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."

Comments

Attention span

[Alex Reynolds]

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.

Re:Attention span

[Bob McCown]

Another thing I heard many of the professors in college say, when a student or ten were not paying attention, was "Well, some of you arent playing attention, but, its not my $BIGNUM a year you're spending, and I dont have to tell your parents why you failed this class."

Re:Attention span

[Zemran]

It does not matter how interesting you make a lecture, some students feel that they should get the qualification just for attending and therefore do not expect to actually work. Unlike school, college students are not forced to attend (except by their parents) and if they are being disruptive I ask them to leave.

Most students that do not want to work simply do not turn up but there are some that come to lectures and workshops that do not have any wish or intention to work.

There is also the other point that some subject are practically impossible to make interesting. As the lowest of the low amongst the academics I used to get the worst courses to deliver. For example I had to teach "an introduction to computers" to first years. When the degree course was put together most students had not used a computer but now they all have their own laptop. They did not want to hear about Word or Excel but I had to try to make it as interesting as I could. I often failed and I accpet that it was up to me to make the course better but luckily the university dropped that module :)

Re:Attention span

[HanzoSan]

oh wow you must know so much about giving lectures, you TEACH ANIMATION, I'm sure in your animation class you have to teach alot of syntax right?

Face it, in what you teach it doesnt really matter what you say or how bad your accent is, you teach animation, you dont need to explain in detail certain terms.

Lets give a lesson on C in bad english and see how much you can learn.

#inkluude

ent main()
{
printf("hellow world");
retuurn zero;
}

Yeah thats how you write C code in flawed syntax. Should I teach students that this is really how to write C?

People who cannot speak should not give speeches just like people who cannot read and write should not make it through grade school, I dont care if you are Mike Tyson or George Bush, if you cannot speak, and you cannot read and write you have no business being on TV talking to millions of people giving speeches on national security, or trying to use big words at press confrences that you cant say right.

Bush gets on TV and embarrasses our country with some of his speeches, I'm sure iraqis look at him and pronouce words better than he does, This isnt about race, its about ability.

Tony Blair can get on TV and give a speech and its proper, George Bush gets on TV and gives speeches that a 5th grade could have wrote.

"These evil terrarists" and "Them bad guys" and "We must stop dem from causin terra on our peoples"

I'm supposed to listen to garbage like this?
I respect him only because his president, but i dont like his speeches and I think he should let the vice President or Collin Powell talk for him.

I'm sorry but if you think I'm a racist because I dont like people with accents giving speeches I cant understand, perhaps you also believe that people who dont learn to read and write in school are victims of racism too? yeah blame race on everything.

Re:Attention span

[MrChuck]

"I'm sorry I flunked out mom, my professor wasn't entertaining enough for me."

Re:Attention span

[MrChuck]

1) animation often involves lots of coding. Ever program light sources? That change over time? Didn't think so.

2) you presume that ability to speak english clearly equates to the speakers knowledge of a subject and intelligence.

Well you reflect on the intelligence of one person.

Er, George Bush isn't necessarily the brightest bulb on the line. But he, like reagan, speaks in simpleton for his audience as part of that.
Keep is simple and easy to unnerstan and the foolish minority that voted for him follows him.
You think it's accidental? (with his Mom and Dad's diction, I'm willing to bet a fair amount that it's a put-up. I'm from a heavily accented city, but my midwest parentage means that I never had that regional accent - my brother and I both left 20 years ago, with him in Asia for 5 years and we both speak about the same.)

Perhaps racist is the wrong word. A better fit might be "narrow-minded, provincial American?"

Perhaps this is why Americans are so widely respected abroad.

I boggle a bit at your equivalence of regional american accents with foreign upbringing.
You'd rather learn something from an unqualified local guy if the alternative was an expert with an accent?

It's not really my loss that you've not been abroad or exposed to other sounds and other cultures as it appears from your notes. One just sort of figures taht your parents were the same, and theirs and perhaps your offspring will be just as narrow.

Re:Attention span

[stephenbooth]

Firstly, IANALecturer, I have done some teaching, mainly technical/IT subjects, to adult learners (mid 20s and onwards) tho'.

I have always found that the best method is to mix teaching styles and be prepared to adjust to the group. When setting assignments I generally make sure that it includes a research element either implicitly or explicitly; just regurgitating what was said in class will not get a good grade, I want to see evidence that the student did at least some reading (most students are part timers in work so not too much reading but at least some). Often a session will start of with a short Socratic session then a lecture or/and demonstration followed by Q&A to re-enforce the material and cover any gaps in the students understanding.

I also make it clear from the start that due to time limitations it's not possible to cover all of the required material in class time, to pass they're going to have to do some self study.

Stephen

Re:Attention span

[HanzoSan]

I bet thats what teachers told Bill Gates.

Some thoughts

[bunyip]

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.

Re:Some thoughts

[sporty]

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.

If I'm making no noise, and have an easy grasp of the course material, who says I have to sit there or even take notes unless the class requires participation? I've had a disdain for professors who either require attendance and/or "undevided attention" when I know the course material or no participation in class ins necessary.

At work, yes. You are required to participate in meetings. But in college, it's totally different.

Re:Some thoughts

[stephenbooth]

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.

If a student feels they already have the requisite knowlege to get an 'A' why shouldn't they skip class entirely or work on other things in the class so long as they aren't disrupting other students? At the end of the year they'll either get the 'A' and be vindicated or not and have learned a valuable lesson. I've already mentioned elsewhere in this discussion that for one of the courses I did at uni the entire class decided after the first few weeks that their learning experience would be better served by self study than by attending the lectures. Not one of us got below a 'B' (infact there were only a few people didn't get an 'A') mainly because instead of spending 3 hours a week listening to him droning on we just read the material and discussed it in informal sessions in the pub.

Part of the learning experience at college is learning to manage your time. If a student believes that their learning would be better served elsewhere why should they waste time at a lecture (maybe skip lectures in a subject they already know well to spend more time on a subject they are struggling with). If students abuse that then, like you indicated, their grades will reflect that.

Stephen

Re:Some thoughts

[tmark]

who says I have to sit there or even take notes unless the class requires participation? I've had a disdain for professors who either require attendance and/or "undevided attention" when I know the course material or no participation in class ins necessary.

As a former teacher at a major university, I can say that I wouldn't care if you don't pay attention. I *would* care, however, when students are checking their email or IM'ing each other because that activity inevitably distracts other students who *are* trying to pay attention, just the same as students who are whispering to each other constantly or passing notes. Images changing on a screen in front of a student can't help but draw their attention away. Hell, if laptops weren't necessary for a particular class, I would even consider disallowing use of *those* because the cacophony of keyboards-a-clicking is very distracting.

My stance was always that I didn't care if you came to class or not, but I did care if your decision affected other students.

Re:Some thoughts

[sporty]

As a former teacher at a major university, I can say that I wouldn't care if you don't pay attention. I *would* care, however, when students are checking their email or IM'ing each other because that activity inevitably distracts other students who *are* trying to pay attention, just the same as students who are whispering to each other constantly or passing notes. Images changing on a screen in front of a student can't help but draw their attention away. Hell, if laptops weren't necessary for a particular class, I would even consider disallowing use of *those* because the cacophony of keyboards-a-clicking is very distracting.

Ah, but if it was possible to sit in the last row with a quiet laptop?

Re:Some thoughts

[blakestah]

If I'm making no noise, and have an easy grasp of the course material, who says I have to sit there or even take notes unless the class requires participation? I've had a disdain for professors who either require attendance and/or "undevided attention" when I know the course material or no participation in class ins necessary.

I bet your parents have a disdain for you when you go to class intending not to receive as much as possible from your professor.

Basically, the high cost of tuition exists so that professors can teach you. The absolutely highest transfer of information comes in class. The best correlate of high grades in college is class attendance and participation. You simply cannot learn as effectively any other way.

And if you grasp it easily and attendance is mandatory, listen up anyway. You are paying for it. You pay anywhere from $50 to $200 per lecture, JUST TO LISTEN TO THE PROFESSOR RAMBLE. Make him earn it. Listen. Ask tough questions. Get good grades.

Re:Some thoughts

[sporty]

I bet your parents have a disdain for you when you go to class intending not to receive as much as possible from your professor.

Yeah, they did. But I wasn't in school for Music or Philosophy, where my interest varied. I was there for computer science. Problem is, some classes, even relevant ones were so easy, that the weren't interesting. I remember taking one course in highschool, and again in college. The second time, it was great. It was a little easier, but the professor was even better.

No, it's not the professor's fault, but c'mmon, if the circumstance is that it wont' be good for me to sit there and fall asleep, can't I do anything else?

Re:Some thoughts

[Uart]

After a semester at Babson College where every student is issued a laptop, every seat has an ethernet port and every class requires attendance, I feel the need to comment.

Some teachers are just boring. Some classes just didn't really require my attendance. Learned more from playing Warcraft 3 in my accounting class than i could have had I paid attention (mostly because I had already taken it in high school).

Professors that require me to show up, and require me to pay attention/ participate once I am there seriously need to re-evaluate their job description. I am not in there class for there sake, I am there for my own, they should cater to their students, who each pay around $30k per year for the privilege. Rather than removing my internet access in class, the professor should strive to be more interesting than the internet.

