just can't spice up a lecture that is about as fun to listen to as it is to watch paint dry
So lets just get down to it and give the solution:
Students should only be permitted to use PC's, Palms, etc during LAB SESSIONS!
Seriously, there really is no need for students to bring a lap top to a lecture unless they don't plan on paying attention
Bottom line: Listen to lecture or (play video game, chat with friends about how silly the prof's hair looks)
Just my $0.02 cents
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
They're not the ones paying thousands of dollars to attend school and goof off.
--sdem
Colleges and universities don't owe you an education. They owe you access to information in a format optimal for learning. You still must actually do something to get it.
Virtually all of the info you'd learn in university is available in libraries and on the internet. So why then do companies still prefer people with little pieces of paper? Because actions speak louder than words. Any basement-dwelling sociopathic geek can SAY they could learn how to calculate the Big O of various fibonnacci algorithms, but the paper proves that this person actually did learn what he was asked to learn. And that demonstrates that he could learn virtually anything else you ask him do. He's already demonstrated that he's a do-er, a go-getter. He's the one who actually participated in classes and made the effort to really understand the course material.
And that doesn't just mean paying attention in class - that means actually putting in effort outside of the classroom.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
I wouldnt mind this at all.
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I can see both sides. There are faculty (i.e professors) that:
- Don't care about technology and you wonder how or why they ever became professors. They will lecture and bore students and only do technology if mandated somehow. And it's hard to mandate tenured faculty into anything.
- Cut the edge and do things that both help and hinder students with technology. They take risks. Sometimes students aren't bored, but they are frustrated. Sometimes they appreciate and benefit from the work the faculty are putting in.
- Don't use technology heavily, but do a good job at what they do. They may not need it or can get the job done otherwise.
- Facutly that want to do something but just can't find the time/money to do what they want. And they're probably the young faculty w/o tenure.
One thing I do know...the university system doesn't reward the risk-takers in terms of teaching/using technology to teach (at least not in my experience). Faculty get tenure and money by research, papers, and working with industry...not by doing a good job teaching.I agree that students have the right to seek refuge from boring teachers (been there, done that...twice). I agree that teachers have the right to expel students who cause distractions or otherwise detract from the class by using WiFi devices (and other technology). I agree that teachers should make the class interesting enough for students and use the technology to their advantage. Problem is...the system doesn't reward that!
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
A professor doesn't have time to read and reply to IM messages during class. This situation calls for more asynchronous communication, email the question.
I'm all for the goals and requirements of classes being explicitly stated at the beginning of any course. People learn best when they know what's expected of them.
And if the student is not paying enough attention to the professor to actually give an honest, fair evaluation, what then? Also, don't think that your school is so unique. Many universities and colleges have students evaluate the faculty, and the administrators take it very seriously.
<sarcasm>Maybe we should just out law spoiled kids</sarcasm>
these professors need to get over their own bloated egos. There's definitely a problem, but it's not WIFI or education. It's the culture which says "slack off, don't do work and be famous for being stupid."
supplementary material to the lecture (some reference PDF of quick notes, very handy if you forget some bit of C code, et al.),
the lecture notes themselves (usually power point, sometimes PDF or HTML),
work being done (it's nice to be able to write your code while the stuff is still fresh in your mind),
Slashdot (imagine that)
BattleTech armor guidelines (I guess it was more interesting than NP completeness)
These are among other things. I do think it's nice to have instance reference, and to be able to do homework during class if a lecture isn't particularly interesting or engaging.
That having been said, I don't bring a laptop. I don't find that any of those things need to be done during class, and that I can live without them until lectures and labs are done for the day. Not just that, but laptops can get a bit heavy after carrying the between a few classes. At least, in addition to other notebooks and texts.
I might add that I don't take notes on my laptop either. I tried a few times, and while maybe some of you have had a different experience, I find taking notes on a laptop is very limiting. I draw lots of little diagrams and figures in my notes which is difficult to do quickly in most text editors.
On the other hand, there is something to be said for laptops and wireless devices. Since we all are required to have laptops, labs are much cheaper. Rather than lots of desktop machines in a dedicated room, a few tables and chairs with CAT5 can be a fully functioning lab. This has its own problems (IM, Email, etc) but the room can be a small lecture room, or non-computer based class when the computer lab is done. This also worked in my high school, where laptops were required as well. Even for non-computer classes (e.g. English Lit) this had advantages, like being able to read free texts online without needing any paper copies, etc. It's a nice convenience.
With wireless all of this becomes even easier, and any room is a connected room. No longer is the CAT5 needed, or the desktop machine. It's a great advance in convenience.
Even after all that, I still try to take my computer labs in the actual labs with big desktop machines or terminals; I like the big screens and full keyboards and looking slightly up to the monitor rather than down. I still don't bring my laptop to class because I can take notes just fine on paper, if not better, and most things I'd need a computer for can wait until I'm done with class.
We're on a mission from God.
As mentioned previously, it's college, not high school. If they don't want to pay attention, they don't have to as long as they accept responsibility for their actions and aren't interfering with the class. It's on them to pass the class and/or participate as required.
What about the "cattle call" classes that everyone has to take and even the instructor doesn't want to be there? My son's intro to C++ class was like that and he surfed the web while in that class. And did just fine in it. When my daughter had taken the same class the year before, she had made similar comments about the class. The instructor was bored and wanted to be teaching more advanced Unix courses but had to teach the intro course. She was not helpful to the students that tried to get her help. My daughter also did fine in the class, but she, like her brother had already taken an introductory C++ programming course in high school.
One of my instructors teaches his MIS course from Powerpoint slides that he just reads. Although capable of truly inspired teaching when he wanted to, he usually didn't (at least at the undergrad level. Ask me next year when I have to take him again post grad). He made attendance part of his grading above and beyond the university's policy of no more than 4 missed classes. Many times I sat in the back of his class and read my latest copy of Linux Journal or articles on my Palm. All of his class material was available on Blackboard before class. After 20+ years, I think he's bored too. Most of the class seemed to be only interested in achieving the minimum necessary to pass the course. Uninspired teaching, uninspired class, rote reading of slides; as they say, "Where's my motivation"?
The better professors won't have to worry. They'll hold the students attention and not worry about those that insist on not paying attention. Most of those students that don't pay attention are either tourists anyway or being held back by uninspired curriculum or professors. If TAs are teaching and can't hold the class, they shouldn't be teaching. That's not what I've been paying for. From the article it appears to be a number of issues are involved (as usual). WiFi is still new enough on campus that both faculty and students are still working out the roles of themselves and the technology. The implementation of any new technology is a bumpy road. I think that what this article really highlights.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world - Ghandi
That depends on their style of lecturing, the pace of the class, what they are teaching, etc.
A math teacher CAN reply to msgs because math problems can take up 45 minutes on a single problem.
English is another subject which can have this.
Also History, Science, etc allow teacher/student communication. Then theres other classes which move at such a pace where theres no time to do anything but lecture, like philosophy, one big lecture, or programming, usually a lecture or a step by step walkthrough.
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Why even bother going to the class if your going to surf and read email in class? Grannted this will prepare you for a career as a seat warmer "bragging" about how many hours you spend at the office without really accomplishing much.
Next you'll say that the university / school should force everyone to have a laptop so they can "participate" in the class. If people really have time to surf and read email, the prof should just start making the class harder.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
All of this can be done with old-fashioned cabled networks. T1 access from my dorm was more than enough for what I needed to do. WiFi in the classroom probably would have been more of a distraction to me, as well as most students, whether or not they are willing to admit it.
There's already been one technolgy based solution to this problem described but there is a ready made solution for schools that either don't want to or don't have the resources to roll their own. http://www.newburynetworks.com has a product that can allow/disallow different levels of network access depending on your physical location. And of course it runs on Linux.
Why, I wonder, is it more socially acceptable to whip out your laptop and hammer away on the keyboard than to, say, start taking/making calls on your phone?
Both seem distracting to the surrounding students and disruptive of class interaction. And that's not even considering the impact on the student using the computer or phone.
--
bachiatari na torisetsu o yome!
You'd have failed the class in the USA, the teacher would fail you for not showing up to the lectures.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
When the professeur was interesting then I listened.
So while sleeping you multi-tasking brain was able to wake you up when the prof got interesting?
wtg.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The prof wasn't "legally" blind, but his eye sight wasn't so good ....
... but that is a totall different topic. If you can't speak CLEAR English, you shouldn't teach in an English speaking University. Why do you think that my lecutes went so much better than those of people that are more intelligent than I am, but that can't speak a lick of English? I also lectured about cooler topics, usually web related ...
He is a retired (and very well respected) prof that came back (really cheaply, I might add) to teach. He probably should have stayed in retirement because of his health problems, but he had nothing else to do. However, even though his courses could be very boring at times, I learned more practial knowledge in his courses than in most of the other courses I took.
As for the language thing, I agree
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
I disagree. If the lecturer is talking about something that a student already fully understands, then that student is perfectly capable of making the decision to tune said lecturer out. That point aside, if a student can't even understand every other word that they lecturer says...the whole thing becomes pretty academic anyway.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
With writing like that you should consider surfing the web less.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Next they'll charge students extra to browse while they're 'supposedly' in class. All the mechanisims are already in place to do that!
AC (since I work there)
Using a Rendezvous capable chat client would be a better solution. Everyone on that LAN automatically sees everyone else in the chat client. It's very cool around my house. My girlfriend and I peer-to-peer chat using Rendezvous instead of yelling at each other through the house when we're on different floors.
mbbac
This has nothing to do with WiFi. My school didn't have WiFi and I still sat in the back of the room surfing while the teacher blabbed on and on about Windows 98. (Yes there was actually a Windows 98 class, which is why I could not pay attention and still pass it). Students will do this if they have access to the internet period. It doesn't have to be wireless.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at the number of posts that are "anti-professor" here, nor should I be surprised that some believe that "googling" can give one "bulletproof" references.
I think colleges should treat wireless connections in a way that if the student chooses to abuse it during class and fail, it's their fault.
