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Professor Bans Laptops from the Classroom
An anonymous reader writes "USAToday is reporting that students are up in arms over a University of Memphis Professor who has decided to ban laptops from her classroom. Earlier this month Professor Entman sent an email warning to her students to bring paper and pens to take notes and leave the laptops at home. From the article: '"My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing," Entman said Monday. "The computers interfere with making eye contact. You've got this picket fence between you and the students."'"
In my experience, the banning of laptops from the classroom is because teachers don't want students IMing each other or fiddling around on the Internet when the teacher is teaching. This professor can't possibly be focused solely on note-taking.
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
I recently went back to school after a long time (10 years) off campus, and I was expecting laptops to be a much bigger deal than they are. For the most part it looks to me like the folks that are actually taking notes are still using paper. The folks with laptops appear to spend most of their time either surfing the web or chatting online.
I suppose I can understand a teacher wanting her students to actually pay attention. Of course, if she gets paid either way...
When I was an undergraduate student, it was before the widespread use of PowerPoint. I would try to transcribe every note, every equation.
When I went to grad school (2002-2004) I found having the PowerPoint slides allowed me to focus more on what the prof. was saying and I just took a few important notes.
To each their own. And if the professor thinks this is best, so be it.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
In this day and age, the simplest thing would be to have the lecturer set up a webcam that can view the lecturn and blackboard/whiteboard, with a microphone to record what is said. The students could then be issued with a DVD of the lecture, which covers the notes angle. In order for the students to bother turning up - and stay awake - the lecture then has to become more interactive, with students actually solving problems (for example) for which they are graded.
The best way to learn is to do, the best notes are the ones NOT made in a rush in real-time, the best classes are the ones where students learn more than what is presented - but also where you are not penalized for not mind-reading what "more" you are "supposed" to learn.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Actually, the process of listening, converting what you hear into your own words, and writing those words down can be a very effective method of learning. Notes are less of a reference and more of way to cement what you are hearing into your mind. Getting notes from a professor (or from a fellow student, for that matter) sort of short-circuits the process. Kind of like how taking an elevator with get you to the top of the building, but it won't get you the excercise that taking the stairs will.
I can honestly say I have never looked at my old, scribbled notes written in 5-subject notebooks throughout getting my BS. They're locked in the closet in a box, and I'm likely to throw them away soon. I can barely even read the writting.
However, using my tablet PC and OneNote, the information is actually relevant after the lecture (currently in medschool). If I'm looking for a particular word or subject, I do a seach and OneNote can find it throughout subjects.
The tablet PC negates the (can't make drawings, highlight, etc) "not-paper" problem.
His problem with students not paying attention may be legit, and a tablet PC may not even help with that (can still surf the web, etc), but IMO a tablet PC is a superior solution to pen and paper, and nothing stops students from drawing or scribbling.
I used my laptop all through college.
My 2 reasons for doing this were eye contact and the ability to listen and analyze. When I was taking notes I would fold the screen down flat and not take my eyes off of the professor and the board and I believe this led to a better relationship with the professors. A relationship that benefited me greatly.
Also, I did like she said, I took down her words verbatim because it was easy enough to just type what they were saying. But, unlike taking written notes, I could really listen to the content of the class because I didn't have to be constantly trying to figure out what to write down and what not to, since I couldn't write it all down fast enough.
I'm sure there are students that are hurt by laptops but, honestly, I think she'd do just as well to encourage proper classroom use of them.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
In the College where I work, the students do not pay one single dime towards the professor's salaries. Professors are paid either directly through grants they receive or by the college from overhead taken from the grants other people receive. This is true for most of the colleges at this University.
For the "liberal arts" that don't have grants, the salaries are paid by the state from tax dollars. The students pay a very small part of the cost of their education.
If the professor cannot be bothered to impart the information in such a way as to make his students learn it as well as possible, then perhaps he should find another job. He is, after all, a teacher being paid to teach, not a wise man imparting his pearls of wisdom in the form of incomprehensible riddels out of the goodness of his heart.
Actually he's paid to do research and asked to teach on the side.
He is, after all, a teacher being paid to teach, not a wise man imparting his pearls of wisdom in the form of incomprehensible riddels out of the goodness of his heart.
I don't know what University you went to, but in mine the professors are there to do research, write papers and get published.
Teaching is an afterthought. This is how the University gets their income to do the above.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
I am a 3L at that same school.
1) many people who signed that petition were falsely told it was re: a proposed policy to ban laptops altogether
2) the students in the 1L class have been communicating in groups during class. Dozens of students at once would turn to look at some other student, or laugh at an IM'd joke.