In the really good classes that I had, everyone showed up, and internet access was never disabled. In the boring ones, attendance was sketchy and the professor always blocked internet access.

A sign of the times

[sboyko]

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.

Re:A sign of the times

[SScorpio]

I completely agree with you especially in an academic environment. While going to school I didn't have these things other than a PDA need the end of my schooling. I didn't then, nor do I now see the need for these devices. If a teacher is extremely boring , then just do what I did just learn to sleep sitting up without snoring. This was especially helpfully after being up 'til ungodly hours working on school work, messing around on the Internet, or playing Video games. It still disheartens me to see all the students just wasting their time. If they don't care about the lecture then don't goto class. Sure it makes the class harder; however, if you not playing attention in it anyways there isn't much difference and you won't be distracting other students that are trying to learn. When all is said and done. New toys are fun but they do not work well in an academic environment. Hell, I'm against putting a computer in every classroom in primary schools. What use is a computer that occasionally gets used to play some dumb little educational game this is several levels below what is being taught in the class. Sure it's common place to need to know how to operate a computer but that doesn't mean you have to be around them at all times.

Re:A sign of the times

[SerpentMage]

What people do not realize is that people have become multi-tasking capable.

I run two computers concurrently. And have two screens for one so that I can log remotely into another couple of machines. Usually I have the TV going as I work.

My point? I multi-task and it was something I honed over years. If I had to solely listen to the professeur I would daydream and get bored because he would not speak fast enough. These days most people are very verbose and 60% of what they say is a repeat of the original text.

Do the professors have a right to limit distractions? NO! If the student does not make noises then the professeur has no right to say anything. When I was in university I used to doodle, talk, sleep while the professeur was talking. When the professeur was interesting then I listened. And that is the key, the professeur has to get you excited about learning. Classes do not have to be boring! That is what many professeurs do not understand. Remember a professeur is there to teach you, not be in awe of their "brillance".

Re:A sign of the times

[fucksl4shd0t]

While going to school I didn't have these things other than a PDA need the end of my schooling. I didn't then, nor do I now see the need for these devices.

I'm sure at one time people didn't see the need for kids to take pen and paper to class either. It's a new age, and there are new tools available to help kids learn more stuff, and learn it better. We should encourage their use for learning, rather than discouraging their use entirely.

It's up to the professor to exploit the tools the kids have. For example, what if the professor says "Can somebody do a quick Google search to see what the consequences of the US joining the second world war later would have been?". Admitted, it's a contrived example, but computers are a powerful informational tool, and professors are to teach information. They should exploit this tool.

It still disheartens me to see all the students just wasting their time.

Students have always, and will always waste their time. This is a fact of life. If they are interfering with the class with their time-wasting, that's a human problem. Removing the computers will not solve this problem, because the problem existed long before computers were even invented.

New toys are fun but they do not work well in an academic environment.

The fact that computers are treated as toys is in itself, the problem. Make them a tool for education, not a toy for distraction. This is up to the professors and not the students, really. Wouldn't it be great if the professor gave html versions of their class notes to their students to view during the lecture? Then the student could fill them in with more detail than they would have had if they had to take the notes completely themselves, and then have more information to use while studying. At least the information would have more depth, and therefore be more meaningful.

Hell, I'm against putting a computer in every classroom in primary schools. What use is a computer that occasionally gets used to play some dumb little educational game this is several levels below what is being taught in the class.

This is also a human problem. Again, like I've said several times before, this is people not exploiting the tools that they have before them. It's up to the teacher to use the tool to benefit the class. Do the teachers need better software to do this? Arguably, yes. Do the teachers need training to exploit this tool? Definitely, yes. Does it do any good to slap one in every classroom (or on every kid's desk, where it could do the most good) without providing the necessary infrastructure (including software) to use it? No.

A tool is only as useful as the people using them allow them to be. Computers are a great tool for storing, retrieving, modeling, et al, information. Let's use them that way. But they still only do what they've been told to do.

Re:A sign of the times

[Kombat]

What people do not realize is that people have become multi-tasking capable.

*raises eyebrows* Excuse me? We've "become" multi-tasking capable? Humans have been multi-tasking capable for thousands of years. It's part of our nature. And who, exactly, doesn't "realize" this, as you assert?

I don't mean to rip on you SerpentMage, I just get irritated at people who not only think they've just "discovered" something that's obviously extremely old, but who also think they're in some sort of elite few who know it. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're not that special. 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.

Classes do not have to be boring! That is what many professeurs do not understand.

Again, this is a ridiculous statement, offered only to serve your own ego. I challenge you to find me one single professor anywhere on the planet who sincerely believes that "classes are supposed to be boring." That's absurd. No one thinks that.

And at the risk of turning this into a spelling flame, perhaps you should have paid more attention to your English professor while you were busy learning to multi-task in grade 8.

Re:A sign of the times

[liquidsin]

I went to a highschool that sat right next to a well-traveled canal and all of the rooms on outside walls had windows. If I got bored in a class I'd stare at the passing boats, or I'd draw in my notebook. Sometimes I'd do work for other classes or just read a book. And very few teachers would get upset with me for not paying attention to them. I never had a PDA or a cell phone in highschool, but I had plenty of distractions. If people don't want to pay attention, they won't. If you take away their toys and gadgets they'll just stare off into space or doodle in the margins or spin a coin on their desks. If you're not distracting anyone else it shouldn't matter what you do.

Re:A sign of the times

[MattJ]

"It's up to the professor to exploit the tools the kids have. For example, what if the professor says "Can somebody do a quick Google search to see what the consequences of the US joining the second world war later would have been?". Admitted, it's a contrived example, "

I'll cut you slack because it was an example pulled out of your hat. But it really would be a terrible use of a computer in the classroom. Your professor is asking for not just a simple, noncontroversial "fact", but rather a historical judgement.

Even if you could come up with a decent Google query and find a good matching page within a minute or two (before the class moves on), you don't have time to read and assess the argument. All you can do is parrot what you've found. This is a good question for an essay, written with careful consideration, but not good for a quick in-class lookup.

Also, this is a good example of one of the biggest dangers of Googling, particularly for students. I'll call it the Law of Distorted Significance, though someone else may have described this otherwise. In a database of content and metacontent (e.g., Google) which is sufficiently large and diverse (created by millions of people around the world), you will find nearly *anything*. That much is shown by the difficulty of googlewhacking. The danger is that you can conclude that what you've found has real significance.

Re:A sign of the times

[Blkdeath]

And at the risk of turning this into a spelling flame, perhaps you should have paid more attention to your English professor while you were busy learning to multi-task in grade 8.

The lecture on cultural sensitivity on an international medium is thattaway -->

I do believe, in my heart of hearts, that Monseur SerpentMage is, how you say, French?

Re:A sign of the times

[kirkjobsluder]

It's up to the professor to exploit the tools the kids have. For example, what if the professor says "Can somebody do a quick Google search to see what the consequences of the US joining the second world war later would have been?". Admitted, it's a contrived example, but computers are a powerful informational tool, and professors are to teach information. They should exploit this tool.

I guess my reaction to this as someone who plans to teach is that reseach should be done on the student's own time. Ideally, class time should be too full of debate and discussion for this to be useful.

Re:A sign of the times

[revery]

*raises eyebrows* Excuse me? We've "become" multi-tasking capable? Humans have been multi-tasking capable for thousands of years. It's part of our nature. And who, exactly, doesn't "realize" this, as you assert?

Yeah, the interrrupt nature of our society has done nothing to increase the natural multi-tasking abilities of people...

I don't mean to rip on you SerpentMage

What are you like when you mean to rip on someone? This is not a formal request for a whuppin'

I just get irritated at people who not only think they've just "discovered" something that's obviously extremely old, but who also think they're in some sort of elite few who know it. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're not that special. 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.

Hmmm... let's reread his post and see where he mentions "discovering" multi-tasking (or "discovering" anything for that matter). He does say "I multi-task and it was something I honed over years. Nasty foolish hobbit, it thinks it can improve a skill.

Again, this is a ridiculous statement, offered only to serve your own ego. I challenge you to find me one single professor anywhere on the planet who sincerely believes that "classes are supposed to be boring." That's absurd. No one thinks that.

I would have thought anyone would interpret his statement as professor's don't realize their clasees are boring. I challenge you to find me one person on the planet who is so anal and nitpicking that they.... oh, nevermind.

I don't mean to be picking apart your post comment-by-comment Kombat, but I just did. Maybe you can make fun of my spelling. I haven't even checked for typos.

Re:A sign of the times

[Carmody]

What people do not realize is that people have become multi-tasking capable.

I've been a professor for many years. I've won awards for my teaching. I have a strong reputation among students for being a good teacher. So I am not just being a dick when I say:

What students do not realize is that they are not as multi-tasking capable as they think.

I am not being paid by you to lecture for a micro-century and then go home. I am not being paid by you to give you tests and grade them. You are paying for my expertise in teaching you the material. I say that when you are in my class you should be paying attention. You don't think that you should have to. You know what? I know more about this issue than you do. I say that when you are in my class, and we break into groups to discuss a calculus topic, that you should be listening to and talking to your classmates for that part of class. You don't see the point. You know what? I know more about this issue than you do. You are paying for my judgement.