As a former TA, where I would teach a C++ course in a 250 person lecture hall, all I asked for is quiet. I could really give a rat's ass if the kids were playing quake or downloading porn. If they chose not to pay attention to my class, that was their perogative. I wasn't paying their $10K a year to attend college, all I asked was for some peace and quiet so the responsible students could contrate on my lecture. Let them fail!
100% Insightful
Pupils posting stoopid "anti-professor" comments to Slashdot while in class...
If a problem's taking 45 minutes, that's more than 1/2 of the class. College classes don't give classwork, which is used to pad the teacher's time, and to make up for the students who don't do their homework when in high school.
The only time that difficult of a problem will be assigned during the class would be for a test. And I'm guessing that the teacher wouldn't want communication going on at that time.
Oh...and in those cases, it'd be a one problem test -- and the test would normally be subdivided into many sections, as it would show many different things that were covered in the class. (for example, it might be a complex fluid dynamica problem, to determine how flow at an inlet might affect the flow at multiple outlets in a complex system... or the deformation of a structure under load when it's not composed of simply supported beams).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Why, when I was young, we didn't have them newfangled compooters and sech. All we had was kalkulators and we was grateful!
Of course, even then the prof's were always complaining about how the cal-kylators was always distracting from the class. Hard to teach with all that klicketty-klacketty goin' on.
And them student's was dumb, too! Couldn't find the 30th decimal place of Pi without a calculator. Heck, they wouldn't know i if it smacked 'em in the face!
You young whippersnappers got it easy!
The preceding comment has been reviewed and declared to be compliant with HIPPA Phase II regulations.
Umm, not all teachers spend time preparing for lectures. And the ones that do will usually keep your attention pretty well, even with the boring stuff. I've had countless lectures where the teacher counted attendance and then basically read out of the book, and got confused and had to correct themselves all the time. I shouldn't be forced to pay attention to somebody reading out of the book.
A good teacher will make the boring stuff interesting. I had a Weather and Climate class that was the most boring stuff ever much of the time, but i loved the class, paid a lot of attention, and learned a lot of stuff, because the teacher was awesome (Jonathan Martin at UW) If the teacher really loves the subject, you can tell, and you start to enjoy the subject and I can tell you that practically everyone in that class was paying full attention. A good teacher will make jokes, do drawings and stuff on the chalkboard, and do pointless little experiments with things just to illustrate a point. Granted, some subjects don't really have that many options for "experiments" (english, etc) but it isn't that hard to do something interesting or funny so the students want to pay attention to get the jokes, if nothing else, heh.
For what most college professors (not the TAs) get paid each year, they damn well better be good at teaching, not just smart. If they are bad at teaching, just stick them with research. Most TAs are pretty good at teaching (comp sci department excluded, because honestly most of them don't really speak english all that well) so just have one of them teach the class. They remember what it's like to be a student, and they're usually pretty good at keeping students attention.
//FIXME: Bad
Glenn Reynolds, author of the popular InstaPundit blog and a professor of law at the U. of TN offers this observation "I also tend to wander around the room a lot
Basically the way I read it, is if a professor is engaged in teaching his/her class, then he/she isn't going to have a problem keeping the students engaged as well.
--- have you healed your church website?
... but frequently the parents. In American culture, at least, it is assumed that, if you are bright, that you will attend college. For plenty, it's almost as though college attendance is mandatory. Sure, it's easy to say, "If the student doesn't want to be in college, then they ought not to be in college." However, that's far easier said than done when parents control the purse strings.
So, for some students, college is as burdensome as high school.
The end result, for these students, is that they are the same underachievers in college as in high school.
Wi-Fi just gives them a new outlet for goofing off.
There's one thing that wi-fi and instant messaging offers - and that's instant, anonymous relay. Because it's alright to put your hand up in a tutorial (and a class of 20) and ask for help, but it's another kettle of fish when putting your hand up in a hall of 500, hoping that the question you're asking wasn't already told sufficiently when you were picking up your pen.
The lecturer would broadcast his IM no., and students would send messages to him. The lecturer would choose to attend or disregard messages he receives (he as most academics, especially professors, remain male).
Let's take that networking course I might be doing - wouldn't wi-fi be a great extension? The 'net in the very room! The lecturer could do a real-time demonstration.
Or pull up the Gutenberg text in that 19th century Romantic literature lecture rather than lug in the book and follow the quotes through text search.
But let's face it, the average college student (in Australia at least) wouldn't be able to scratch the grub together to buy a laptop, and the last thing we need is further 'elitisation' of education. Still ten years ago, mobiles were considered a luxury as well, but one going off in class hardly even gets a groan from most lecturers. Maybe in another 5 years, laptops'll become even more commonplace.
they made me do it
I think that items which look distracting should not be used in the lecture theatre. Laptops do stand out. PDAs would be OK though. I think that anything which is discrete should be fine.
I speak from experience. In some lectures which put me to sleep, I took up quietly eating lollies. I found that I wouldn't go to sleep, and I absorbed most of the lecture.
I personally wouldn't use any sort of computer during a lecture. If the lecture was that boring, I just wouldn't attend in the lecture to begin with -- I'd study in the library or something. I absolutely love self study. The library makes a good friend.
I'm not someone that just doesn't like lectures, either. I have done hard courses and fully enjoyed them (and paid full attention).
That's sad... and if by "girlfriend" you mean "mom" (as I suspect), that's really sad.
In either case, I bet the sex is horrible.
You obviously have no idea what college is really like. Not one of my professors would have ever taken the time to take attendance, or even cared who showed up.
Dinivin
I've been in classes with professors who simply had nothing to teach. When I'm not learning anything for a lecture why should I pay attention? Why should I be required to pay attention to hello world when I already know C? I KNOW C ALREADY.
In classes where I dont know something and the lecturer is teaching something thats not in the books or on a peice of paper in front of them, I listen, but when I can get that information from other sources, or I already know the information why should I be taking notes and paying attention?
I'm not spoiled, I'm poorer than most people here, I have to take out loans, use financial aid and do whatever it takes to pay for college. Fact is I'm paying to be taught something, I'm paying for GOOD lectures, for INSTRUCTION THATS GOOD, I can do better than some professors so why should I pay attention whe I can read the C tutorial and get more detailed information than they give? And these stupid professors who dont let you ask questions or who get mad when you ask too many questions
Why the hell do I need you if you cant answer questions? you get my point.
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Reading Slashdot is heavily impacting my productiveness. Damn it! I ain't no kiddin' here folks.
You can get an education using the internet. Go to a site like http://www.wikipedia.org/, read tutorials on C, C++ and Java, and work with Linux for a while writing open source applications, you'll have as much knowledge and as much if not more experience than your average computer science major.
You dont need a professor to give lectures, lectures are just for convience, so you dont have to do the research yourself.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
First off, I always attended classes, whenever possible, as it's the teacher who writes the test, not the book -- If the teacher says something 4 times, even if the book only mentioned it once, you better right it down, because odds are, it's going to be on the test.
That being said, I slept in class. I don't know what it is about classes, but unless the teacher made it interesting, I couldn't stay awake. There was only one class that I did particularly poorly on [not an A or B] in college -- Fluid Dynamics [mind you, I got an A the semester before in Hydraulics, which I had to get the pre-req of Fluid Dynamics waved for].
I feel strongly that it had to do with the teaching style -- the teacher wouldn't even let you take notes in his class, because 'if you were writing, you weren't listening, and if you're not listening, you're not learning'. To make matters worse, I found the teacher to be particularly boring. He read from the book. That was the class -- him reading from the book, putting a few problems up on the overhead, and you sitting there, bored out of your skull. [Oh, and he wrote the book, too, so it's not like he added stuff that wasn't in the book, or could read the book for a slightly different explaination].
Now, I did my best to not be a distraction for people in class. Although I had a Richochet modem, I didn't make a feature out of the fact that I wasn't paying attention to the class. I took an Oracle DBA certificate program last year, and there were three people sitting in the second row, who kept looking at web pages, talking to each other, taking cell phone calls while the teacher was talking, etc.
I don't believe that you need absolute undivided attention. [ie, if you got the concept right off, and the teacher's explaining it to a few people who needed some clarification, okay, I'd glance over at my screen], but the teacher should be your primary focus for the class, and if you become a distraction, I think you should be removed from the class so you don't impact other people's education.
[Oh -- and in the course last summer -- those same three people installed AIM, and were using they joys of networking to cheat on tests... one more strike against technology in the classroom].
Personally, I find that I pay the most attention in class when I can understand how the material affects me. Of course, everyone has different experience, and finding how to make the material relate to each of the students can be a difficult task. [I view the 'meet the students' first day one of the most important days of class... especially if the teacher asks what you're expecting to get out of the class]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
One of the things that suprised me, not having attended a US college, about Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the attitude exhibited to the students by the lecturers, dissmissive or even downright hostile. At first I thought it was just the fact that it was fictional but what suprised me even more was talking to friends who had attended, and were still attending, US colleges and being told that that was normal and expected.
yeah, I can't count the number of times I've had professors try and open up alternative demensions to summon demons to torment me and my friends, and I'm paying these people's salaries!
uh.
I post links to stuff here
(It is sometimes better to befriend 'em, even if you can beat 'em.)
This is college. The student is paying for it. If he wants to fuck off and browse the web instead of listening to lectures and taking notes, fine. As long as he's not distracting other students, let him waste his money. He'll only have to pay again to retake the class he failed.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
I can't hear the prof everytime my tinfoil hat shifts on my head.
That is, part at least, of the point! As an adult (and yeah college students should be considered adults, heck HS Seniors deserve at least some degree of adult treatment) I am responsible for getting the most out of my educational experience at college. If I believe that the best use of my time is not attending a particular lecture and am prepared to justify that then it should be my decision.
At 18 a US college student has a minimum of 12 years of experience of studying, a UK student 14 years. If the primary and secondary educators have done a good enough job then the student should be able to make reasonable decisions as to if they need to attend lectures. I don't see it as the lecturers job to police attendance to sessions where the student could make up the work on their own time. It might be required to attend lab sessions and tutorials, sessions where practical skills must be demonstrated or where progress is checked, but lecturers need to realize that their prefered style of lecture may not be the best method of learning for all their students.
There's an old joke about lectures being the transfer of information from the lecturer's notes to the student's notes without lingering in the brains of either. Unfortunately many lecturers, and students, see that as the truth or even a requirement.
