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Is Wi-Fi Ruining College?
theodp writes "Over at Slate, Avi Zenilman has seen the real classroom of the future firsthand: Students use class time to read the Drudge Report, send e-mail, play Legend of Zelda, or update profiles on Facebook.com. But not to worry - replace laptops with crumpled notes, and the classroom of the future looks a lot like the classroom of the past." From the article: "... when Cornell University researchers outfitted classrooms with wireless Internet and monitored students' browsing habits, they concluded, 'Longer browsing sessions during class tend to lead to lower grades, but there's a hint that a greater number of browsing sessions during class may actually lead to higher grades.' It seems a bit of a stretch to impute a causal relationship, but it's certainly possible that the kind of brain that can handle multiple channels of information is also the kind of brain that earns A's."
so long browsing sessions drop grades (because the students are ignoring the professor)
and short but frequent sessions increase grades (because students are looking up wtf the teacher is talking about)
Seems pretty strightforward.
FTFA: "There are about 100 students in the Columbia University lecture I'm currently attending, and about 10 have laptops. (The lecture consists mostly of grad students in their late 20s, so the ratio is a bit low.) I can see four screens from here; only one person is actually taking notes. Another is looking at the registrar's Web site. The other two keep checking their e-mail."
So the real question is, would these same students pre-occupy themselves with something else if they didn't have their laptops open to browse? Its reasonable to conclude that they have a limited attention span as it is, so whether they're sending email, talking on an IM client, or checking out the hot blond two rows down, they weren't going to being paying attention in their English 101 lecture anyways.
The internet is a tool just like a notepad. I can sit and doodle all day in my notepad instead of taking notes if I wish to. Does that mean notepads are suddenly bad for studying?
The problem is peope abuse the tool to do other things, so they lose focus which ends up making them worse off in the long run.
Wifi is not the problem here, giving it to people who want to dick around is.
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Why should you want to limit it? This is college we're talking about. These students are paying for the priviledge of wasting thier class time. Thier tuition bought the wireless they can play Zelda during Phys 121 if they want. So long as they keep the volume down so that the student who want to pay attention (and who will end up being thier bosses later on) don't get distracted.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
The casual relationship between multitasking and higher grades is no big news. People with ADD get bad grades... duh. Seriously, this is only one incidental aspect of a well known relationship. The real news will be when browsing/surfing is supporting or augmenting students in ways that were not predictable.
The really good part of information tools is that they allow us to multitask on our own time, not the time schedule of others. The article hardly lends any time to whether or not the students who are surfing in class know the material well already or not. The wide variety of subject matter knowledge held by the students determines their own personal need to listen intently or not. If they don't require it, multitasking is a good use of time, and students who can multitask well will make good grades whether there is Internet access or not, likewise, students who cannot multitask will not make as good of grades.
Multitasking in a school environment means that you don't have to shut off the parts of your thinking that are not fully focused on the matter at hand.... you may be in a poli-sci class, but your thinking is on a project that you are working on for another.
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By personal experience as a College Student who use wifi in almost every class, I don't think how I can go without it. I think it has greatly improved my learning experience since its like a library in front of you. For example, say your in a ethics class and they bring up the topic of some act or case, just google or use wikipedia to look it up. Your in physics and you need a quick reference or more graphics and illustrations on a certain theory, simple: just search it. If it wern't for the laptop/internet, I (or anyone) would ever bother to look that information up later.
And what about the times when the prof is going on and on about things that you have clear understanding, honestly everyone was just falls asleep or skips the class, or you can use that time to look up some information on the subject/topic the prof just talked about or is about to talk which is much more efficient use of the time while still keeping a ear open to see if anything interesting is said be the prof. This helped me understand the lectures and material much better (than those days when I don't take my laptop).
If you are playing games or surfing stupid websites that the students choice and you shouldn't blame wifi or laptops for that, the student is responsible. But if you just take wifi out of the class room, then all the students who use internet connection in class rooms are the ones who will suffer.
If professors can get away with just giving the powerpoint enclosed with the textbook, we should be able to get away with going online.
I can relate somewhat to what the writer of the article is trying to say. The computer in the classroom (especially with internet access) is just a distraction. In my experience with my own laptop, it's often true. If I have the laptop out then I'm usually not paying all that much attention to the professor. When he's talking about ip packet fragmenting, I'm playing Earthbound, or just browsing the web. Here's the trick though, I'm not doing this in classes where I actually want to pay attention. My networks class for example, is an example of a class where I don't want to pay attention. The professor will go on and on about something not related to the course materials for the day, and I've had a fair amount of networking experience in high-school that whatever concepts he throws out I understand immediately, so the rest of the lecture ends up being pointless. In contrast, in my Senior project class we go over things that are new to me and are useful to me in a format I don't fall asleep right away. And it's not like the computer and internet in the classroom are just a distraction. I have used it to look up facts and extra information about the lecture before.
So is wifi ruining college? No more than any other service provided on campus. I can still shut down the laptop and not pay attention to the professor the old fashioned way, like reading a book, or sleeping. A boring professor is a boring professor whether there's wifi or not. It's my choice to use it knowing the consequences of my actions may lead to lower grades, and as long as I'm not disturbing or otherwise interfering with my classmates who actually want to pay attention, I don't see the problem.
Tech has a good solution to this problem too: they let you do whatever you want, but if you don't understand the material they fail you and kick you out. It's effective at keeping us focused (enough) in class, and also isn't draconian.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Great, yet more evidence that business schools don't know anything about motivating employees or customers. Thank God someone is there to teach the MBAs of the future that the internet is useless except for marketing and DRM verification!
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In that scenario, it is not WLAN that causes the problem, it is the students who goof off too much. An effective way to produce good graduates is to help the slackers flunk out early. Forcing students to pay attention is therefore counterproductive. The higher your dropout rate, the more students you can admit, and the greater your odds of admitting someone who will someday make you proud.
I wouldn't say WiFi has been ruining my "college experience". In fact, I actually have gone to classes where I would otherwise not have, simply by having the knowledge that if today's lecture was going to be a bore (and something I already know), I could browse away.
At least in the physical sciences, 2/3 of the audience have their laptops open and are busy at work finishing up their own presentations, sending email, and doing any number of other random things. I've never seen a classroom with anywhere *near* the density of laptops being used for tasks other than note taking that happens in a conference full of professors, post-docs, and senior grad students.
It seems to me the reason is simple: a lot of what speakers say isn't useful, even in the case of good speakers and voluntary audience. Even when it *is* useful, the rate at which information is presented is usually an order of magnitude slower than the rate at which the audience can absorb it, with huge gaps of dead time between important statements. So, at lectures people spend an hour sitting in their seats in order to catch a minute or two of really useful information.
As someone who hasn't taken a course without lots of equations and diagrams in a long time, I've never had an excuse to bring a laptop to class. Instead, I have to spend all that dead time thinking about other things on my own without the benefit of a technological distraction.
The problem with laptops in the classroom is that it hurts the feelings of lecturers, who are forced to confront the fact that most of their audience isn't paying attention to most of what they say most of the time.