Part of college may be the process of learning "time management" and all that, but you know what? I don't give a shit. In my calculus class, the only thing I care about is that you learn calculus. And, as a result of my experience in teaching, and research in education, I've found that if I insist on your attention, you will learn a hell of a lot more about it. I've done experiments to that end, have you? I've read literature about it. Have you? I've taught calculus to thousands of students. Have you?

My classes are usually interesting, according to my students, so this isn't that much of an issue for me. But you know what? You would have learned more if you listened all the time. Not all subjects are Monty Python's Flying Circus. Even though my classes tend to be fun in general, sometimes I will warn the students, "Gang, this is going to be a dry fifty minutes, and I'm sorry." and then I will procede to bore the fuck out of them. (Measure Theory wouldn't "VOOM" if you put four million volts through it) There are techniques that, as a professor, I can employ to help you through the dull spots. But even if a professor doesn't do that, tough titty.

If I had to solely listen to the professeur I would daydream and get bored because he would not speak fast enough

Then daydream. Get bored. Life is not always like Nintendo. If all of your professors bore you, then maybe you are in the wrong major, or at the wrong university.

I have not mentioned my particular policies re: attendence, laptops, doodling, etc. My policies are irrelevant to this discussion. The point is that you are paying the professor to exercise her or his judgment when setting those policies, and the professor likely knows more about it than you do.

Re:A sign of the times

[HanzoSan]

And at the risk of turning this into a spelling flame, perhaps you should have paid more attention to your English professor while you were busy learning to multi-task in grade 8. Be careful with that Quote, Some people Anim8me2 might assume its a RACIST statement.

Hey they might even blame lack of ability to spell on Race! They may even make comments such as this one Silly Comment

Or perhaps its their own racism that allows them to assume only "certain" people can't spell.

Re:A sign of the times

[delcielo]

It's up to the professor to...

This strikes me as being a lot like the customer's always right sort of thing. It's great as a philosophy for the professor(retailer); but as soon as the student(customer) co-opts it and begins to use it for their own purpose, often as a stick with which to beat the other, all usefulness for it has disappeared.

Certainly the professor has a responsibility to do the best job of teaching he/she can; but don't think that just because you spent your money (or somebody else's) that you have no responsibilities in the matter. If you're not paying attention because you think you already know the material, or because you drank too much last night, or because you're busy surfing, then do poorly in the class, it's not the professor's fault.

The whole philosophy of "It's not my job to struggle and learn, it's the professor's job to teach me despite myself" is just indicative of what's wrong with this country.

Re:A sign of the times

[Lumpy]

There ARE some Amazing people out there..

I remember one kid in high school that would Doodle with his left hand, take notes with his right hand and read something from a different class.. the teacher many times tried to bust "steve"... by saying when she was sure he was just screwing around.. "so what is the answer to this steve?" and without even looking up from his math book would give the correct answer... usually like "That's really easy... it's Sodium-di-chromate in an aquous solution" or something else that blew her mind, and everyone else.

There are TRUE multitaskers... who really can do many things at once... and they are ultra rare...

Re:A sign of the times

[Dun Malg]

Does it do any good to slap one in every classroom (or on every kid's desk, where it could do the most good) without providing the necessary infrastructure (including software) to use it? No.

A computer at every desk? This is the typical "magic wand" thinking that has created the problem in the first place. It's not a lack of "necessary infrastructure (including software)" that makes computers a distraction instead of an Ideal Teaching Aid-- it's the nature of computers themselves. As you said, in your own words:

Computers are a great tool for storing, retrieving, modeling, et al, information

In other words, computers are a super-convenient library. Most classes (labs being one of the obvious exceptions) are constructed around the speaker-audience model-- they are lectures. No amount of methodology modification can really turn a library into an effective enhancement for a lecture. Lectures require the attention of the audience. Anything that distracts that attention is simply that-- a distraction. Like you say, computers are great at storing, retrieving, and modeling information.

Let's use them that way.

I couldn't agree more.

Re:A sign of the times

[Bastian]

What people do not realize is that people have become multi-tasking capable.

Next you'll be trying to tell me that Windows 3.1 is multi-tasking capable.

Re:A sign of the times

[bgat]

Hear hear!

Re:A sign of the times

[nathanh]

When I was in university I used to doodle, talk, sleep while the professeur was talking. When the professeur was interesting then I listened.

I'm guessing you didn't major in English. The correct spelling is "professor".

The problem with your attitude is that it is selfish. What you think is uninteresting might be of vital interest to the person sitting next to you. They don't necessarily want to hear you talk because they are trying to learn.

Re:A sign of the times

[theLOUDroom]

Great. I can sum up your whole post in one sentance "I know more than you do"

Well good for you. Did you do a thesis on arrogance?

Look, you're not the only person on the planet who can judge how well someone is learning calculus. You're not going to teach everything you know in 1 semester. Try and wrap your brain around this one:
Some people learn better by reading than by listening. Some people would rathed read a chapter in their calc book than listen to you lecture. They learn better that way. They may choose to zone out and just read the chapter later. I'm one of those people.

What you should be doing is teaching calc and giving fair tests on material from the sylabus. I'll judge the best way for me to learn it, and this way may not be the same for everyone else. As long as I don't interfere with your lectures, and I learn the material, I should be able to use my judgement.

It's neat that you know all kinds of esoteric math that I probably don't, but that doesn't matter very much if it's not what you're teaching. Your actual policies would be a lot more relevant to the discussion. For instance: Do I still have to suffer through your lectures, if I'm doing fine getting the info elsewhere (do you take attendence)?

BTW, all these "have you?" questions just make you look bad. If you have good ideas, they should be able to stand on their own, without any attempts at intimidation. You sound like one of those people who just has to bring up where they went to school in an arguement, instead of sticking to the topic.
If you said, "By teaching thousands of students, I've discovered..." you might make it sound like you learned something and it would be a less confrontational, more constructive way of speaking with people. Instead you have these rhetorical questions that are specfically meant to try and make people afraid to argue with you.
Have you? Is not a good supporting arguement. Doing something does not necessarily mean you have gained insight into what you just did. (You can teach thousands of students and still be a lousy teacher.) If you actually gained insight into what you were doing it should show in your ideas. They should appear well thought out and insightful.

Re:A sign of the times

[Carmody]

Yeah, you're right. I was posting in anger and came off more arrogant than I actually am. Happy new year.

Re:A sign of the times

[SerpentMage]

Merci!

Re:A sign of the times

[SerpentMage]

Guess what I am a paid professional speaker and trainer. And like you people pay me to stand in front of them to teach them something. So regarding interruptions, etc I know them all too well. My students typically have wireless, lans, etc beside them.

But unlike being a professeur I cannot say, Hey STOP THAT EMAIL. I could, but then my ratings would go down the tubes and I would not be hired again. So the only option I have is that I have to make everything interesting. And I have to pace the material.

What many professeurs fail to realize that is that teaching is a very complex skill. It takes many years to figure out. You pace the student, you put in breaks at the right time. You raise and lower your voice at the right moments to break the boredom and day dreams.

Now about dry material? There is no such thing. There is only dry teachers. Any material can be made interesting. In software engineering there are some very dry and boring items. The trick is to make it interesting.

Now about the professeur knowing more than you. That is a given, but the trick of a successful teacher is making it appear that the professeur is just like you!

Re:A sign of the times

[SerpentMage]

Forget the spelling since there are many ways to write the same thing eg Canadian vs British vs American English.

As per my posting. I mentioned that so long as you did not make noise, then why does the professeur care? If it does not make noise then the student beside should not notice? However, if the student does not notice then it must mean that the topic is boring and hence totally uninteresting.

Re:A sign of the times

[nathanh]

As per my posting. I mentioned that so long as you did not make noise, then why does the professeur care?

I was specifically referring to where you said:

When I was in university I used to doodle, talk, ...

Talking is the same as making noise.

Though honestly, I find silent people can still be distracting if they're tapping away at keyboards, fiddling with pens, swinging their arms around, or whatever people seem to like doing instead of paying attention. I did 5 years of university and - while I was not always innocent - I did my best to shut up, not move, and pay attention. The selfish people who didn't offer the same basic courtesy in return were distracting to me and to the lecturer, whether they were talking or not.

If you want to talk, leave the lecture theatre. Do not ruin the experience for others. One of the most enlightening experiences for me during university was giving my own lecture. It's incredible how the lecture theatre amplified every whisper, every pen scratch, every shuffling of feet, and every muffled cough. No matter how quiet the whisperers thought they were being there was nothing quiet about the booming chatter that interrupts your chain of thought. I took an extra effort from that day on to BE QUIET.

Shouldn't matter

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

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.

Re:Shouldn't matter

[Kombat]

If the class is interesting then the students will stay on task

Not everyone finds network analysis interesting, but it is a required part of the cirriculum for many comp sci degrees. Some people find it fascinating.

It is not the material that makes it boring or interesting, it is the student. People have different interests. Not all subjects are inherently interesting to everyone. But they still must learn it, if they want that piece of paper.