If I'm signed on a course because it is a requirement but it's for something I already can do then why should I be made to attend lectures telling me what I already know. As part of an electronics programme I was doing I had to do a course in Pascal programming. Assessment was based on a single programming assignment that had to be completed by 3 weeks after the end of the 10 week course. At the end of the first session I asked what the assignment was (it was to write a program to perform polynomial arithmatic) and by the start of the second I handed in the completed program with fully documented source code and printouts of test series performed. I already knew more about Pascal than I would ever learn on that course and I could look up what I needed to know about Polynomials (I'd never even heard the term before that assignment, and weren't covered on the course anyhow) so I didn't need to attend the course.
Failing a student for non-attendance of lectures is pure abuse of power.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Why not just have a whitelist of allowed IP's to access? It is not dificult to block access to certain ports also...
Enough "Connection Refused" pages accompanied with loud embarrassing noises will probably cause students to look for other forms of entertainment, maybe even the prof?!
At Keele the demons were largely metaphorical or induced by over imbibement of alcoholic beverages. There were legends, mainly based around the interest Alistair Crowley had paid to the site, and rumours but little definate. Also our Wiccan/Pagan group was a lot more serious and much less Wannblessedbe than the one in Buffy.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
I think only super geeks would actually use WiFi at the university to enhance their academic experience. I'm sure the majority would use it for gaming, chatting, surfing, generally not paying attention.
I have to say that rumours of our rage and angst are greatly exaggerated. I'd like to see more of my students with Wi-Fi equipped computers attending classes and using their equipment. I wish that more of our classrooms were equipped with computers and projectors for the professors, since I've integrated technology into my courses. It's wonderful when students can download files as you refer to them, bookmark websites you recommend during class or check out additional resources to bring more fuel to their comments in discussion.
My rules are few: Sound alerts must be turned off during class (especially those annoying IM moo noises) and Wi-Fi network access must be disabled during tests and examinations (I don't want my students surfing the net for answers when they should be writing). If you can abide by those rules (and the general campus rules for Wi-Fi access) you're welcome to compute during my class!
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
a teacher cannot try to blame the students for lack of attention, students pay you with THEIR money so that you can get their attention, these people want to learn and pay to learn
BULLSHIT. I taught at a university for 16 years. If you think all students are there to learn you are wrong, wrong, wrong! Students who pay their own tuition usually care about learning; some of those who are there on mommy and daddy's money have zero interest in learning.
My favorite classes to teach were night classes because most of the students had full-time jobs and families, and they were there to LEARN. They were interested, which made me do a better job when teaching these classes. They really cared, so I really cared.
you'd be better off getting your information from the internet than listening to the lecturer guide you step by step on how to write hello world
Not everyone comes into a class with knowledge of the subject. I've taught intro programming classes where more than half of the students had never written a single line of code before. You don't realize the difficulty of trying to keep a class interesting when part of the class is bored to tears because they know the topic, and the other half is struggling with "hello world". (And believe me, some do struggle.) Upper-level courses are a different matter.
I used to tell students I didn't care if they attended lectures, but if they never came to class, don't bother coming to me for help. If they came to class, and it didn't have to be every single day, I'd help them as much as they needed.
We've all had teachers who were just horrible and boring and who should have been in another profession. And those who have taught have had students who should have been somewhere other than in the classes we taught.
Students talk about how much their teachers suck; teachers talk about how stupid their students are. It works both ways.
I'm the urban spaceman babe, but here comes the twist... I don't exist
One of the professors at the college I attended was probably the best lecturer I've ever had the pleasure of seeing. (And yes, he had a fairly distinct Italian accent. If you paid attention, however, you could understand what he was saying - he was kind enough to enunciate industry terminology) However, he had post-secondary expectations of the students who had secondary school expectations of the course. Therefore he wound up with dozens of complaints and really poor reviews. Throughout the course he gave lectures including many things that weren't in the assigned textbook or in the handout materials - kind of extra digressions of the course material. Much of it helped to learn the materikal better, some of it was simply an extra interesting fact or two that we could take away with us. Much of it, however, was to be on the final exam. See, he'd already noticed a rather distinct pattern of students who were away from most every class.
Early in the course, he handed out a 30-50 page report, due in about three months, and from then on the students decided, en masse, to unilaterally hate and ignore said teacher. As a result, he was forced to lower the bar to ridiculous levels when marking these assignments; to the point where I, who had handed in a large, well researched, well complied paper covering all the outlined materials, nicely presented in a folder, felt slighted. Granted, I got an A+ on the paper - but the guy who handed in a four page, double spaced, stapled, wide margin paper with (of all things) pictures got an A.
The unfortunate aspect of colleges and universities is the fact that they are, by and large, a business. Their clients are their students; without whom they could not keep their doors open. I entered college with the rather naive impression that college would be somehow better than high school because, hey, people are paying thousands of dollars to be here so they have to care, right? As it turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong. College students seemed to be some of the most spoiled, apathetic brats I've had the displeasure of being associated with. What made matters worse was the fact that so many of them had cars, not to mention that the majority were 'of age' to drink and could skip class in favour of the campus bar.
I'm of the opinion that college should have a pre-requisite that students do sometghing on their own for a period of one-two years such as work a full-time job, rent their own appartment and manage bills; something to aquaint themselves with the real world before they get to sit in padded, swivellling chairs and ignore the poor schmuch trying to instill knowledge in them.
To get topical; wireless or no wireless, students will likely always ignore the teacher to some extent. The "Back Row" students will always find distractions; even if they have to bring a switch/hub and some ethernet cables and play games against one-another, they'll do it. Our primary lab was wired with a 2:1 ratio of ethernet ports to computers, therefore allowing every student to also bring a laptop with them (which was, for various reasons, against policy, but I digress). To get around the problem of students playing games, chatting on ${MESSENGER}, surfing the web - many teachers would instruct the students to close all laptops and turn off all monitors. There were few rare exceptions for the students who actually took lecture notes on their computers, but those were typically sitting at or near the front and were few and far between.
Perhaps these instructors could simply ask the disruptive students who obviously aren't paying attention why they're there? After all, if they just want to use the network and play games / horse around - couldn't they do that in the school's lounge, student centre, cafeteria, etc..? If they continue to not pay attention, they could be asked to leave, lest they disrupt the remainder of the class. Sure, they have a right to be there based on the money they've paid - but they don't have the right to disrupt the class for the dozens of others who've also paid thue same amount.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
"But professors say the technology poses a growing challenge for them: retaining their students' attention."
My lack of attention has absolutely nothing to do with technology.
On another note, I really dislike my teachers, yet I want to be a teacher myself.
Try this: go to a class like analog electronics where you can pay full attention in class and still have no clue what the teacher is saying, then go back to your room and have no idea what the textbook is saying, ask your friends what's going on and find out they have no idea either. Then take a class like Programming 1 where you don't go to class for 3 months and have a 103% average. Explain to me why it's so important that I paid attention in class.
I don't even want classes to be enjoyable, I just want teachers to care about me. I go to a small, Christian school, you think it'd be much easier.
With apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer
The outlook wasn't brilliant for the student march that night;
The quads were filled with rent-a-cops and not a picket sign in sight;
With Cooney busted for possestion, and Barrows, the riot laws;
A sickly silence fell upon the supporters of The Cause.
A straggling few got up to go, in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which "springs eternal in the human breast;"
They thought, If only HanzoSan could be rallying that mob,
We'd put up even money now, with HanzoSan at the quads.
But Flynn preceded HanzoSan, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a no-good and the latter was a fake;
Forlorn, that stricken multitude discouraged by the odds,
For there seemed but little chance of HanzoSan's getting to the quads.
But Flynn let fly a bottle, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despised, set a bomb off in the hall,
And when the dust had lifted and men saw what had occurred,
Jimmy beaned the Dean of Students, while the bombed out library burned.
Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell,
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell,
A Harley roared up from the street, and was tearing up the sod,
And Hanzo, HanzoSan, was advancing through the quads.
There was ease in Hanzo's manner as he wheeled into his place;
There was pride in Hanzo's bearing and a smile on Hanzo's face,
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly gave a nod,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt `twas HanzoSan at the quads.
Ten thousand eyes were on him as he gunned the throttle loud;
Five thousand tongues applauded as he signaled to the crowd.
And while the nervous officers grabbed the night sticks from their hips,
Defiance gleamed in Hanzo's eye, a sneer curled Hanzo's lip.
And now a can of tear gas came hurtling through the air,
And HanzoSan stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there,
Close by the haughty HanzoSan, the can unheeded sped --
"That ain't my style," said HanzoSan. "Break it up!" the coppers said.
From the streets, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm waves on a stern and distant shore.
"Kill them; kill the pigs!" shouted someone from the mob;--
And HanzoSan guns his engine, and wipes-out on the lawn.
With a fist of protest shaking, HanzoSan's visage shone;
He jumped back on his Harley; he bade the march go on;
The Harley takes off through the quads, 'till it hits a vicious bump;
And HanzoSan sails through the air, landing smack upon his rump.
"Fascists!" he screeched, "Capitalist, Imperialist, Racist, Sexist pigs!"
"If I must I'll ride a tricycle, but we'll have this march - you dig?"
They saw his face grow stern and cold; they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that HanzoSan wouldn't lose that bike again!
The sneer is gone from Hanzo's lip; his teeth are clenched in hate;
He sniffs with cruel derision as he lets go of the brake.
And now he throws it into first, the clutch he now he lets go,
And now the air is shattered as the bike takes off - alone.
Oh! somewhere there's a campus town where they drum and chant all night.
They protest for the rain forest, and demand the wart-hog's rights.
And somewhere bongs are being passed, and somewhere radicals shout;
But there is no joy at Old State U -- HanzoSan has Wiped Out!
Whether or not students can get online in class makes no difference. If they have laptops, and are bored, they're just going to play games if they can't get online. No problem will be solved by not allowing students to use wireless Internet in class.
The difference between a high school senior and college freshman is less than the difference between a 5th grade elementary school student and a 6th grade Jr. High student. In general, the college student tends be more dedicated, but mostly still easily distracted. Furthermore, the professor is not their to entertain, but motivate.
