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."

Comments

Browsing vs Looking up definitions

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

An "A" is an "A" Studen

[MLopat]

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.

It's a tool

[Turn-X Alphonse]

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.

How they handle it at Georgia Tech

[mrchaotica]

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.

Why?

[elucido]

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.