Re:Shouldn't matter

[dcavanaugh]

Although "interesting" classes may be somewhat exempt from Wifi-based entertainment, it's really all about motivation. Wifi or no Wifi, some students are not all that motivated. How is Wifi surfing any worse than passing stupid little notes or just plain old sleeping. I suspect that Wifi doesn't change the percentage of students who fail to pay attention. On the other hand, it could be a real factor at exam time.

Re:Shouldn't matter

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

If the class is interesting then the students will stay on task, not check their email and etc.

You know, some things are just not that interesting. I would amend the above statement to say that if the class lecture is necessary to understand the material, students will pay attention (the ones that don't will suffer and either learn to pay attention or fail). In most of my engineering classes, the material is all in the book, but the professor was instrumental in bringing out the concepts clearly. And there were classes for which the lectures were not helpful in understanding the material. I eventually stopped going to those.

How sad...

[muyuubyou]

...it is that new technologies find OPPOSITION at Universities so often. It really makes you think.

Re:How sad...

[poot_rootbeer]

Yes, it makes me think that new technologies should not be embraced uncritically, just because they're new.

Re:How sad...

[colmore]

I don't think asking the question "is this technology, which we are paying X thousands of dollars for, actually hurting the learning environment more than it is helping?"

Reading the posts here makes me remember why I was so eager to switch majors from engineering to liberal arts. Every post I've read ASSUMES that all university classes are large, 100+ enrollment, lectures. I haven't had one of those in two semesters.

Most people end up working in a field that has nothing to do with their college degree. If your major is providing you with nothing more than sleepable straight-from-the-book lectures, then switch. The tech industry sucks for jobs right now anyway.

Also, and I know I'm risking offending a lot of slashdot here, and maybe this is different in other schools. But I found Compsci classes to be filled with complete and utter arrogant social paranoids. I've never met so many people who treated simple discussions of class material as some sort of knowledge contest. I'm not saying you won't find assholes in literature or philosophy, but you'll find a lot more well-adjusted people.

Maybe if teachers worked with technology instead

[HanzoSan]

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.

Passing notes in class

[mmoncur]

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.

We had this problem too...

[$0 31337]

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 :)

Re:We had this problem too...

[stephenbooth]

If you don't want to pay attention then simply don't go.

Unfortunately, as has been mentioned elsewhere, some lecturers automatically fail students who don't show up to listen to them drone on. Personally I'd argue that if you have to threaten students with an automatic fail or ejection from the course for not attending lectures that's a sign that you need to do something about the lectures, not the students. Monitor progress through assignments and tutorial sessions, not by counting (sleeping) heads.

Stephen

Wish I had wireless when I was a student.

[reaper20]

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."

Exactly,

[HanzoSan]

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.

Re:Exactly,

[benzapp]

Unlike highschool, people pay to go to college. Its not logical to pay for something you dont REALLY want.

Well, this is LAW school we are talking about. Prior to 80 years ago, most states did not require lawyers to go to law school, and those that did not require an undergraduate degree as a prerequisite. (note, lawyering used to be like a trade, you worked as an apprentice. This is still required in Canada) Law school as we know it today was created to make it exceedingly difficult for lower classes to become involved with the American system of jurisprudence.

That being said, law school doesn't really teach you anything. As the article states, most of these teachers are stuck in the 1970's, during the great heyday of the wealthy elite ruling the universities thinking they knew what was best for America. The "Paper Chase" is nowhere near accurate today.

The reality is that Law is being changed by the internet more than any other profession. You used to pay for the experience a lawyer gains over a lifetime. But now, anyone with a credit card can go to Westlaw or Lexis-Nexis and find tons of resources.

But students get it for free. This makes the entire research process infinitely easier, as well as makes the process of summarizing cases for class discussion much easier. Many cases are already summarized online.

The teachers hate this more than anything. Between the internet and the many hornbooks and study guides available, most teachers know students don't learn jack shit in class. All class teaches you is how deal with pressure. Personally, I believe that is questionable, but in the face of overwhelming evidence that class instruction is not required to do well on an exam they have to claim something.

The point? No one WANTS to go to class in law school. It sucks. But, if you want to be a lawyer you have to go. So people go through the motions, and try and look busy.

Re:Exactly,

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite true. Most students are paying for the degree and often see any class outside their narrow focus as an obstacle to graduation. The idea of a university is to educate, and sometimes that includes learning ideas that may not be initially interesting to a student. How many management majors want to take a course in the philosophical foundations of ethics? How many do we wish would? The CEO of Enron, perhaps?

If a school is going to give someone a degree, it is saying that person has completed all the requirements for graduation -- i.e. has gained a broad enough education to be granted a bachelor's degree. The degree is not a commodity and shouldn't be cheapened by letting students who are too immature to realize that a course has value completely ignore it. Yes, some instructors should be better, but that doesn't release the student from the responsiblity to learn.

Re:Exactly,

[gpinzone]

What's makes even less sense is that bad professors get tenure and don't get fired for their lack of teaching abilities. Too bad universities don't have a moderation system for teachers.

Re:Exactly,

[TheLink]

Actually, I think academicians who can't teach but do good research should stick to research and not teach.

Those who can do both well should get paid more of course. But it's not all about teaching nor should it be.

Maybe the other profs are useful for other things - like bailing people out of college pranks gone wrong ;).

Re:Exactly,

[Kashif Shaikh]

Professors need to earn their salaries, at my school the students actually EVALUATE the teachers, teachers who cannot give good lectures recieve poor ratings.

We have this too at our univ, but it only kinda affects new professors(5 years). There are a lot of old geezers teaching CS when they shouldn't be(i.e. they are engineers, physicists, etc) and you really can't do anything about them because of their sinourity(sp?).

Not a distraction

[abesottedphoenix]

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

It's just a new thing....

[zloppy303]

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!

Give it a few months(and some bad exam results ;) ) and you'll see everything gets back to normal.

just my 2 cents...

The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[HanzoSan]

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.

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[tsa]

That's not entirely true. Lectures can be useful in understanding the material, but only if you can discuss the things you don't understand with the professor. I only went to the lectures when I didn't understand the books. Most of the times this helped.

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[Anonymous Coward]

BZZZZZZTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!

WRONG!!!!

Care to try again? The classroom environment requires the participation of BOTH the instuctor and the student. Additionally, the onus to aggressively pursue a quality learning envrionment lies more with the student. The best teacher in the world can't teach a student who actively resists, but a dedicated student can (and often WILL) suceed in learning a great deal despite instructors of a lower caliber. This is exemplefied in Mark Twain's famous quote: "I never let schooling interfere with my education."

---
Fighting ignorance and apathy since 1977

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Well, the tone of the comment was rather racist (or nationalist, or something-ist) but yes, you're right. As academia becomes more international, this can be a real problem, and I do think it's vital for both professors and students to work hard on the language of whatever country they're working/studying in. We had real communication problems in a class I took last semester -- the professor is Polish, with a fairly heavy accent, and many of the students were Indian, with extremely heavy accents; I could generally understand both, but listening to the students and the professor trying to communicate in completely different accents was often pretty painful. Fairly often I or one of the other American students in the class would end up acting as a kind of interpreter -- "Well, Professor, I think what he's asking is ..."

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[liquidsin]

I only ever went to lectures where the instructor was helpful || entertaining. If I understood the material or didn't like the prof I spent that time in the lab, where I could be produtive and not annoy the prof by nodding off/doodling. Luckily for me, none of my courses had mandatory attendance marks. If they *do* make you go and you don't want to be there, I say do whatever you want provided you're not being a distraction to those who actually do need the help the lecture offers. Now, if the prof can't handle the fact that someone's not paying attention and they fell the need to stop their lecture and bother you, that's their own damn problem.

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Well as a teacher, Thats true, it is up to the instructor to make the information at least digestible. I have two counter views however.

The classroom is a society and as such the student has a responsibilty to allow other students the opportunity to be interested, not distracted and get the benefit of the lecture. If anyone is slamming away at a laptop in class it is a distraction, or if they have a CD player going with headphones that can be heard 10 feet away, that is a distraction. If that is the case then assuming attendence is not mandetory that student should behave or not show.

The second observation I have is that some but not all students that seem to feel that they know the material, don't. You point about knowing C is a good example. No self respecting college level course teaches just C, or C++ or whatever. What is being taught is programming, or data structures or Object Oriented Paradigm, or some cluster of ideas, but never just a language. As I have observed in my day job, knowing a language has little to do with intellegent approaches to structuring and solving problems in way that is efficient, maintainable and re-usable. These are the other things that are taught along with say a language being taught.

If you get to a place where you think that it is not worth listening to someone teaching on your subject then you have stopped learning. Or better yet you can start that next process of learning by comparing what you hear with that you know and make those critical observations about how it should have been done. Much of my work has been just that, reverse engineering other peoples ideas about how something should have been done.

Opportunities are now, not later. Find the fault line to split the diamond in one blow.

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[HanzoSan]

They do require you to go alot of the time depending on the size of the school.

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[HanzoSan]

I took a programming course on VB and it was a complete waste of time.

I admit i didnt take OOP or Data structures. My point is, I know C, i know alot of these concepts, any kinda test they could give me I could pass not to mention i can find out what kinda test they will give before its given.

I learn on my own, I dont really need a teacher unless I'm stuck, If I were writing a kernel, I'd surely get stuck and I'd need to be lectured by a professor, but if its an easy enough assignment why do I need to pay attention?