Furthermore, it is mistake to assume a knowledge of technology. If we use technology, then we must teach it so that it can be used effectively. If we spend time teaching it, we should test it. In engineering they teach and test technology. In science, they tend not to.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I have heard of proactive IT departments interfacing class rosters and schedules with the wifi network. The result is each student's adapter is not active while they are in class. The minute the class is over, the connection is restored and everyone's email floods in creating a cacophony that marks the end of the period.
Profs are not there to spoonfeed you. The real world doesn't spoon feed you. They are there to offer up the info on a silver platter, but you still must make the effort to reach out and grab it.
So what exactly are they doing that I cant do better on my own? If they arent there to spoon feed me information, I'm sorry but i can get a better more detailed precise accurate source of information.
http://www.wikipedia.org/ is one example.
But I shouldnt have to pay someone to waste MY time.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
People who aren't going to pay attention, will not do so even without computers to entertain them. They might just stare off into space with no alternatives but taking away computers doesn't mean they are paying attention.
Being in class and doing anything besides participating in class in an appropriate manner is rude to the teacher and distracting your fellow students. The worst are people who come to class and then sleep. If you aren't interested, don't come. Which bring's me to my next point...
Mandatory attendance in a college class is (in general) stupid. There are fairly few non-lab courses where attendance actually matters. If someone prefers to get their material out of a book, let them. If being in class is important to passing the class, the students will figure that out. Teachers should think of class attendance as feedback on the difficulty of the material and the quality of the lecturing.
Conversely, if you (or your parents) are paying for a college education and you do not make every effort to get as much out of it as possible you are an idiot.
Yes, surfing the net is often more interesting than a lecture, but even a boring lecture often has useful information. Even the worst lectures (and I've had some very bad ones) usually contain something worth knowing. You are going to be dealing with boring meetings, boring tasks, and boring people for the rest of your career. You might as well learn how to get the most out of them.
The teacher's job is not to entertain you, it is to teach you. Effective teaching often correlates with being interesting to listen to but you can learn without being entertained.
Finally, don't be so arrogant and assume you know what is important about a subject better than the teacher. There is usually a reason the teacher is lecturing on the material they choose. They aren't doing it just to annoy you.
You're teaching at an art college. Statistically speaking, over 90% of your school's graduates are destined to work in the food service industry regardless of whether or not they goof off in class.
How feasible would it be for a professor to setup electronic countermeasures?
The solution would have to truly block, not just send out scatter, since the students probably already know the identity of the AP and sending out fake AP broadcasts wouldn't stop them at that point.
I could forsee some being willing to fork out $100-$200 to create something that would block 802.11* over a small area (say, a class room). Can you do that and if so is it legal (FCC)?
If so, would you be able to limit the range appropriately so you aren't blacking out the entire campus, but instead just an area around your class (probably much harder and dependent on how sensitive the devices your students are carrying, so some might be able to defeat it but that could be better than accidentally knocking out the computer lab's connection in the next building)?
If not, is it possible to configure an AP to talk on all channels at once? If so, that might do the trick. It would be more expensive but also possible to simply buy enough APs to cover each channel.
I don't know the answer to any of these, but I use 802.11* and could see it coming up as more things like this happen. For instance, a business could want to make sure their employees aren't "accidentally" connecting machines to a neighboring business' 802.11* network, or a provider might want to make sure that it's customers are using the proper network and try to fend off competitors from hijacking.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I understand the whole concept of "Hey, I paid my tuition, I can do attend class attentively whether I want to or not." But I think another reason these Profs might be getting frustrated is that perhaps there were some individuals who could have been enrolled in the class but couldn't because of a size limit. Perhaps that student would have been very interested in the course, and would have achieved a greater mark than that of the slacker.
As a student, I made the classes I felt necessary and skipped the ones I felt worthless. I was mature enough to understand that if I goofed, my GPA suffered. No problems, however, as I graduated in the top quarter of my class, both under & post graduate. As an instructor, it can be very frustrating if you have students who are actively not participating in the class, but I also understand that if I don't have the material to make the class interesting, there is little I can do to keep their attention. My only concern is whether or not the students who are choosing to pay attention & participate are not affected by these (admittedly few) other students........
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
You are the lone voice of reason on this thread.
Maybe if you were busying yourself with working with the students who *are* interested in your lecture, you wouldn't be so concerned with those who aren't. Maybe if you talked *with* your students instead of *at* them, and had an actual conversation instead of just reading the material straight from the text, you might find that some of the students who were surfing slashdot have perked up their ears and are now paying attention. Try it sometime.
do not read this line twice.
"Failing a student for non-attendance of lectures is pure abuse of power."
:)
You say that like it's a BAD thing.
Uncle Al spelled his name "Aleister Crowley"
if you spell it the way you did, the numerology (gematria) is all wrong.
The annual convention of Aleister Crowley reincarnations will be held at the Astrodome. Overflow will please use the parking area, filling in space in reverse alphabetic order.
I teach a 3D applications course in the architecture department at a large university. When I wander a bit in the lab during a lecture, I can see that about 10% of the students are online. Does this bother me? A little, but as has been said before, if they aren't making noise, no big deal. What does bother me is when some of those students show up at my office hours asking about the assignment, when I know they were more focused on trying to boost their karma than ask a question during classtime.
In a design studio, WI-FI is a godsend. Frequently during reviews, I will reference some obscure building or piece of art, and the ability to dig up an image of it in a minute or so and send it to the rest of the class is invaluable.
Cell phones are still a scourge though. Get any group of professors together and a rant about ringing phones is sure to ensue. Nothing derails a train of thought like a sudden chime of the Godfather theme, which forces me to stop a lecture and ask, "What are you, A.J. Soprano?"
Correct. Attendance policies do nothing for helping you learn what you already know. If I am in a course where there are three exams and 5 papers I expect that if I do X grade on each, I should get the average of those grades... There is no acceptable argument that other people in the class should get a higher grade b/c they were in attendance. If I did the work that was asked and got a grade on it, that's the grade I should recieve in the class. Why do professors (I am only experienced in the US) feel that attendance is necessary for sucess? I would really appreciate a response from a prof about this.
Please, if you respond, do not give the "if you were here, you absorbed more". I want to know why a student cannot take the class, do the assignments and exams and get that grade. What is so supposedly important about classroom settings?
TIA.
If the teacher unplugs the access point, the wireless-enabled devices could just go ad-hoc or set up a mesh network and, through that, connect to the access point in the next room (hopefully). :-)
It is still the responsibility of the student to learn the material, if they desire to pass the course in any reasonable fashion. The teacher doesn't *have* to give interesting lectures, but it is generally appreciated.
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
Why the hell would I demand a students attention?
It's the student who has voluntarily undertaken to pay huge gobs of money and invest huge gobs of their time to attend college.It was the student who voluntarily chose to sign up for my class. It was the student who chose to *show up* for class. I didn't leap out of my office, drive halfway across the country ( or the world), hold a gun to their head and insist they take my class.Hell, once they've signed up I don't even insist they attend.
This isn't high school I think some of you have a hard time wrapping your heads around that one.If you don't wish to participate, stay home.It's that simple.
Hell, you can even get an A in some of my classes without ever attending if the work you hand in deserves it.
What I don't understand is if you would really rather be surfing the web or playing Quake why you don't just stay in your room and do it? Wouldn't we both be more comfortable that way?
KFG
I've lectured two classes at the University of Western Ontario (CompSci) in the last year: Compiler Theory and Organization of Programming Languages. Let me say that your comments are spoken like a true student, but still contain some decent ideas.
Look, technology is good, WiFi is good...
This is blind devotion and you should just stop that. It's religious zealotry. Either that, or provide an argument for your reasoning, which you have not done.
The teacher could even bring his own laptop, add their AIM screen names to his AIM account, and talk to students via AIM.
I'm going to assume you don't mean during class, since that is a monumentally bad idea (have we reduced ourselves to the point where we would rather use IM to communicate, even when in the same room?). If it is outside of class, it doesn't add that much value because it is rarely the case (from my experience) that students and teachers have the same schedule. The IM notes would just sit in limbo most of the time. This is what email is for - asynchronous communication.
This is college not highschool, a teacher cannot try to blame the students for lack of attention, students pay you with THEIR money so that you can get their attention, these people want to learn and pay to learn...
Wrong, wrong, wrong. So very wrong. This is the attitude that is plauging universities right now. A univeristy education is not a service. Paying tutition does not equate to a degree. Paying tuition is, essentially, a fee that provides access to a large communitity for independent learning with some help along the way.
A university teacher's job is not to get your attention. Rather, it is your job to pay attention. This is not the absolute (we still have teacher evaluations at UWO) but it is the kernel of the teaching philosophy at university. Nonetheless, what it means is that if some student is diddling away in the corner doing nothing, it is not my responsibility to get him to learn. I assume that he is here because he wants to learn and will participate as he sees fit. If he does not meet the requirements I clearly set out for the course, he will fail.
Sound harsh? Sure it is, but life is not about having your hand held. Sometimes, you have to take the initiative. Students that do take an active interest in their education by making an effort in some vein will most likely be rewarded. Having a problem with the material? It is the student's job to seek out the teacher, not the opposite. (Of course, if the teacher is not available, then it's not all that fair but again, this is the primary idea.)
I am pleading with you, stop taking the viewpoint that "I am paying for this, so I deserve better!" on every aspect of university. It is not helping.
[clip stuff about boring lectures]
I agree with you that a teacher should make an effort to provide an interesting lecture. I try to do that (and I hope I succeeded on some level). But now we address the problem of those who will simply come to class with a laptop and not pay attention.
Frankly, I don't care if that is what they are doing so long as it is not distracting others. I don't know why they even bother coming to class if all they are going to do is watch a movie or read email. However, if they are interfering with my lecture, I will not stand for it (cell phones going off in class, the Windows sound, etc. are all examples of distractions). Students who don't care about the lecture are left to their own devices.
Often, that device is the Internet. My courses are run such that coming to class is a greater benefit that not and I do this by saying up front that "coming to class is not a substitute for reading the notes or textbook". My notes do not cover everything and neither does the textbook.
