Slashdot Mirror
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."
Maybe it would be possible to allow access to a local intranet only through the wifi? It wouldnt eliminate any Legend of Zelda, but it might keep the surfing to minimum.
"You won't eat our meat, but you'll glue with our feet.." --Some cow
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.
I like muppets.
professor "You see, you must first find the limiting reagent, then..."
Me BOOM HEADSHOT "PWNAGE!!!!!"
professor "What in god's name was that?"
*raise my hand from the back of a crowded study hall* "Me pwning"
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
If everyone has a computer(in some labs, and in the future), a monitored chat room can help learning a ton. For example: The teacher says something obscure, and the students want to know what it is, they can chat among their peers instead of disturbing the lecture. If no one knows in the class, they can interrupt the teacher. All talking would be logged so the teacher can see who's abusing the system after class.
God spoke to me.
I'm a student at Harvard Business School, where they have a fairly interesting solution for handling this problem. While every campus building has wireless access, all the access points in the classroom buildings require a web based log-in that checks your student ID versus your class schedule. If you're scheduled to be in class at that moment, you are denied wireless access to the internet (in any classroom building).
Draconian, perhaps, but very effective at keeping us focused in class.
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.
There are three kinds of lies... lies, damned lies, and statistics!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
use class time to read the Drudge Report, send e-mail, play Legend of Zelda, or update profiles on Facebook.com
Thus preparing them for the corporate world?
"Teachers leave us kids alone
I teach and find laptop abuse to be an issue. The Slate article misses the real problem, which is not that the student checks out (the article correctly notes there are lots of ways to do this), but that others can see the laptop screen. Suddenly there is a group of five students giggling about something. I've had students complain about the distracting laptop usage of others.
I don't know what the right solution is, since I think that in theory it's fantastic for students to have a laptop to take notes, perform calculations, and look up related issues during class. But it's a real problem when the abusers distract a group of students. I suspect that shutting off internet access during class is the best practical solution.
If professors can get away with just giving the powerpoint enclosed with the textbook, we should be able to get away with going online.
Speaking as someone who works in college IT, I've heard from more than one colleague that the same faculty clamoring for wireless and technology in every classroom are the ones now clamoring for killswitches so that the students can't use it during their classes.
Awesome.
It's sort of like when we put projectors with laptop hookups in all of the classrooms in nice, integrated bunkers and then they decided that the laptops were too heavy to carry, and they wanted desktops permanently installed in there are well. Whee! I'll never understand why a professor can carry three different NPR tote bags chock full of paper, and the four pound iBook they've been issued is the breaking point.
--saint
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.
From my own expereince, every single person that brings a laptop to programming lectures is either talking on AIM, surfing Facebook, or playing a game. This really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone - the internet is more fun than doing work or paying attention. http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/5505/dilemia0ps .gif
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
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
When I was a lad, working at the shoe factory at 12, I didn't have none of them fancy "educations". We had to work hard, and maybe at the end of the year, Mr. Jones would give us an extra tuppence for Christ's Mass. I worked my way up the corporate chain, first as senior tongue stitcher, then journeyman heeler, all the way up to lace inspector, and I did it though hard work, gumption, pluck, and sheer moxie.
This youth of today expects their fancy degrees and book learning to get them a big shot job in the city without the perserverance and elbow grease we old-timers had to invest. Why, just t'other fortnight, this young whippersnapper came strutting into the factory like Little Lord Fauntleroy, looking for a job. When I asked him if he was willing to dedicate his life to the High God of Shoes, to prostrate himself before the Terrible Majesty of Zapato, He Who Shods Man, I swear a slight look of unbelief crossed his naive visage as he politely excused himself and fled the factory, no doubt to go read another book on how to be mighty smart but ignorant of the ways of the world. Pfeh! Run ofta yer Ivory Tower, you Harvard dandy!
What do you think of something like this monitor filter? Maybe make it required for students who wish to use their laptops. Seems like most of the time, the laptop users would prefer this anyway; I know on the few occasions I've had a laptop in a lecture setting (conferences, not schools, but basically the same thing) the laptop wasn't distracting, but the ability of other people to read my screen made me uncomfortable, even though I was doing innocuous things.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
It's not the teachers job to force students to learn, or limit the ability of students who use the technology to learn faster. When you get rid of the internet, students who use the internet to actually research what you are talking about suffer, you end up hurting the students who are bright enough to use the technology properly. You also hurt the technology industry, as sales of laptops and wifi equipment will go down if you attack the main users and buyers of it. It is always wrong to punish the minority due to the stupidity of the majority. This means if the majority is ruining your class by not studying, give them F's, but don't hold others back with your solutions.
I think access to information and communications should be increased on campus as much as possible so students who actually know how to use the technology can use it. If a student wants to play games and goof off in class, theres a grading system to handle those students.
I certainly found I had that problem -- I'd concentrate so much on writing illegible notes that I wouldn't take any of the content in. In classes where we were given printouts of the slides, and I could annotate them where needed, I found I retained much more information from the lectures. Unfortunately, I can't claim that the correlation is significant, as lecturers for each subject all seemed to use the same technique.