Write hello world? Write a calculator? Write an mp3 player? Write a chat program? these things i could write on my own and wouldnt really need much instruction.

Now, if the teacher said write these applications in a specific way, say in a way that it is bug free, runs cross platform, and is designed efficiently, this is where I'd need to be lectured.

It depends on the assignments.

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[HanzoSan]

Racist? No, I just dont think someone should be teaching in American schools if they cannot speak American. If George Bush was my professor I'd want his ass fired as well.

I dont like people who cannot speak right trying to teach me anything that has anything to do with language. I'm sorry but its just silly. You want to call me a racist without even knowing what race I am, you must really be sensitive to racial issues, I'm assuming you are a minority?

Look, if you were from India and could speak perfect english, I'd want you to be my English professor, but i dont want someone from India who speaks with an accent teaching me English.

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[stephenbooth]

Kinda half agreeing, half disagreeing with you here. Ideally the learning process will involve a participation by both tutor and student, that I definately agree with. However if the teaching method used by the tutor is so poor or ill fitting to the students needs that a student can get a better result by surfing the web or hitting the books outside of class then why should the student be compelled to attend sessions that actually have a negative effect on their education by taking up time that could be more usefully spent on other things?

Between tutor and student it is the tutor's participation in the learning process that can be optional. And that's entirely inline with the Twain quote you refer to.

Stephen

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Ey theres the rub. Especially for beginning classes which have students with a wide range of experience and apptitude and context. There is a tendency to try to bring everyone along and that pace can be slow and boring. The answer it to take each problem and extend it to its logical conclusion. Like maybe the hello world and design it to ask you for your language and respond in that language, which gets into some graphics programming when you go into the Japanese, Chinese, arabic...sanscrit etc.. And to make it configurable for adding new languages, possibly alien languages yet to be discovered. Designing that extensible framework would be a challenge.

Another example is an general ledger reporting system I had to write, in Fortran for a major bank years ago. Well you could get more boring, so I wrote a compiler and turned over the cost center wrappup language to the user to let them design what the system actually did. I after all did not want to be involved in the accounting, just the tool to do it.

I guess the other important point to learning (and teaching) is attitude. Take what you find and go deeper, ravage it and make it yours and new and better. And it will driver your instructor crazy, but with a smile. If he does not push your boundries, push his, gently and with a smile.

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[GreyPoopon]

The classroom environment requires the participation of BOTH the instuctor and the student.

Shhhhh. What's the matter with you? Let them think that the student doesn't have any responsibility. It's OK. It just means less competition for those of us who realize that you only get out of an education what you put into it.

Seriously though -- for those of you that think you shouldn't have to listen to a boring professor, grow up! You're going to encounter lots of people in life. Only a small percentage of them will be interesting to you. However, many of the most boring will have information that you need to know. Consider part of your college education as learning how to pick up good information from difficult sources. In my mind, the only professors you should complain about that are those that read the book verbatim to you in class and those whose pronunciation is so horrible that you can't understand them. If you have a professor like this, a visit to the dean of the college for a friendly discussion is probably a good idea.

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[gmack]

Or throw jokes in.

I always added things like "press any key to continue or any other key to exit"

The point I gave up though was when we were asked to do an assignment using a more painful way of doing something for the exact reason demonstrating how much easier the proper(tought next lesson) way is.

I did it the proper way got docked marks for not wasting my time and after the fourth run in with that I quit.

No amount of jokes could overcome the horror of having to do an assignment the wrong way simply because I was told to.

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[MrChuck]

Sometimes there's a point where the professors' knowledge is the benefit and perhaps not his (lack of) english.

Now, I'm sure you've studied Latin and Greek to read the western classics in their original right?

One of my best English teachers was foreign. He had an advantage. He had to learn (there's a word for you) the language. I've had several Amurrican teachers whos qualifications were mainly that they spoke English. I learned some bizarre and wrong things from them.

Oh, well.... I guess you would have dropped out of Professor Einstein's Science classes because his english wasn't good enough for him to be smart enough to teach you things. And those Neils Bohr lectures you skipped are the reason your Quantum makes a terrible whining noise when you turn it on.

Get over it. Sometimes, you have to move from your mono-lingual cultural prejudices to learn.
Mind/Umbrella and all that.

Or course if you are just one of those sheep not in college to learn how to think, but rather to memorize enough to takes tests so you can get the receipt, then just keep taking those gut classes and don't be crowding out the smart people for the good seats.

Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student

[GreyPoopon]

I've got one of those! Except he doesn't read out the notes, he stands in near-silence while writing them on an overhead transparency extremely fast, while occasionally muttering something incomprehensible into his navel.

Well, surely he has the most learned navel on the face of the planet. :-) I had a similar experience with someone who couldn't speak English well enough. He would say a sentence and leave out a word that he didn't know, pantomiming to get the class to guess the word. I ended up dropping the class (along with several others) and reporting the situation to the dean. He seemed to know the course material pretty well, but probably needed some language lessons before being allowed to teach.

Professors are being paid...

[mikeboone]

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.

Why? Maybe if professors USED the technology

[HanzoSan]

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.

Who cares?

[Quixote]

As long as the student who is surfing the web/chatting/whatever doesn't bother anyone else, why should it matter? The student could just as easily walk out of the class. In my class (when I used to teach as a TA) the rule was simple: as long as you didn't bother the others, do whatever you want. Sleeping was OK too, but not snoring :-)

These professors should lighten up and get with the times.

Re:Who cares?

[Kombat]

While I agree with your point of view (it is the students' responsibility to learn, not the prof's), your last comment disturbs me. I, for one, and somewhat reassured that the profs are getting so riled up over this. I don't think it means that they're "behind the times," I think it means that they're genuinely and sincerely devoted to helping people learn. I believe they're concerned that most of the people who are not paying attention do not already understand the material, and are in fact just being lazy and distracted.

True, their final marks will bear this out, but I still like to think that the profs are just trying to make a difference, rather than just fulfilling their contract obligations and spewing out the info for those who want it, and damn those who don't.

Re:Who cares?

[Quixote]

Well, if the professors are really interested in helping the students learn, they should start by teaching the students a lesson in personal responsibility: that you (the student) are responsible for your actions, and if you do not pay attention in class, your grades will suffer and you won't learn anything.

Trying to climb up a ladder and disconnect the AP is childish; it teaches the wrong lesson.

IMHO, the professors are trying to gain the students' attention by force, a tactic that rarely works. I have seen professors who continue to re-use their age-old slides again and again, and the lectures become extremely dull and boring (i.e., the students are not challenged). I'm not saying that the professors dress up in Barney suits and engage in gimmicks; but they should try to make the classes more engaging, instead of using brute force.

Not high school

[airuck]

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.

Re:Not high school

[airuck]

as long as they are not distracting other students

Re:Not high school

[josephgrossberg]

(Gasp!) You mean treating college "kids" like adults? Who ever heard of such a thing?!?

I couldn't agree with you more. The more interesting the lecture, the more attention I paid. The more boring the lecture, the more drawing I did in my notebook (if I bothered to attend at all).

Re:Not high school

[poot_rootbeer]

... this article is not about high school.
University students are paying customers and instructors are employees.

As opposed to high school, where students are paying customers (usu. through their parents' property taxes in the case of public schools) and instructors are employees?

just block extranet access?

[smd4985]

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 ;).

Re:just block extranet access?

[extra88]

That's not a terrible idea but then some students set up open proxies to surf through and become not just classroom distractions but security and spam risks as well.

Very few college students are capable of determining whether a lecture is worthwhile or not.

So whats the role of the professor that you pay?

[HanzoSan]

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.

What is wrong with kids today?

[hayden]

Why can't they just fall asleep like generations of uni students before them? It prepares you for later life when you need to look attentive and not drool in meetings.

Sigh, the times we live in.

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[the_rev_matt]

Technology is not good. Technology is technology. It is neither good nor evil. Like any other tool, it can be used for many different things. In the examples you give, technology isn't the solution. Better teachers is the solution. You're trying to apply a technological solution to a sociological problem and it doesn't work. Yes, wi can be used to great advantage in schools and it should be.
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."

Theres a big difference

[HanzoSan]

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?

Distracting

[kEnder242]

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.

This is true.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Why use AIM when everyone is in the same room?

[MyNameIsFred]

Am I missing something? Why use AIM if everyone is sitting in the same room? It's a lot easier just to raise your hand and say something. I agree that technology could be better employed in the classroom, but this doesn't seem to be the answer.

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."

Re:Why use AIM when everyone is in the same room?

[clifyt]

"Am I missing something? Why use AIM if everyone is sitting in the same room? It's a lot easier just to raise your hand and say something. I agree that technology could be better employed in the classroom, but this doesn't seem to be the answer."

Ahhh....but you are talking to a roomfull of geeks here in /.land and they will not get the idea.

Hell, back when Mudding was a big thing on campus ('92 I think was the last year I touched the stuff) the most pathetic thing was that everyone would log into Muds to communicate -- not to play. On weekends when the normal folks were gone, the labs would be filled with smelly geeks all mudding along.

The worst part would be that in unison they'd ALL burst out emoting in one way or another in response to what was on the screen. I logged in to see who all was online (yeah -- I was a geek, but I also had the safety net of having relationships with something other than a computer -- my girlfriend never had to DRAG me away from the computer) and there was not one person on the particular mud that wasn't in the room.