This is a somewhat underhanded way of making the student work at their education a bit more. The material I lecture about is often learned quite well by experimentation (hrm, what happens if I do this?...). I try to motivate students in my class to do this using on-screen demos and other such mechanisms.
The laptop in the classroom is not suited for every type of material. I could ramble on forever about different teaching methodologies but let me say this: computers in the classroom are not going to solve everything. There are many factors that play into it and the teacher must weigh all of them when they make up the course. It's a very difficult balance to achieve that is fair and reasonable (what if everyone doesn't have a laptop, for example?). I also do not think it is the teacher's job to force students to pay attention so long as the distracted student is not distracting others. Design your course around some classroom work and try to get those who are passive about education to be more active, especially if they are doing poorly.
Woz
Its not race thats the issue here, theres plenty of Americans who are of many races who speak PERFECT ENGLISH. Theres plenty of Americans like George Bush who cant speak English.
A person with an Accent should not be teaching a class on any Language. Learn to speak English before trying to teach Americans how to speak English in an English class. Learn to speak properly before trying to teach someone a programming language in English, I mean IF i cannot understand what the hell you are saying and I cannot understand your code, what do you expect? I'm not going to pay attention to gibberish.
Now, if you can speak properly without an accent theres no problem, it has notihng to do with Race, if you want to label me a racist its taking the easy way out while ignoring the issue, a person should not be a professor in an American college if they cant get rid of their accent.
Yes I'm nationalist, I love my country, I respect other countries as well, I'm not racist just because I want to be educated by someone I can u nderstand. You can be from another country and be very smart, but that does not mean you are qualified to lecture people.
You can be from America, but if you go over to say Japan and you try to lecture in Japanese and fumble all your words, dont these Japanese people have a right to get angry? Especially if you are going to their country teaching them their native language japanese and you cant even do it properly.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I picked up a laptop over the summer. Small little Vaio. I don't get wireless access in most of my classrooms, but I do in some and in many places I can go between classes. I use my laptop for all my note-taking in class, even if I don't have internet access at the time.
I believe that if I hadn't had this laptop with me, I wouldn't have gone at all. For three straight semesters I ended up dropping all my classes out of a sort of lethargy and unwillingness to make the commute to school. This gives some added value to being there, and as a consequence I don't mind as much going to class.
Many people learn for the wrong reasons. I think learning should be enjoyable regardless of the material.
I have a horrible memory and history was my worst subject in highschool and college. Does this mean I slept through all of my history classes? Believe it or not, no. I enjoyed many of my history teacher's lessons. I enjoyed listening and (more importantly) participating in the lecture. I still did poorly on many of the exams, but I was attentive in class and I really did learn a lot (in many cases, more than my higher-ranked peers.)
I think there is a "wrong" view of education by students. Many go to college so they can put "whatever degree in blahdittyblah" on their resumes. This means they will work only as hard as they need to in order to get that on their resumes. While an impressive resume is important. An education should be why people go to college, not an impressive resume.
I think this problem stems from how people are raised. In elementary/middle/highschool, people are rewarded for getting good marks on tests regardless on how they got that mark. If it was cramming the night before, or truly getting an understanding of the subject, they get the same mark, same reward. Most people (at least americans) tend to opt for the one that'll give them the most TV watching time (cramming the night before.) I hate to blame the parents (again) and TV (again) but I think parents shouldn't expose their young (0-6 year old) kids to much mainstream TV. Sure, let them watch PBS or even The Discovery Channel, but the networks that show nothing but colorful pictures with lots of noise should be used with extreme caution. Read to kids, encourage them to ask questions. Even more importantly, show them where to find answers and teach them how to think things through before asking questions.
Showing kids how to learn and use logic at an extremely young age (while their minds are still developing) will encourage them to enjoy learning and will get them to go to school to learn and not just to get a paper with a mark on it. Besides, how much respect does a frat boy that managed to memorize some tests answers and forget them right after the exam get when they go into the real world? Oh right... they get elected for presidency.
-Derick
I agree that Profs are not there to spoon feed one, but I'm afraid times are changing. When my parents were in College back in the 1950s, higher education was not required to make a good living -- one could make a good living with a "blue collar" job out of high school. Many Farmers had only a High School or even just an Eighth Grade Education.
Today some College or extra education is needed for almost any good paying job - even a Farmer needs higher education to stay afloat in today's market.
This means that many of Today's "Students" are not there to get an education -- they are there to get the Diploma so that they can get a "good paying" job. That along with the hefty Tuition increases in the last 20 to 30 years have turned the University into another product. Big bucks are paid in so Parents/Students expect high grades in return regardless of the effort expended. Wifi isn't the problem, it is just another symptom of the real problem.
Beware of Sleestak
When I was finishing my undergraduate degree at UC San Diego, the campus was not yet fully wi-fi-ed. I was bored out of my mind because I had put off my GE's until the last possible time I could take them.
The only thing that got me through it was my Ricochet connection in the class room. However I can say that it did distract me to such an extent in class that my grades suffered because of it. I actually ended up not passing one of the classes.
That being said I'm involved in wi-fi-ing the art department at the university I'm currently at for graduate school.
While it is true that teaching has to adapt to wi-fi usage, I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing to force it to adapt. Just like any disruptive technology, the repurcusions outside its immediate sphere usually leads to a balancing effect upon other actants in the network it disrupts.
So basically: everything should adapt to pervasive connectivity, whether it likes it or not.
"Virtually everyone multi-tasks, you just don't see it because you're too in awe of your own mastery of simultaneously reading Slashdot and watching Star Trek, while compiling a kernel."
Hate to tell you this, Kombat, but not everyone can multitask successfully. Many people I know easily get engrossed in one thing or the other, or do a horrible job of it. Proper multitasking is an art, not an instinct.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
You'd rather yell across a house than instant message? If I'm in my office working, and she is downstairs doing whatever and the laptop happens to be on, she can easily IM me rather than yell something that I won't hear -- especially when I'm listening to music.
mbbac
--heh heh heh,this article is too funny, back when I was in junior high and high school, I had a couple of large books I had hollowed out for my "multitasking" err work. One contained a transistor radio (earbud and long sleeve shirts required for the human to radio 'stealth' connection), the other was hollowed out to contain "reference manuals" like doc savage books, conan, and ace doubles science fiction. And you couldn't use your slide rule in tests, either, double heh. And drafting required solid state wireless input devices called "pencils".
If I want to hear different accents I can talk to some of my friends, I dont need to pay someone whos supposed to teach me the proper way to do something to listen to them speak mangled broken English.
Enough people around me speak Broken English, I go to college where I'm supposed to learn the proper English and what do I get? International English.
Maybe If I take a course on international english, I can have many English professors come in and teach me the wrong way to speak. Maybe I can even take a class on Ebonics so I can learn how to speak slang?
Look I'm not paying to translate, I'm not paying to learn different accents, I'm not paying to try to figure out what some teacher is TRYING to say,
My role is to pay to be lectured properly, in the language which I pay for. If I pay to be lectured in English (not international english, not southern broken english, not ebonics) I want an English teacher who can speak better than I can, and I want a person to teach me how to write code in an easy to understand way.
I dont want to have to translate their verbal speaking and then try to figure out whats going on with the code if I cant understand them.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Good point: Wireless networking allows students ways to remotely research class topics outside the classroom. Yes they could go to the library before, or stay in their dorm rooms and look this stuff up, but the new technology allows that work to fit more neatly into campus life. Result: More opportunity to study.
Bad point: Wireless networking allows students ways to slack off inside the classroom. Yeah, attention deficiency is nothing new in the classroom, but considering the things the modern laptop can do, its presence can be an awful temptation to those already inclined to play around. Result: More opportunity to ignore the teacher.
Both are valid, and to take one side is to trivialize the other.
As another aside, there's been some talk of whose fault it is students get bad grades. It's the teacher's responsibility to present the course's subject matter in a reasonable, easy-to-follow fashion. It's not his responsibility to spoon-feed the student a passing grade, no matter how undeserved.
Rule of thumb: if one student does poorly in a class, odds are it's the student's fault. If almoast everyone does poorly in a class, odds are it's the teacher's fault.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Give the kids a class-topic wiki/blog and let the computers become a tool for student-student, student-grad.assistant, and student-prof communication. The prof could bring a grad.assistant to each class and have him/her answer questions that students have about the lecture in near-realtime as they appear on the wiki/blog. Give shy students a way to ask questions. Bonus points for students that answer each other's questions before the grad.assistant.
The profs are lagging behind the students. The students have rushed forward in a somewhat haphazzard fashion, but think of it as a case of spitballs and doodles. One doesn't end spitballs by taking away all paper or doodles by taking away all writing impliments. The best thing to do is to give the students something better to do with the tools. Some virtues that will draw their attention better than the available vices.
"DRM is a mandatory buggy whip in every car." MadAhab (40080)
I am studying medicine at a 'new style' course in the UK, which uses problem-based learning in groups. The few lectures that we do have are usually given by experts in the field; attendance is compulsory because it is embarassing for a senior doctor to arrive to find a half-empty room, and there is usually information given that is useful but not easy to find.
My first degree was in computer systems engineering and we were mainly free to skip lectures if we wanted too. I usually found that the professors that included an attendance element in the grade were those that were well aware that their lecturing style and preparation were inadequate, and used compulsory attendance as an ego-boost. One lecturer resorted to playing barely relevant videos for 30 minutes in the middle of each lecture to make up time (he was lecturing on Robotics from 15-yr old 35mm slides).
"Why the hell do I need you if you cant answer questions? you get my point."
From your various posts, you seem rather angry.
In a class there's usually more than one student. The lecturer's job is not just to teach you, but others as well. A teacher's task will be made harder or even impossible if there are students distracting everyone else in class (includes the teacher).
You may be the smart one who knows more than the lecturer on the topic at hand and is bored stiff. But if most of the class manage to find the lecture useful, the lecturer's presence there is justified. There may be other students who don't know what you know, and if the lecturer doesn't teach it to you they will be screwed in later courses.
Students don't all learn the same way. The best teachers know how to engage most students. But unfortunately like every profession, the average teacher isn't that great. The best researcher is not necessarily the best teacher.