:-)
Part of the problem, I think, is that lecturers like to see students doing something, and having to write out copious notes helps with that. I had a lecturer who, in previous years, had given out a coursebook with material from the course. But for some reason he decided this was a bad idea, so stopped giving them out and just wrote up all the notes on the board verbatim and expected everyone to copy them down. This made it very difficult to learn things in his lectures, even when you did have the previous years' coursebook
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
I started law school this fall; it differs from undergrad in that nearly everyone has a laptop and uses it to take notes. In my entering class, I think perhaps 6 or 7 students don't have a laptop. As an engineer and a techie in general, I find it terrific to have. I type much, much faster than I can write with a pen, and have FindLaw/Westlaw/Lexis-Nexis, state codes & regulations, the U.C.C., etc, all right at my fingertips for reference during class.
:-) You reap what you sow.
What amazes me are the people who chat on aim the whole class, or browse facebook, or play MMORPGs (seriously). Even if you're a freakin' genius and don't need to listen to the professor and class discussion, it's distracting and just plain rude. The corolary, of course, is that it's natural selection in action
[As an aside, I actually find law school fun and, while not easy, certainly not hard. It is a feeling shared by the other handful of hard-science and engineering grads. We're basically used to the workload, if not the type of work . (No worries Slashdot-crowd, I'm not in it for the money and I'd sooner commit seppuku than work for the likes of the **AA.) ]
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
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.
One of my grandchildren attends university in California. He was telling me that one of his friends always brought a laptop to one of their Biology classes. My grandson and some of his other friends were particularly annoyed with their friend who'd always be playing games or watching DVDs.
One of my grandson's friends ended up recording a soundfile that said "PENIS PENIS COCK PENIS PENIS VAGINA CUNT ANUS BUTTFUCK", and other sayings like that. They ended up putting it on their friend's laptop, and waited for a lecture when he left the class to go to the washroom. Once he was gone they turned up the volume, started looping that soundfile, and waited until their friend got back and sat down. As soon as he did, they pulled out the headphones, blaring out the audio.
I think he said that the professor flipped, and told the kid to get out of his class. They had a meeting later on, and my grandson's friend was told never to bring the laptop to class again.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I use laptop in my classes. And yes, it can be a distraction. I find myself checking my mail, reading comics, cnn, updating information on a portal I (with my friends) own. But most distractions do not come from the Internet, they come from what you already have on laptop. You read articles you have downloaded last night, you write documents for your other classes, you prepare your projects, you write your own materials (ie. personal web page or a blog entry to be uploaded later when finished, projects, programs, finish job tasks), try out new soutions (software), audit and configure your PC and do a lot more. So blocking Internet acces is not a good solution!
And blocking Internet access is bad for a number of other reasons as well. The first thing I do when I ge to class, I try to download the latest materials about the subject (and check the classes web page for updates). I also use the Internet to find materials relating to the subject (that can be very handy if you want to "take on" the tutor/presenter/lecturer ;)). Also finding alternate viewpoints to the materials can be helpful when trying to understand the lecturer or trying to confront him/her. Finding translations (from estonian to english or french or latin in my case) of terms is a challenge by itself. The downside is you understanding the amount of false information on wikipedia :p.
For people having trouble paying attention to class I have a suggestion. Try to make notes. Not handwritten (you won't be able to read those anyways - that is the reason why I started carrying my laptop to classes at first place), but make notes using Lotus Notes, Microsoft Word (or Excel), KWord, AbiWord or OpenOffice.org Write. If you are some kind of a Linux/Unix geek, you might even take notes in *TeX (which I wouldn't suggest to anyone else). It is especially useful if the class does not yet have an online conspect as then you will be the first to write one and it can be an opportunity to get credit or extra income.
I have seen most laptops in physics and economy classes, a bit less in computer science followed by law and then other social and real sciences and finally others. But I see the use of laptops increasing every week. I consider the use of laptops and Internet in classes more of a necessity than of distraction. It gives you much more opportunities than takes away. Ideally colleges and universities should be able to supply laptops to students in need as I can't see uncomputerised learning possible in ten years. E-learning, i-learning and learning from remote and independent is becoming more and more common. Classrooms are becoming more and more like (student) corporation rooms - places where people with similar interests can gather. It is even possible to graduate an university eithout actually ever visiting the university building (of the university you are to graduate) today. Why should we spend time for commuting between universty and home or university and work or university and cafe or ...? And why should we reserve certain times a week just to go and listen to one person talking if you could listen to the recording of his talk any time anywhere? We shouldn't!
I'm one of those people who always brings their laptop to class. The only classes that I don't take it to are math classes, or classes where it's not allowed (which is almost unheard of.) I even bring it to classes like Physics.
The main purpose is notes, but as the term goes on, it takes on a whole other secondary purpose: Giving me a reason to be there. Frankly, 75% of the professors I've had so far in college (I'm in my second half the junior year) are dull, read off slides, don't know what the hell they're talking about, or are incomprehensible. However, most don't tell me when tests/quizes/homework will be ahead of time, so I go to class to make sure I know. While in class, I either work ahead in the book, do homework, or browse the internet. I once played Half-Life during Chemistry.
There's no reason for me to do otherwise. Either the professors have such high curves that I don't actually need to learn the material to pass, the book gives me all the info I need so the professor is useless, or the professor is actually good and I am actually taking notes. The presence of my laptop generally has little to do with my overall grade, regardless if I use it to take notes or not, but the level of the professor has a profound effect.