3) students were sending each other the needed answers DURING class; law school class is not supposed to be a collaborative effort.
It's also not mentioned in the article that by far the majority of students at Cecil C. are embarrassed that these 1L's are such whiny lightweights.
Personally, I find it MUCH easier to go through paper notes than scroll down a word document. It's way easier and faster to go back and forth between pages, reference other documents at the same time, make marginal notes, etc. When using reference texts, that physical book is much easier to use and somehow more personal. I frequently have three or four books open and stacked on each other; the indexes are available with a flip, and you can instantly get several different slants on a topic. Works for me.
Great points. In my business classes (I'm an MBA student at 37) there have been a couple of students that have tried to use laptops, and they're so busy interacting with that stupid box, trying to capture everything into word or powerpoint, trying to annotate the instructor's ppt slides, that they do not have any spare cycles to interact with the rest of the class. It is like they are physically there but mentally they are not present. In fact their grades and work were some of the worst in the class. They forfeited their in-class participation grades, and they didn't learn/retain anything from the discusssions that they missed out on (but were physically present for.) Eventually they got weeded out!
I taught at a local college as an adjunct prof from 1984-2001 before state budget cutbacks terminated all of the adjunct faculty. I taught in a "computer lab" environment; everyone sat in front of their own computer.
During the 1980's and early 1990's, very few students tried to use their computers for note-taking (on floppy disk). After the advent of the Internet, I noticed more and more computer use; once instant messaging gained a foothold, I noticed a lot more. I finally requested that all computers be turned off during the lecture/class discussion portion of class.
Try it sometime; it is very difficult to teach/talk with/discuss with a group of people who are doing something else. Some part is psychological; not being able to make eye contact with most of your "listeners" is not conducive to good teaching. When fifty people are typing, it's noisy, too.
I also noted that students who were on their computers become disinhibited from the standpoint of no longer being polite or participative listeners. Some students even tried "quietly" printing out their notes in the last ten minutes of class! Or laughing or talking to themselves as they answered an instant message.
As a teacher, I always got high marks from my students when it came time for them to evaluate my performance. I never heard a complaint about being asked to keep computers off.
If the only thing I had at the end of a 50-minute class was a memory of what was said, I am certain that I --personally -- will remember less than if I had the opportunity to write notes during the class.
Specifically, writing what I think is important helps me remember the key points visually, plus I believe there is a benefit in the note-taking itself -- a kinetic engagement of the new material, if you will -- especially if it's not strictly words but includes a few diagrams/pictures.
The book Multimedia Learning by Richard E. Mayer (links to Amazon.com) includes scientific evidence proving that most people learning more if they engage multiple senses (e.g. hearing and sight) while learning. (Interestingly, he also shows that we tend to learn less if the visual part of the learning is simply to read word-for-word what the lecturer is saying. E.g. any speaker who reads his PowerPoint slides to you word for word is actually diminishing what you might have gained from the presentation.)
You may like extra insight, as I happened to call this nice lady.
/. comments to her as part of a fake interview) that laptops are not only a distraction, but they cause people to not think critically, nor do laptops help people learn how to condense information on the fly, since they do indeed try to type every damned word. As an estimate we both agreed upon, roughly three out of every eight words need to be noted in her class in order to have a rudimentary understanding of the subject which can be easily refined many orders over with two or three simple questions. Her POV is that these laptops are robbing her students of the ability to think for themselves, which, in essence, is the main idea behind college - from K-12 you're just taught the basics, then with college, you learn not only a useful trade, but also how to think for yourself and filter out useless information at a whim, and improve your life.
As of now, she currently thinks (due to me relaying
And though I disagree with laptops being a distraction in the class (as long as sounds are turned off and students aren't having to deal with system crashes) I have to agree with her standpoint. How about the rest of you stop calling her a luddite or anti-luddite and USE YOUR RATIONAL MIND instead of this huge knee-jerk reaction I see happening here? After all, I'm only a high-school dropout, and I've gotten a FAR better perspective on this than the rest of you have. You're just sitting around discussing probabilities and what-ifs when you could just as easily find the source AND ASK HER FOR YOURSELF! She's not being bothered by the media, infact, she's surprised USA picked up on it. This hasn't even hit OUR (Memphis) local news.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Half my class was busy playing online games or IM each other or other friends.
It proved too distracting to us who wanted to actually learn something.
Lapotops are useless in linguistics because it's a thinking class.
My professor sent us all an email and verbally told us:
Pen & paper and a brain are required for class. Leave the laptop at home please.
After a month, I'd say it was a big change. More class input and greater involvement in the lectures and seminars. By the end no one cared about laptops.
I found the noise fromt he keyboards really annoying so I welcomed this move.