Of course if the lecturers are useless to most then they shouldn't be teaching. That's what lecturer evals are for. If enough students say the lecturer is crap then the lecturer should go (but often there are no replacements unless maybe a student goes up and teaches - which apparently has happened in some secondary/high schools here at least).
BTW in the real world it can be a good idea to be nice and polite to people of limited immediate use. If anything, it's a good way for you to build character and integrity.
It's a sign of good character/integrity if you are able to treat people decently whether they useful or not, or nice or nasty, without _any_ ulterior motives.
"DRM is a mandatory buggy whip in every car." MadAhab (40080)
"the current trend toward wireless Internet access in the classroom has students surfing the web and checking their email from the backrow, while instructors are climbing up the ladder"
At least the students are going to class. Where I go to school, the instructor is lucky sometimes if 1/3 of the class show up for lecture. Seems like they have far more to worry about than wireless networking.
When I took EE courses at USC, my professor actually told us to NOT take notes, because he said that if we are busy writing, we aren't paying attention. So he gave all of us a 3" binder that contained all the course notes and diagrams. Attendence was required, and 3 absences was an automatic failure. At first, I was like OMFG. But the reason was the class was very interactive. I actually really liked the way he taught the curriculum, and I was always energetic and interested in the material. It really helped that he liked to use humor in explaining the pros/cons of different theories.
All this in contrast to my physics class, where the prof looked at me and said, "I understand that my lectures may be boring, but if you could please refrain from snoring as others may be trying to pay attention..."
Whole class (that was awake), started laughing at me. The next day, I was paying attention with my eyes bugging out. Some people around me were chuckling saying, "Dude, you're actually awake today...."
...but this sort of waste was common place even when in computer labs before wireless networks were installed in every classroom...
I remember being in the back row at my rinky dink college watching 75%+ of the class browsing online instead of paying attention to class. That same percentage would be later asking for more time to complete projects and complaining that the class is too hard without even ATTEMPTING to complete the work.
Each professor should give the same lecture on the first day of class each semester so that each student hears it and is brain washed to believe it. It is OK for you to waste your time. It is not OK to waste mine or any other students time. You may bring computers into the class and go about what ever business you like. If it impacts your school work though, expect no pity.
And that should be that.
The use of "toys" in class is the effect, while distraction is the cause. Professors can remove the toys but not the distraction. Note that here I'm using the term distraction in the sense of the state of being distracted, not an item that distracts. This is probably not exactly the sense you had in mind but I think my point is still valid: If a student is distracted, this is a state of mind, not the act of playing with some gadget. If you take away the gadget they'll look like they're paying attention and taking notes but they'll actually be doodling or doing homework from another class.
This also addresses your first point, reguarding "these days." It seems to me that it's not a sign of the times, it's a time of the signs. The ways students reacted to distraction in the past weren't as obvious (doodling rather than taking notes, etc) as they are now. Perhaps this makes distraction more contagious but it also provides the professor with valuable feedback. I'm also skeptical that it makes distraction very much more contagious. The more traditional ways of responding to distraction are quite visible to other students, just not the professor.
If I were a professor, and if students were horsing around or sleeping or whatever, why should I care?
If some kid is checking his e-mail or not listening, that's cool. I will just massacre them on the mid-term on stuff that I would talk about only during the lectures.
If some kid is distracting other kids or being a nuisance, I would kick them out. 'Nuff said.
Is there really an issue here? There were distractions way before WiFi enabled classrooms, and this problem was encountered way before today. For example, portable TVs, radios, CD players, etc. Having a Wifi connection is just a new distraction... nothing more, nothing less.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
I'M PAYING TO ATTEND YOUR DAMN CLASS! I'm paying your salary to do as I please, so long as it does not disrupt your ability to teach and other students ability to learn.
Profs have this fancy notion that by somehow speaking the words from the books aloud in their voice it somehow makes the info "easier to understand" and "more important." Very few lectures have I attended in my college career that were anything more than regurgitated book quotes with a few stories and examples in between.
--Should work--
I used to feel the same way about those "dumb little educational [games]" but I now work at an elementary school and in light of my observations of kids playing these games I have revised my opinion of them. Yes, usually they are a little below the level of what's being taught but they provide an effective and fun way for kids to get practice and review, both of which are crucial to the learning process.
Oh, and how is sleeping in class any better than doing something on a computer that has the potential to be intellectually stimulating?
a new freshman was trying to find his way about the campus. Seeing a man who looked like he knew the general lay of the land the freshman approached him and asked, " Excuse me, but could tell me where the library's at?"
At this the tweed jacketed elder stiffened his back, lowered his chin, looked down his nose and said, "Young man, this is an institute of higher learning.*Here* we do not end our sentences with prepositions."
"Oh, I'm sorry," responded the freshman, " Can you please tell me where the library's at, Asshole."
KFG
I pay tuition, I should be able to do whatever I want, right.. If I fail the class, i can always take it again and work harder.. Sounds good to a college student, as college is expensive.
However, at state schools, tuition is only a portion of the total cost of education. I imagine the taxpayers in my state might get a little pissed off if every college student took every class twice, as the taxpayers subsidize the cost.
Perhaps the students at private schools can say this, but as a full time worker trying to finish my degree part time, my attitudes towards college have certainly changed, since I started paying taxes to be there, and paying tuition out of the little money left over after those taxes..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
a smart teacher would use WiFi and the fact that all the students have laptops
Um, and if all students *don't* have laptops....? Is the university going to provide one or are the students going to have to shell out another 2 grand (which I certainly didn't have)?
I am a junior in college at the moment, and in the last year or so my school has added 802.11 access points in a few buildings, so i have wireless access in all but one class now. i have always taken noted on a laptop since i can type faster than i write, and dont lose them that way. as a general rule, i still take good notes and pay attention in class. sure mozilla is up in the background, and i may flash over to the other desktop and glance at email every once in a while, but it hardly distracts me from my notes at all. in fact the only time id say i really goof off on the internet in class is those few times when im so tired or burnt out that i wouldnt be paying attention anyway. also, in CS classes for example, it is almost essential to be online in class, so i can get/update/view code that the class is working on at the moment or do a quick google search for something the class is discussing or wants to know about. in those classes almost all of the students bring laptops and are either connected via wireless or wired lan, and make use of their internet connection to contribute more to the class. maybe its just that wireless internet isnt as much of a novelty to me that makes it such a distraction as it generally is to the non-cs oriented crowd, but either way, the bottom line is wireless in the classroom is a good thing, if students are being distracted by it then they need to learn to focus better.
Ever go rock climbing? Heres a bad analogy (bad analogies are often the best ones). Imagine me, the professor, at the top of a climb and you, the student at the bottom. You've got a climbing harness on and a rope in it which I'm belaying. Your attitude is something like expecting me to just pull you up the cliff. Ain't gunna happen. I'll try to help you find the right places to put your hands and feet, I'll try to keep you from falling to your death, I'll help as much as I can, but I can't and won't just pull you up.
However, this is a common enough attitude among so many college students. They think "I pay the professors to make me learn." They should remember the nice saying "never try to teach a pig to sing. Its a waste of time and annoys the pig."
And for the poster, I'd suggest not going to class at all if things are that bad - talk the instructor into letting you skip it unless they dont require attendance. Then use the time to learn it on your own. It will be time better spent for you, the professor and anyone else in class you may be annoying. (My stated policy is that I do not require attendance - if a student doesn't want to come to class, I'm not going to require it. My observed result is that students who do not come to class fail more often than not.)
It's plenty logical to spend money on something you don't really want. It's just not rational.
After being out of school for 13 years, I've been considering going to law school. So, I visited a class at Duke to see what it was like and sat in the back of the class. I was astounded to see that maybe 1/4 of the students were doing something totally unrelated to their classwork -- some were IM'ing, some were reading espn.com, etc....
The thing that bugged me is that the class was really interesting -- the professor did a great job and (according to the student next to me) was considered one of the best professors in the school.
The first thing that crossed my mind was "these students are paying $30,000 a year to be here" and then I did the division and came up with around $100 per class. But, that's a bit deceiving because the value of school is not just in the lectures.
The problem, though, I think is that many of those students probably are not very keenly aware of why they're in class. Instead of trying to suck the marrow out of their education, they've grown sloppy and have really lost track of what they're doing there in the first place.
Now, that assessment certainly doesn't apply universally -- I've sat through classes where reading slashdot would have been a better use of time than paying attention to the professor. The point, though, is that there're two sides to the story: Sure, the professors have to do a good job of actually teaching in such a way as to make the subject interesting. But, at the same time, students need to pay attention and do their part.
To everyone who is saying "I don't pay attention because I know all this stuff already": The point of the class is to move from what you do know now to something new. If you stop paying attention during the review, you will miss the transition to new material and when you do start paying attention again you'll be hopelessly lost. I made this mistake in college more times than I can count.
YOU GOT 5 millionth post!
No, he's right.
If a teacher has a bad accent. I SHOULD GET MY MONEY BACK FROM THE COLLEGE.
To call that racists shows that you have your head up your ass.
Here's a stunt I used to pull on these professors from foreign lands...
Use their inability to speak against them in tests, assignments, whatever. Make them so afraid they give you an "A" just to make sure they have no contact with you.
Oh its sweet when you pull it off, they sit in huddled in their offices, hands shaking when they see you.
I handed in assignments weeks late and then yelled at them when they handed it back ungraded I'd yell "Why am I being punished because you can't organize your office".
Oh man, the look on their faces when my face would get red and my fist would start flexing.
Meanwhile, they're jabbering in some language that I don't give a fuck about and I'm acting more and more and more pissed off but in a nice way. Oh, it works so well I shouldn't be telling you.
Sweet sweet sweet.
"I took last semester -- the professor is Polish"
I'll bet he taught you everything backwards. His submarine designs included screen doors. His tanks only had a reverse gear.
When you ask a technical question of a polish guy...hell you've already admitted defeat.
These guys would apologize for some thick-accented professors bar-b-queing babies because their so PC.
It makes me laugh and glad I'm not in college anymore.
The key to an undergraduate degree is to jettison independant thinking.
The key is... learning to take tests.