Pathetic...I think it was one of these situations that made me give up the mud, where as friends of mine dropped out of school so they could spend more time with it.

Again, you forget the crowd you are talking to...AIM might be the only way they know how to communicate...these are the same people that can't recognize sarcasm without an emoticon appended at the end of the sentence :-)

clif

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[JimDabell]

Maybe if teachers worked with technology instead of bashing the technology and blaming it for them being terrible and boring with their lectures they'd be fine.

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:

The teacher could even bring his own laptop, add their AIM screen names to his AIM account, and talk to students via AIM.

As opposed to simply talking to them?

This is college not highschool, a teacher cannot try to blame the students for lack of attention

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.

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!!!

Been there, done that...

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.

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.

Charge more for tuition

[HanzoSan]

Resources are unlimited, colleges get money from tuition, not to mention they get money from the state.

Re:Charge more for tuition

[dinivin]

You have now clearly demonstrated that you have no idea what you're talking about (or, possibly, that you're trolling). Considering the fight that colleges and universities currently get when raising tuition to support technology projects, your idea falls flat on its face.

Dinivin

Re:Charge more for tuition

[Silver222]

You just get dumber and dumber and dumber, don't you?

Re:Charge more for tuition

[HanzoSan]

Looks like you dont go to an ivy league school.

Try going to MIT.

Double-Edged Sword

[da3dAlus]

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 :)

Life is not MTV

[wazzzup]

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?

Re:Life is not MTV

[Powercntrl]

Life is not a constant stream of entertainment. The most rewarding things in life come from blood, sweat and tears

You work for the DMV, don't you? ;)

Re:Life is not MTV

[budalite]

Ah, Finally. Something to reply to. As an old guy returning to school, I had forgotten that good teachers at any level are the exception, rather than the rule. Teachers who are interested in whether someone else understands the material and will actually take the time to learn how to teach, learn how people learn, and care whether each and every student does the best s/he can are, unfortunately, in the minority. I have taken 4 classes at a major U. here in VA. Two of the teachers, one a professor, essentially mailed in their work. The third was simply incompetent and never should have considered teaching. The fourth, ah, the fourth, was a little lady, a "converted" Classics Prof. teaching CS I to a auditorium of newbies, made CS a joy. She translated her love of the subject , love of teaching, and concern for her students into a course where going to class was one of the highlights of my week.
Sure, life's tough. You gotta take what you can get and do your best, often in spite of the obstabcles. I do wonder, however, how many careers were launched by that lady and how many careers were re-directed or just doused by the others. (ps. And why can't Classic Greek Literature 540 be interesting? Who would you rather talk to? Someone who talks to you because they have to or because they want to?)

Re:Life is not MTV

[liquidsin]

It's unfortunate, but a university will give a teaching position to almost anyone whose name is followed by "PHD" on their resume. Just knowing the material does NOT qualify you to teach it to others. Listening to someone rehash the text is no better than reading it yourself. A *teacher* should be able to make you understand the material and make you want to learn it. A course taught by a good teacher only needs the text as a reference. Maybe if we made professors learn to *teach* before giving them *teaching* positions, we'd hear less of crap like this because they would know how to work with the technology rather than decry it.

Re:Life is not MTV

[Yunzil]

or an email of how your friend saw this really hot chick at Wal-Mart.

Your Wal-Mart must be different. The local one here is staffed almost exclusively by mutant rednecks.

As an...

[craenor]

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.

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[HanzoSan]

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.

Another annoyance: Students googling for ...

[TheMidget]

... teacher's every word and loudly pointing out every teeny mistake he makes, with bulletproof reference to prove him wrong?

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...

Teachers are teachers, not babysitters

[goldspider]

By the time a student is of university age, it should be their responsibility to stay on task, not the teacher's to keep them there. Whether a student pays attention and takes notes and whatnot, or instead does his or her own thing on the Internet, their level of diligence will be reflected in the grades.

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...

Re:Teachers are teachers, not babysitters

[Idarubicin]

Keyboard clatter and mouse clicks--and the pr0n on the screen of the guy in front of us--are distracting. I can choose to pay attention to the lecturer (or not) but the lecturer does have some responsibility to maintain a good learning environment. This may sometimes include telling people to shut down their laptops when they become an annoyance to others.

Social Engineering?

[rf600r]

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.

Re:Social Engineering?

[HanzoSan]

So teachers get paid even if they suck and students get punished when teachers suck?

What responsibility does a professor have besides showing up if this is the case?

They show up and they get paid, you show up and you have to follow strict guidelines on how to pay attention and act interested. Oh and you have to pay them for it.

Re:Social Engineering?

[Idarubicin]

What responsibility does a professor have besides showing up if this is the case?

At my university, students in the Faculty of Science (presumably in other faculties as well) fill out (anonymous) evaluations of their professors at the end of each term. The results aren't released to the professors until after the class' marks have been submitted to the Registrar's office. There's a 'bubble sheet' on one side to rate the professor's knowledge, ability to answer questions, organization in presenting material, and so forth. The other side of the page has good-sized blanks for constructive criticism and encouragement.

The best part is that part of each professor's annual raise are based on these student evaluations.

Sounds like an update

[AndroidCat]

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.

Re:Sounds like an update

[mccalli]

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.

I shall act as if I have no sense of humour (debatable anyway...) and pick on the nugget of truth ingrained in the joke.

When I was at University (90/92) I used to leave a dictaphone running in some of the lectures. This wasn't so that I could snooze however - quite the opposite. It was so that I could listen and follow what was being said, rather than getting bogged down in just copying everything that was said to paper.

Tape recorders can be useful, so long as your intent is good.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[stephenbooth]

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 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

On the other hand

[dachshund]

If I'm making no noise, and have an easy grasp of the course material, who says I have to sit there or even take notes unless the class requires participation? I've had a disdain for professors who either require attendance and/or "undevided attention" when I know the course material or no participation in class ins necessary.

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.

Re:On the other hand

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Well, yes, and that's the answer. Generations of students have zoned out in classes with boring teachers; it's just that now it's more obvious that they're zoning out because they're working on electronic devices instead of just daydreaming. A good professor, with an interesting speaking style, who adds a depth of understanding to the course material that students can't get by just reading the textbook, is a lot less likely to have problems with this. I'd be very interested to see student evaluation results on the professors who are kicking up the most fuss ... Like the NYT article says, " The screens provide a silent commentary on the teacher's attention-grabbing skills."

Now, granted, there will inevitably be students who are too easily distracted -- "Oooh, shiny!" -- to pay attention even to good profs. You know what? Screw 'em? The rest of the class, both students and professor, will know who those people are, and work around them. In the rare cases where those people are geniuses who just get the material without paying attention in class, well, good for them. In the much more common case where they're goof-offs, well, their grades will show that at end of term.

Re:On the other hand

[ruzel]

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.

You're damn skippy I didn't pay $n for a correspondance course, which is why I quit college after it dawned on me that I could get a hell of lot more information from books than professors. I may not have gone to the best college in the world (UGA) but I was sorely disappointed.

I think it is completely and totally the professor's fault if students are not engaged. Students and kids, they are young -- they do not understand the value of the information their professors possess and it is therefore up to the professors to illustrate the value.

I, for one, got really tired of research-track professors who came into class with about as much excitement in them as a unisom. Once upon a time (during the Enlightenment, I'm told) people actually applauded lectures. Where are those lecturers? I had a couple, but the majority of my professors were dull. They may have possessed expertise in their field, but their teaching skills were pathetic.
_______________________

Re:On the other hand

[prator]

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.

Actually, you probably pay $n,000++ for those video correspondance courses. I just got done taking an NTU class that was actually a Georgia Tech class. A 3 hour course was $3,000. Luckily, I got my company to foot the bill.

Also, I recently found out that I could take the same courses from Georgia Tech directly for $1,700. NTU gets quite a profit from those things I guess. If I do continue taking courses, I'm going to apply to Georgia Tech directly.

-prator

Re:On the other hand

[Lumpy]

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 will agree with this as it is specifically written, but as someone who has been self-educating myself for over 23 years now in the Computer Science and Electronics engineering fields.. Self education IS better than anything a professor can throw at me. I suffered through all those CS classes because the "professors" refused to let me test-out because my syntax style was not his or some other silly reason. to qoute one thing that stood out in my mind..." I was rejected to take the test out because instead of using a bubble sort I used a B-tree... so I was disqualified for testing out because I was more advanced and submitted advanced examples... nothing in the request was specific to the TYPE of sorting to use.

Professors, GOOD professors that can teach and have the gift are very rare.. I hope that you are one. but from the highlights of my life... If you can pass while ignoring the professor and posting to slashdot... don't change what you are doing.

I passed my first 5 CS classes by sleeping through them. Aced every test and the finals. forcing a student to take low level courses because the professor's EGO is too big is a mistake to both the student and the professor.. it reduces any respect for the professor to ZERO for that student and actually harms the education process.

remember, every professor will encounter at least 3 to 5 students that know more and are much smarter than that professor in their life, how that educator deals with that prodigy makes the difference to all the students.

