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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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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"
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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.
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.
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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.
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
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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.
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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!
If you have so little self-control that you can't keep yourself from wasting time on the Internet every chance you get, you're probably better off not being in school anyway.
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
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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.