I struggled for a year and a half in college until I figured out that professors don't ask you to reason in their exams, they want you to memorize facts and parrot back their reasoning.
In an econ class, the worst thing to do was to disagree with the professor.
Most professors are the same way.
College isn't about learning to think (that's a noble goal and all), its getting the sheepskin. Anybody tells you different, they're screwing you up big-time.
Learn to take tests and you'll do well in college.
If you disagree with me, then riddle me this... if college were about thinking and attending and participating, then why test anyone?
"Because the professor cannot properly do their job they punish the students? Its not the students job to be interested in what you have to say, its YOUR job to keep their interest and give exciting lectures, its THEIR job to do the required work and pass the required tests as well as attend class."
You are a pinhead. It's not the student's job to be interested? There should be two activities going on in the class - teaching and LEARNING. No one I've met is so great at teaching that they can do it to a hostile audience. They're there to help you _learn_. If you're defending the goal, they'll never get a shot by you & you'll be every bit as stupid during the final as you were on the first day.
If you want to be entertained, spend your 4 years & thousands of $s on digital cable and a big screen TV. If you want to learn, show up having read the material and able to ask questions about it. Some things in life require a little investment of concentration, and don't immediately make you soil yourself with joy. You have to put a little work in to get the satisfaction of really understanding something.
Take a look at the slashdot discussion of E=mc^2 going on right now - more pontificating bullshit from people who were awake for 10 minutes of an intro physics course and now believe they're qualified to say things like "We don't really understand relativity...". Of course he doesn't! He was expecting MTV instead of actually thinking about what was being said and trying to ask questions.
You just nabbed yourself the five millionth post! Too bad it doesn't make any sense, but good show nonetheless.
Run a network sniffer that shows the traffic students are causing, the URLs they are visiting. Project the results on the side wall of the classroom.
When you ask for entertainment instead of education in your school, you might end up being educated by clowns.
Personally speaking, I prefer to learn from the masters. If Bill Joy or James Gosling were teaching a Java class at your school, do you think you'd care about how boring they were?
Those are the two extremes. Most other situations are somewhere in the middle. That's life. Deal with it.
Correlation is not causation. Student engagement does not strictly depend on quality, nor does quality strictly depend on engagement. Instead, it's a complicated dynamic mix, and my gut tells me quality has a larger influence on engagement rather then the way you seem to assume in your post. No matter how hard you try, you can not engage with a crappy class. On the other hand, a very good class makes it hard not to engage if you have any interest in the subject at all.
Are you up on any recent research?
To learn, you must draw on past experiences, use intelligences in which you have strengths, communicate and discuss with others, be aware of your cognitive processes, assess yourself...
I'm afraid that "absorbing" thing never really happens... the days of desks in rows, taking notes from the speaker who lectures and is the giver of all knowledge, are soon over I hope... Though this style works for some people, multiple intelligences, constructivism, and various other "new age" techniques work for EVERYONE -- and seeing as how education is a "public right," I do believe everyone aught to be included, don't you?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Hey democracy lovers, add Quorum as a c
Was the class advertised as post-secondary level (and did the "slacker" students just sign up for something that was over their heads), or were the teacher's expectations beyond the level of the class? If the former, then that must have been dissapointing for the teacher and the students who were actually capable of the higher level work, but, on some level, I want to say that if the class really was too hard for the majority of the students then the curve probably really did need adjusting.
As a Unix System's Admin instructor, I found it very disheartening to walk to the back of my classroom during lecture, only to see most of my students running a browser.
So this term, I did something about it. With one command from the instructor's machine, I disable the browsers so that I can lecture. I turn them back on during breaks (our classes are anywhere from 2 to 4 to 8 hours long). I tell the students why, and they accept it. As far as I am concerned, when the student sits in my class, he is MINE. They can check their e-mail and porn sites on their own time.
I also tell them that if they can figure out how I do it, they can run the browser all they want. So far, only one student has found out how. Sad, really, because the fix is not that hard to figure out. And most of the students have root privileges. I guess I am not teaching any hacker candidates...
Although the browser is off, ftp and telnet still run just fine. But even though my students know about these services, they just don't know how to use them.
Such is life.
I am not sure what classes you are taking but in my classes (which relate to telecommunications, strategic planning and project management), if I student does NOT participate the student is losing. I require attendance and I require attendance. Of course, I am teaching adults and maybe that is the difference. The students in my classes have an opportunity to learn from one another, from the required reading, and from the instructor. I would not allow "surfing" to go on in my class.
I am a computer science professor and don't see students' inattention as a problem. I don't require students to attend class. If they can learn the material without going to class, or without paying attention, more power to them. In practice, however, I have excellent attendance, and students pay attention. This is partly because Mills has small classes (my classes have had 3-18 students) and a student's absence or inattention would be noticed, but I think the real reason is that the material is hard and classtime is necessary.
There are times, however, when a student is so sleepy or sick that it's obvious that she is not getting anything from being in class. In those cases, I'm tempted to ask the student (sincerely, not unkindly) whether she'd be more comfortable lying down in my office (across the hall from the classroom) or going home.
I teach one less-technical discussion-oriented course, in which class participation is a major part of the grade. In all of my classes, I announce the grading criteria on the first day, and students are free to make their own choices about how to spend the time.
I don't assume that I know better than students how they should spend their time. I don't really think it's my business whether a student misses my class because she's being awarded a Nobel Prize, taking care of a sick child, or going skiing. Students can make their own choices and live with the consequences.
While it may hurt a professor's feelings for students not to pay attention, that's not an adequate reason to coerce students. I think many academics forget that that schools should be geared to the needs of the students, not to the faculty and staff.
I'll get off the soapbox now.
First off: (The on-topic stuff)
Not every class is a super-imortant, don't know it already class.
Example: I took ECON101, attended 5 lectures the entire semester and recieved an A. How did I do it? I did the required work and already understood the material. Why was I in the class?...to statisfy degree requirements. Luckily, they didn't take attendance, so I didn't have to go sit through lectures about this I already understood.
That's right, there are classes that you are actually required to take, even if you already know the material.
Not paying attention in class doesn't necessarily mean you're lost. Sometimes those kids who aren't paying attention, already know the material, and are just there becuase the prof. likes to give quizzes.
Doesn't anyone remember how boring it is to sit through someone drone on about something you already understand? (And I do mean drone, possibly with an unintelligble accent.) One of my favorite things about college is that if a lecture sucks, I can usually get up and leave. I can't always do that though, some classes actually require attendance, even when the lectures are totally passive experiences.
The important thing is not suffering through lousy lectures. The important thing is actually understanding the course material. That's why businesses want a degree: It shows that you've taken tests and passed them. (Or completed projects successfully.)
Second:
I really hate the "spoonfeeding" analogy. It's really a load of BS. I haven't heard that crap since HS. Teachers are there to teach you, not to hand you a book and say "I'm not going to spoonfeed you." I can read a book by my damnself. I do expect the prof. to "spoonfeed" me, as in, break the information into reasonable sized chunks and deliver it to me (a.k.a. lectures). If I have a question, I expect to be given an answer, not to have to suffer through analogies that compare me to an infant. Why do you think I'm paying to go to school? If someone thinks they're too important to answer questions, they shouldn't be involed in teaching. Provided the person isn't asking for test answers, there really isn't much of an excuse not to answer someone's question. Suffering is not equivalent to learing. Teachers should just answer questions, and if they think it was something the student should have been able to figure out on their own, the can ask the student a question about it. This way, they answer the student's question (as opposed to insulting them) and still get to make them think.
Life is too short to proofread.
It's been quite amusing perusing all the opposing views about who's responsibility it is to foster the learning process. It simply is up to the person to learn and if learning from the Internet, a book, a friend, a teacher, a dog.. or whatever it may be then more power to them. If someone wants to WIFI while in class then they are obviously going to cause distraction if nothing else, unless in the back of the class, those around them curious what they are doing. There is no way anyone can say that someone browsing the web next to them is not a distraction in some way shape or form.
:) I'm sure not everyone agrees with that but we can always find another way to be taught there are plenty of sources in the world.
I would contend, as many others have pointed out, that using computers as a way of increasing interaction between one another is a great idea. It surely is a lot easier to ask a question at a terminal in an anonymous way than it is to ask a question openly. I'm sure many people can relate to the times they went to raise their hand and hoped that everyone thought their question was astoundingly intellectual and not ridiculously stupid. The biggest problem with schools in general is that the teacher more often than not sits on an ivory tower and openly dictates instead of teaching. Learning in the real world is not like that and it shouldn't be like that in the classroom either. The teacher should be learning from the students and as well as the students learning from the teacher. If the teacher never gives the student a chance to teach the class and themselves then dictation is in effect. If boiled down to the smallest possible view then all teaching that could be classified as dictation should be kicked out of the classroom
(I wrote the initial post you responded to).
I graduated with distinction with a CS degree once I stopped trying to figure stuff and and just learned to take tests. My freshman year, I decided to try to really understand the material, to really have a deep understanding of it. Didn't mean squat. Midway through my sophamore year, the light bulb went on over my head, my note taking and study methods changed to figuring out what the dumb-prick professor was going to ask and write that down. Once you get in the groove, you don't have to understand a damned thing about the material; you've just got to figure out a professor's tendencies and what will show up on the test. The rest is an easy "A" in the course. I'm telling you the gospel truth here.
I can interact with people fine... in fact that's my strength. But if I flunked out of college because I was trying independant thought instead of figuring out how to please the professor, then I've failed.
I'm telling you, the students getting the high grades aren't thinking; they're the ones who know how to take tests.
+5, Truthful.
C4n41z r00t U!
Actually, my school (Bentley College) has port-per-seat wiring in all the new classrooms and is even slowly retrofitting older classrooms as well.
:)
The school also requires all students to either rent or purchase an IBM ThinkPad laptop for use in the dorms, and in class. These things tend to have about 2.5 - 3 hrs of battery life in them on a full charge.
Currently, they've wired up only public areas with WiFi (the library, open areas in buildings, cafeterias) access. But in class, in the rooms that have net jack and power outlets in each seat location, the Professor has a web control panel on the PC underneath their podium which lets them regulate the level of network availability the whole class has: All, Nothing, Intranet only, Web & Email only, Web Only and a few others...