Re:On the other hand

[BinxBolling]

A good professor, with an interesting speaking style, who adds a depth of understanding to the course material that students can't get by just reading the textbook, is a lot less likely to have problems with this.

[...]

Now, granted, there will inevitably be students who are too easily distracted -- "Oooh, shiny!" -- to pay attention even to good profs.

The problem I see with this and many of the other comments posted here is that you're only admitting to the existence of two variables that dictate a student's attentiveness: The student's ability to resist distraction, and the professor's skill at "being interesting".

The third variable that has to be acknowledged is the power of the distractions available to the student. Suppose a professor had to give his lecture in front of a large movie screen on which a porno (no sound) was being projected. When most of the class was paying attention to the porno, rather than the professor, could you honestly argue that it was the fault of the professor for being too boring, or the fault of the students for being too easily distracted?

Now WiFi is clearly a lesser distraction than the porno, but it's also clearly a greater distraction than a pen and a doodle pad. It raises the bar both for the student's ability to focus, and the professor's ability to entertain.

Re:On the other hand

[iabervon]

Different people have different learning styles; personally I think I do best reading the book and sleeping during classes (that way I get handouts and announcements, and wake up and see the board on occasion). Furthermore, there are often a number of people taking classes because there aren't placement tests; they don't have to absorb anything at all, they just have to demonstrate that they already knew the material when the test happens.

The thing that really makes college worthwhile is the facilities, the other students, and the course staff outside of lecture; a dry lecture (or even an interesting one that just isn't very interactive) might as well be a video.

Re:On the other hand

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I don't quite buy that analogy. The hypothetical porn movie playing in the front of the room isn't under the control of the individual student. (More realistically -- I've been in plenty of classes where there was something noisy going on outside the window, and yes, that makes it damn hard to concentrate even if you want to.) If you're doing something distracting on your own laptop while sitting in a lecture you really should be paying attention to, that's your problem; if the lecture is so boring that it's not worth paying attention to, hey, do all the IM'ing and online gaming and e-mailing and Web-surfing you want.

I'm a bit of an elitist about the distraction problem, I guess. I started grad school when my marriage was in the final stage of falling apart -- and buddy, there ain't no Wi-Fi connection in the world that's as distracting as that. And I still pulled straight A's. So, to those who can't concentrate because they really feel the need to go a few more rounds of Quake, I say: grow the fuck up. It helps when Mommy and Daddy aren't paying your way, of course ...

The Scourge of Daydreaming

[reallocate]

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.

Re:The Scourge of Daydreaming

[geekoid]

"2. Teachers ought to say something not available elsewhere."

neat trick.

Re:The Scourge of Daydreaming

[reallocate]

Not really. You aren't required to reveal new insights on a daily basis, just say something that supplements, rather than duplicates, what's in the required reading.

I

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[extra88]

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.

My Experience w/ WiFi in class

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:My Experience w/ WiFi in class

[AppyPappy]

Playing the games is disturbing when a player jumps up and screams "This is MY HOUSE".

Or you could just order a pizza on OUR time.

Battery life

[Bazman]

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

Re:Battery life

[kenthorvath]

Why not give them both? Not everyone has a wireless card in their laptop, but every laptop comes with an RJ45 jack.

Re:Battery life

[Bazman]

Yeah, and a phone jack as well for those without RJ45s but with modems. Better make sure we install European and US power sockets as well as UK ones for those people without UK power adaptors.

Would be nice to just have wired network access, and to save all the spaghetti how about network cables that reel back into the desk when not in use?

Baz

Re:Battery life

[ealar dlanvuli]

I get 4 hours of life from my TiBook regularly with airport enabled, I've heard iBooks give similar performance.

x86 laptops tend to suck to be quite honest, if you've ever owned one you know what I mean.

So professors get paid just to show up

[HanzoSan]

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.

Re:So professors get paid just to show up

[aallan]

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.

Actually, at least in the hard sciences, you're wrong. Most of the money going to pay your lecturer's salary will be from research income.

Al.

Re:So professors get paid just to show up

[pi_rules]

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.

Bravo! I consider the ability to joke with your class and keep them involved by pulling the subject back into the real world and to their previous experiences the mark of a really good professor. They're not there to profess the book back to me verbatim -- they're there to profess -their- knowledge and -their- experience; the book's there to supplement that and works as a nice recorded series of facts to assist in getting a more complete picture of the subject area.

One of the best professors I've ever had would typically give 1 or 2 stories from previous jobs in each class. Usually they were funny too -- he had a great sense of humor. I've even created my own rule of software design from one of his stories and named it after him. "The Jorgensen Rule". Here's the story:

He was working on a team that designed ATM machines, and they had the thing down rock solid. Diagramed every possible event out with state machines (as that was the topic at hand), nailed down every possible outcome and had a routine to handle it. This was quite some time ago mind you. They were deployed in Germany from what I remember, and only once did the thing actually crash.

The engineers were baffled, how the hell did somebody crash their prefectly coded ATM machine? What could they have possibly done to throw it into an unvrecoverable error state?

Some drunk guy stuck a McDonald's fish sandwich into the "deposit" slot instead of his envelope. Well, the engineers never quite thought of that one. So, Jorgensen's rule: You can make it fool proof -- but you can't make it damn fool proof.

For the record I pretty much failed the class. The subject matter was really frustrating for me, and I still consider it a rather flakey area of software design (visual diagrams). I'm glad I got a cursory knowledge of the subject, but just never got into it enough to make it seem really imporant to me. I do wish I had done better on some of my assignments though -- I turned in some really really shoddy stuff that I'm still embarassed about to this day.

Justin Buist

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[swb]

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...

WiFi isn't a problem but a symptom

[LaughingOrc]

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.

porn gazing

[MacAndrew]

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.

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. :) 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.

Teacher's Ego

[CleverFox]

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!

Degree Vs Education

[drcrja]

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.

Re:Degree Vs Education

[Telastyn]

And vice versa, there's many universities who simply give out degrees without education.

Unfortunately for me, I just wanted sex; not a degree or education. I got none of them of course, but alot of time dicking around online instead of going to classes turned out to be very educational; even though the university had less practical applications.

It's catching

[PaschalNee]

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.

Re:It's catching

[NDPTAL85]

Why on Earth would a dentist care about people going online in his office?

Re:It's catching

[liquidsin]

I'm sure there's a joke here about 'r00t c4n41z' but I can't quite find it...

In all fairness ....

[mustangdavis]

How can a prof's lecture compare to playing a nice game of WarCraftIII or Age of Empires?

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 ... so this wasn't hard to do ...

... on the other hand ... I have given pleantly of lectures myself to college students ....

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 .... 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 ...

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 ... 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!

Bottom line: Listen to lecture or (play video game, chat with friends about how silly the prof's hair looks) ... this is an easy one that only requires prof by observation ... QED.

Just my $0.02 cents ...

Why should professors care?

[I Am The Owl]

They're not the ones paying thousands of dollars to attend school and goof off.

Re:So whats the role of the professor that you pay

[Kombat]

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.

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.

Thats not a bad solution actually

[HanzoSan]

I wouldnt mind this at all.

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[extra88]

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.

Well at my school...

[Tevye]

Well at my school (RPI) we've got a similar setup, and in many of my classes I see lots of students on their laptops during class. It doesn't really matter that there's no real reason they'd need it for the class, they've still got it out. What I've seen on people's screens includes:

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.

Big Boys Rulz in effect

[Marcus Erroneous]

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.

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[HanzoSan]

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.

Only cheating themselves

[Codex The Sloth]

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.

Re:Only cheating themselves

[dvdeug]

Why even bother going to the class if your going to surf and read email in class?

To get the homework and to make sure you know where the class is.

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[HanzoSan]

You'd have failed the class in the USA, the teacher would fail you for not showing up to the lectures.

Hwo do you know it's interesting?

[DrSkwid]

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.

Re:Hwo do you know it's interesting?

[Idarubicin]

So while sleeping you multi-tasking brain was able to wake you up when the prof got interesting?

I've found that one learns very quickly to take brief catnaps in university. Nod off for a couple of minutes in lectures and snap awake when the professor's voice changes tone or inflection to indicate a new topic or more interesting problem. When working on assignments in class, one can sample the lecture every so often and pay full attention when an interesting keyword ('exam') goes by.

There's only so many hours in the day, and I'm not going to waste that time in unproductive lectures---but it's not safe to miss lectures entirely, in case something important happens. That said, I'm opposed to laptops in class, just because the mouse clicks and keyboard clatter--not to mention watching someone play solitaire--are annoying and distracting to other students.

Re:We should have standards on who can be profs

[mustangdavis]

The prof wasn't "legally" blind, but his eye sight wasn't so good ....

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 ... 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 ...

Have you been to a college math class?

[oneiros27]

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).

My good professors made the boring interesting

[ShortSpecialBus]

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.

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.

Professor Glenn Reynolds weighs in ...

[HealYourChurchWebSit]

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 ..., which may discourage some of that behavior. And I tend to call on the students who don't seem engaged. But I don't make any particular effort to ensure that students aren't surfing or IM-ing or whatever. They're grownups. If they're willing to risk their grades, and to look dumb when they're called on, well, I'm willing for them to do that too."

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.

It's not always the students who pay the money...

[sleight]

... 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.