Although, being a small private business school, they can afford to wire up more than other schools.
Every classroom also has a podium PC, w/ overhead projector, VCR, external video hookups, computer controlled lighting and even computer controlled window shades and screens in the newer buildings.
Bentley's undergrad CIS/MIS program was actually rated #10 in the US in the last US News ratings (second in the state, MA, to MIT)
Sure, kids are going to get distracted. But it's never been a major problem in my classes... Most professors will just say "don't bring your laptops" or "close your laptops for the next portion of the lecture" or they will just ask distracted students lots of questions and embarass them (this is very effective!).
Class attendance is also mandatory (a few professors don't care; but I have to ask and assume they keep track otherwise). School policy is to get an 'F' in any class where a student misses more than 5 hrs of classtime, unexcused.
Just my $0.02
If a college student, an ADULT mind you is stupid enough to not pay attention and miss info in class well, too bad for them and the people paying for their schooling. The college still collects tuition. The prof. should stop wasting the time of the class on lowest common denominator and TEACH the CLASS.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The class was required for the program, and it being a post-secondary (college) program, it should have been expected to be at a post-secondary level. The course was actually extremely easy; mostly simple take-home assignments and some simple in-class excersizes. The exams were open-book (anything you could bring on paper was permissable) yet atleast half the class failed. Yes, that's right, failed.
The majority of students in this program were fresh out of high school, and I'd have to say that the vast majority of them had absolutely no discipline where studies were concerned. Students didn't pay attention in class and didn't complete their take home assignments. Students were buying and trading (bartering) for one-another's assignments and cheating on, but still failing (or barely passing) open book exams (atleast three of the first years' finals were open book).
In short; the problems of students not paying attention isn't related to the technology at their disposal, that's just the latest of a long string of distractions students have had at the post secondary level to not pay attention in [lecture|class]. Whether you're in the blame the parents camp, or in the blame the teachers camp, or in the blame the liberals camp, or ... the students are completely unprepared for an actual learning environment, and by extension are not adequately prepared for the real world. When in a class out of 115 students, where about 5% or so have been out of high school for a number of years, only 10% really show any signs of excelling or even performing up to expected standards.
Teachers face the burden of having to win popularity contests in order to keep their positions and pay levels. The idea of student review is a good one; only if the students are mature enough to review the teachers with some level of responsibility. Otherwise, the teachers who demand any sort of high standards from their students are rated very poorly; coupled with complaints of unfairness to the program facilitator and/or chairperson and the teacher gets reprimnded. After all; ten students wouldn't complain for frivolous reasons, right?
The typical reaction I got from many of the students I spoke to about the course was flippant; they didn't believe they needed it. These being people who haven't worked a single hour in the field of computer networking, and they're telling me with great authority that they don't need to know anything about data encoding, signal attenuation, cross-talk, electronic versus optical signalling, etc.. (if you work in data communications, I'm sure by now you're shaking your head. Let me tell you; I was, and still am).
High school has taught students that some courses are required and others are optional - they only understand that credits lead to a diploma; the knowledge gleaned from the course is inconsequential. This being a rather unfortunate side-effect of most high school courses that can be literally faked through by any cunning student.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
What a stupid idea, a teacher using IM *in class.* They're in the same room, they should talk! I can concoct scenarios in which that's not stupid but they almost never happen in real life.
// do something with data
// do stuff
... guy sitting next to me could tell that, so he just leaned over and whispered "it's a for loop." Bonk! The light went on and the rest of the class made more sense to me.
:).
I can think of time when having IM software in the classroom would have been great. I once had a professor in an algorithms and data structures class that had a function that went something like this:
int something(int data, int &counter)
{
*counter++;
something(data, counter);
}
My C is shoddy, as it's been a while, but something along those lines. I proposed:
int something(data)
{
static int counter = 0;
counter++;
something(data);
}
I actually spent 2-3 minutes trying to get the idea across that I thought it'd be better not to pollute the stack with a 4 byte pointer everytime, but the professor disagreed -- however he had no reason to disagree, he just said I was wrong. I honestly think it's because I didn't have the opportunity to just -write- the code down for him to see. He wasn't a native English speaker, and it was horribly hard to communicate with him sometimes, but we all spoke code well. Yes, I could write it on the board, but doing that with code in front of class is cumbersome, as you have to walk up, take the time to write nice, etc.
Another possible use: no more waiting your turn to ask a question. You could IM the professor right in the middle of what he's saying, provdided you can still -listen- while typing, and send the question up to him. They can then handle it whenever they feel like it, or ignore it entirely if they know they'll be answering it a bit later on. Less interruption to the class in general, IMHO, and the prof could have a recorded log of things that students asked during the lecture, which may be of use the next time around as they can structure things differently if they notice pattern.
Also, we shouldn't discount student to student interaction behind the professor's back so to speak. There are times, when I know people in classes very well, and they know how I think. For them to be able to shoot notes back and forth quickly can be a good thing, so long as neither is too distracted to keep paying attention go the lecture. I'll never forget when sigma notation was being taught to me in highschool and I just didn't get it
I could see it being useful... but then again, I IM people just a couple of cubicles away
I remember college and some boring classes.
I remember instead of paying attention, I would doodle and sometimes show it to my friend - equally bored, and drawing as well.
Perhaps paper and pencil should be banned as disruptive instruments as well.
C'mon...this is college. If someone doesn't wanna pay attention, so be it. If they are disruptive, kick them out of the class - I have yet to see an institution that would side with the student instead of the faculty on something like that.
And what if that wifi AP serves more than one class or area?
" I am not being paid by you to give you tests and grade them"
Unfortunately, you are.
Your university says you aren't, but as an undergraduate, the only thing I care about it a degree. The obstacle you place in front of me is to take a test and grade my answers.
Therefore, the only thing I care about is passing that test.
Everything else is, pardon the pun, academic.
"Colleges and universities don't owe you an education."
When I pay that much for an education, you owe it to me.
Hell, you owe me sex too for that amount of money, but you don't get it.
Fortunately, you type will be the first against the wall when the *real* revolution comes.
"You're paying for the privilege of being there."
This is wrong and false.
I hope you're not a student or god forbid a professor.
I can go to any university and sit in on any lecture I want WITHOUT paying for it.
I'm getting an education right? Without paying for it.
So what am I not getting?
Think hard Einstein.
That's right. I don't get to take tests. And if I don't get to take tests, what don't I get Einstein. That's right a degree.
So what I am paying for at college? The right to test for a degree.
Fortunately, some of us actually understand why we went to college.
That's why I live in a big house, with a swimming pool, have 2.5 kids, have a cute blonde wife, go on vacations 4 times a year and drive a bimmer.
Because we can think, and the university had nothing to do with it.
The nice elaboration is to put network access on a timer. The network simply drops when class begins, and comes up when class should be over (although professors tend to run a few minutes over). In can be overridden with the toggle.
Early on, students would trick the system by flipping the switch when the professor was not looking. So the school added a green light in the back of the room, which indicated whether the net was up.
Now the green light shines when classing is over, and the light flicking off calls the class to attention.
Net access can be a valuable tool, or a distraction. The right solution should give the professor flexiblity to design how it is used in class.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Are you serious? I dont need to be educated by the so called experts when I can get the same books and information they use to educate me on my own.
I dont need that, I didnt ask them to coddle me and give me an A, I just want them to do their job and I'll do mine.
I dont need them if I'm just paying to be there, fuck that.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
ok.. teachers are arguing that wifi should not be allowed in class because it is distracting to the user, and possibly to other students. ok, better get rid of pen and paper. Pen and Paper distracts doodlers during class. Pen and Paper can be used to write notes and pass to other people, distracting both the user, and other students. Paper can be used to throw at people, and also pen and paper can be used to make spit balls. Every action that a student takes affects himself and possibly the others around him. Most anything could be used to distract others. Im not arguing that we should have fireworks in class rooms, but I dont think we should remove a potentially usefull item from the class room becuase it --could-- be used unwisely.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
Yes, it makes me think that new technologies should not be embraced uncritically, just because they're new.
No, but they have to be CONSIDERED, instead of discarding them inmediately. You can't apologize against something you haven't quite tried. And they can't have tried it intensively just because they're new.
Makes you think professors are close-minded and that's a sad thing.
Thanks for the great answer. In response, I really do feel sorry for the teachers of such a class. Unfortunately, I don't think the situation is very unusual. Even my own roommate often comes home saying she "hates" some teacher and wants to complain to the teacher or even a higher authority, mostly because of problems that were her fault to begin with. For example, she misread the instructions on a test, but was peeved because the teacher wouldn't give her partial credit for her "correct" answer. She wanted my support in appealing to whomever would listen to the appeal and get the teacher in trouble, but I would not give it.
Bleh.
Yes this is a spelling war. Remember you started it!
I spelled professor using the French spelling because after all I speak French, English and German. And since I live in Switzerland and have a place in Quebec I am extremely used to speaking in the three languages at the same time. This often reflects in my writing because I will write what I was last speaking.
Now you should not be one to talk about your spelling. Because where did you learn to write "realize"? You see where I grew up Canada, we spelled it "realise". So MAYBE YOU should have paid attention that maybe in this world there could be people who spell things different than you, but is still correct nonetheless!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
When you can only miss 3 days, I mean damn!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Actually, I've had quite a few classes over the years where computers were allowed.
When I took Statistics for Engineers, we were allowed anything provided it wasn't a communication device. [so well, you load all the data into a spreadsheet, click a button, and hope you got the right answer... although in 1996, I didn't see anyone else with a portable during the final but me]. I've also had programming classes where the teachers allow access to computers [although, if you didn't keep working on the non-programming problems while your FORTRAN was compiling on a 386, you didn't stand a chance at finishing on time].
These days, computers in the classroom are more and more prevalent, although I may have a flawed sense coming from formerly engineering, and now programming background.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Surely the teacher could run a quick script to stop access during the time when they need the students to pay attention. Then run a script to allow access again when they're allowed to use it.
"I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I
put the car key in the door lock. The house started up. So I figured
what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times. I thought I
should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to
get off my driveway."
-- Steven Wright
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