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[dinivin]

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

Smart kids, Dumb Professors.

[HanzoSan]

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.

Re:Spoiled kids

[NDPTAL85]

By your logic then every college student in Europe should have the same spoiled attitude since none of them pay for tuition, at least not directly.

Education does not cost money, Degrees do.

[HanzoSan]

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.

There's the good teachers, and the bad ones.

[oneiros27]

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]

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[einstein]

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.

You CAN use WiFi alongside live discussions ...

[ShabbyDuck]

Clay Shirky reports on using WiFi to support a 30-people brainstorm session. They used chat as a way to allow side conversations -- on topic, of course! -- and commenting without disrupting the live conversation. It may not always be OK for classroom use, but it is worth checking.

(It is sometimes better to befriend 'em, even if you can beat 'em.)

Guess what

[antis0c]

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.

Re:Guess what

[xenocide2]

Actually hes only paying for a fraction of it. Tuition usually only covers around 15 percent of a collegiate budget. Governmental assistance covers about 30 percent (and declining) and then the rest is research grants and alumni donation. So to say that its only their money the students are risking is concealing the truth, perhaps.

Re:Guess what

[MavEtJu]

Mind if I mod your posting to -1, I don't think it is interesting[sp] what you are saying.

Oh, you object? You hypocrite!

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[stephenbooth]

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

whitelist?

[BigBir3d]

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?!

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[stephenbooth]

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!

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

Re:Young Whippersnappers

[AppyPappy]

Calculators? We used to DREAM of calculators. Try figuring Pi using piles of small stones.

The clicking is disturbing. But it is quieter than the snoring. There's nothing worse than trying to hear a lecture while the guy behind you makes a noise that sounds like a washer in spin cycle being flung down a flight of steps.

We used to sneak beer into Real Estate Class (Thurs at 6PM) in McDonald's cups. That made class much mo betta.

Re:Spoiled kids

[HanzoSan]

hahaha
that was funny but kinda cruel at the same time.

You made the parent author look like a fool even better than I attempted to.

As a Prof on a Wi-Fi campus

[ancarett]

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!

Re: [not] Exactly,

[Blkdeath]

And if the student is not paying enough attention to the professor to actually give an honest, fair evaluation, what then?

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.

my fourteen cents

[neildogg]

"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.

This won't accomplish much...

[dotgod]

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.

So what am I paying them for exactly?

[HanzoSan]

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.

Re:So what am I paying them for exactly?

[Yunzil]

So what exactly are they doing that I cant do better on my own? If they arent there to spoon feed me information,

You're paying for the privilege of being there. You're paying for the opportunity of being educated by people who are (theoretically) experts in their field. You're paying for the opportunity to have access to these experts. You are NOT paying to have said experts coddle you and give you an A.

But I shouldnt have to pay someone to waste MY time

If you are not paying attention when you should be, then it's YOU that is wasting YOUR time, not the professor.

Attention & Consideration

[sjbe]

Several points I'd like to make.

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.

Re:Attention & Consideration

[pclminion]

Are you sure you've been to college? No college student I know refers to the professors as "teachers." They're professors or instructors.

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.

First of all, sleeping students are great. As long as they aren't snoring or drooling onto the floor, they're much better than the dorks who sit in the front row, wriggle with excitement in their seats, and ask at least 30 questions each class session just to show how smart and attentive they are. These idiots gets in the way of my education, by forcing the instructor to waste precious minutes answering their stupid questions.

Now here's something ironic. First you say:

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.

Then you say:

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.

Isn't assuming that "attendence doesn't matter in most cases" a pretty arrogant assumption?

If some moron chooses to attend class, to not attend class, to pick his nose, to not pick his nose, whatever, why should I care? As long as he doesn't waste my time, the instructors time, or anyone else's time (and therefore money), who cares what students do?

Re:Attention & Consideration

[sjbe]

Are you sure you've been to college? No college student I know refers to the professors as "teachers." They're professors or instructors.

OK smartass. Whip out the ol' dictionary and you'll notice that the definition of a professor is "a teacher at a university, college, or sometimes secondary school". (Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary) And you are questioning whether I went to college? Hah!

Isn't assuming that "attendence doesn't matter in most cases" a pretty arrogant assumption?

No. If you need to come to class, come. If you don't, don't. That shouldn't be the teacher's decision to make since the only one hurt by you not attending is you. But most people should attend and try to pay attention since there is a reason they are in class and not teaching it. If you think you can get the material out of a book, that should be your perogative. With the caveat that there is a near 100% chance the teacher (oh excuse me, professor) know's what is important about the subject better than you do.

Re:Attention & Consideration

[sjbe]

Freshmen are not always mature adults, and having someone tell them what to do is not a bad thing.

This is an attitude that has always bothered me because it is only half right. They may not be mature but they are adults with all the rights and responsibilities that implies. If they can't handle the workload for whatever reason, then they probably don't belong in college. I believe in second chances, but I also believe in the benefits of a good kick in the butt.

I also disagree with the notion that they are anyone's problem but their own. If they don't pass the examinations and never come to class, why would any professor have a problem flunking that student? If they blame the professor, well, that's just pathetic, but it isn't the professor's problem. And I say this as someone who earned a few failing grades. It's not always a bad thing.

As long as their are some students who are actively trying to learn, a professor's lecture time isn't wasted. Most college professors I know don't grade student's work themselves anyway, so they aren't wasting time on grading either. (Heaven forbid students take time away from research...) And even if they do grade it themselves, the professor is serving a useful purpose in letting the student know that his work (or work ethic) is unacceptable. If you slack in a job, they fire you. Why should school be any different?

Inexpensive Counter Measures?

[Jahf]

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.

Hmmm....

[blankmange]

As a both a student (undergrad & master's) and an instructor (technical), I can agree with the some of the points made here, but here is the crux:

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........

Dear Profs:

[liquidsin]

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.

Mute Button, Please

[adso]

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?"

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[garcia]

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.

Mesh networks!

[certron]

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.

Demand attention?

[kfg]

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

Speaking as a lecturer

[Nagash]

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

Think before you call someone a racist.

[HanzoSan]

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.

For myself, as a student...

[FroBugg]

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.

But, mom! I don't wanna learn!

[BFaucet]

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.

Re:So whats the role of the professor that you pay

[Gonarat]

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.

I can attest to the distraction

[ethank]

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.

Multi-tasking

[intermodal]

"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.

what?!? goofing off? No, "multitasking"

[zogger]

--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".

I dont pay for a lesson in broken English.

[HanzoSan]

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.

The Two-Headed Beast of SCIENCE!!

[Crash Culligan]

It's been mentioned enough times on this topic, but it bears repeating: technology has both good and bad points. Furthermore, given the extensive use of technology, a solution may exist which nobody's thought of yet.

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.

Profs should get in the game...

[V4L1S]

... they could run something like Driftnet and possibly shame kids away from more blatant wastes of class time... or into getting some practical know-how with security.

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.

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[uglyduckling]

I agree mainly.

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).

Not all kids are as smart as you.

[TheLink]

"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.

Once upon a time. . .

[kfg]

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

Tuition does not pay everything..

[QuantumRiff]

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..

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[Yunzil]

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)?

Teaching a Pig

[jefu]

This attitude may work for fifth grade, but in college its way wrong. As a professor, it is my job to do my best to help a student to learn. I can not, should not, will not, foo not, bar not, whatever not compel a student to learn. Even if I strap a student into a torture device and administer punishment on wandering of attention or wrong answers, I can still not compel a student to learn.

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.)

Dumb.... maybe... undisciplined... probably

[cfulmer]

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 the students

[Have Blue]

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.

Re:Bring a graduate assistant to class ...

[extra88]

The GA idea could be a pretty good one for some types of classes, especially ones that already use GAs in other ways.

I just thought of something about the computer vs. old methods of "tuning out." For me, and I think most people, the computer with a 'net connection is more engrossing than doodling, reading assignments for other classes, etc. That means it's harder for me to "snap back" my full attention on the class when necessary.

Correlation != Causation

[Jerf]

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.

Denying access to the Web.

[DrDebug]

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.

Students, professors can/should act like adults

[Ellen Spertus]

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.

Profs are there to teach you.

[theLOUDroom]

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.

ignorant fools

[Archfeld]

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.

Re: [not] Exactly,

[Blkdeath]

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.

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.

Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea

[pi_rules]

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.

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++; // do something with data
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++; // do stuff
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 ... 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 could see it being useful... but then again, I IM people just a couple of cubicles away :).

next ban pencil and paper

[Sabalon]

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?

Huh??????

[HanzoSan]

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.

Re:WRONG WRONG WRONG

[Kombat]

I can go to any university and sit in on any lecture I want WITHOUT paying for it.

This is just plain false. Universities are private property. If you try to sit in on a class you didn't pay for, you are TRESSPASSING.

Granted, some institutions permit people to "audit" certain classes - that is, sit in on them without getting credit for the course or paying for it. But that is usually reserved for special cases, or at least students who are already paying for OTHER courses. Not just some Joe Schmoe off the street.

Thats whatI dont like

[HanzoSan]

When you can only miss 3 days, I mean damn!

Computers in class rooms

[oneiros27]

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.

Re:HanzoSan at the Quads

[fault0]

word.