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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."'"
I'd call her a free thinker. We need more of them in the world.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Requiring students to actually show up to class?
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing
Oh, I'm sure they were thinking and analyzing, but more likely about how to win the current game of Minesweeper or Solitaire.
People should just take audio recordings of lectures instead. Then you can automate transcription. If you record video or snapshots of the white/black board then you're really covered. At that point, you can fully involve yourself with the lecture, without having to worry about the risk of failing to record something you'll need to pass the final. Every school should encourage this.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Since Students were not making eye contact while taking notes, she emailed them again, stating pencils and pens are now banned also.
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
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.
Why didn't the Prof mandate voice recorders, if that was really the concern?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I've taught a number of classes at university level, and I hate people note taking with laptops, for the following reasons:
i) Too few of them are good enough typists to focus on whats being said properly.
ii) It's almost impossible for them to copy down diagrams or any complex equations, or make decent marginal notes.
iii) It's much noisier than pen and paper, and paper is easier to highlight and annotate.
iv) They remember the content better if they make pencil notes, and type them up later.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Often students seem to believe that lecture time is when the professor Speaks and the students are supposed to Remember. I'd guess this is due to poor teaching methods in public high schools, where there is a focus on rote.
Ideally the purpose of class time is for the professor to lead the students to understanding. The book has the facts and figures and whatnot, but for many students just reading the book doesn't make things click. Every group of students will need to be led to understanding a slightly different way, and class time with the professor is a chance for that to happen. It's supposed to be a session of brain activity, not mere transcription.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
"My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing,"
My past experience is that "trying to transcribe every word rather than thinking and analyzing" is exactly what most teachers want.
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.
I totally agree with this professor. When I teach I often feel like I am in a room full of stenographers. It's a distraction to me, and definitely is not the kind of interaction I want to have with a student. It's also counterproductive in my opinion since the best way to really remember something is to process it at the deepest level you can - think about it, connect it with other thoughts and knowledge, etc. That cannot happen when one is focused on the low level aspects of the information, e.g. translating the sounds into written text. The visual barrier the laptop screen forms is also a problem. Not only does it prevent me from seeing the student's reactions, but it's hard to compete with all that light for a student's visual attention.
To counteract this I try and provide as much material as I can - lecture slides available on line before class for example, so they don't feel there is a ton of information that will be lost if it isn't written down immediately. This improves classes immensely.
I agree with her that students should be spending their time thinking about what she's saying, but writing notes on paper doesn't facilitate that any more than laptops do. My favourite lecturer at university gave us printed notes for every lecture, precisely so we didn't have to write anything down, and could focus on thinking about the subject. I did great in that class, and to this day I don't understand why many lecturers still insist on making people take notes instead of following suit.
Oh no... it's the future.
I don't take notes, never have since high school, so I found that all I do in class is use wireless. Finally had to stop taking my laptop to class so I'd at least pay attention.
The professor announced that his next step was to ban all the paper and pencils in the class.
"My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing, The notebooks interfere with making eye contact. You've got this picket fence between you and the students. Even since paper and writing was invented teaching has been hindered. I propose that we abolish the alphabet once and for all"
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)
Contrary to what the media and Bill Gates or Steve Jobs would like you to believe, sometimes technology in the classroom can be a distraction.
I graduated just a year ago from a decent size University (10,000 students) and since I was getting a Computer Science degree I saw laptops in use in a lot of my classes. I'd say that 50% of the time people were playing video games of some sort or another, playing FreeCell or Solitaire, watching DVDs and generally using the laptop to do anything *but* take notes. This in turn distracted everyone else around them as they focused on whatever the person on the laptop was screwing around doing instead of on class.
I'll be honest, some of these classes were boring and I was occasionally envious of the people with laptops, but when I went to do homework or study for a test, I actually had some notes since with just pen and paper there is not a lot you can do to amuse yourself unless you have a really active imagination or like doing the box game or playing Tic-Tac-Toe for hours on end.
Now, some will say "but not everyone will use the laptop to screw around", and that's not my point. The point is, SOMEONE will, and that will distract everyone else. I've seen it happen and anyone claiming that it doesn't happen is lying.
So basically, I applaud her move and think that not every class should allow laptops in the classroom as sometimes technology is more of a hindrance than a help.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
I've had professors that don't like laptops, and probably a few that have stated no laptops in their syllabi. Why didn't they make the news? I'm in the middle of a class right now (although a 10 minute break), and I can say that this is more distracting then it is useful during a lecture. I typically only use it for notes (except for really boring classes), but I rarely see anyone just using a laptop for just notes, if at all..... If she was saying "blah blah, you can't come in the room with a laptop in your bag. if you do, you are not allowed in class" I could see why this is a story, but this is stupid. Teacher likes students paying attention. Now I will return to class due to the professors glare...
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
My previous employer was a University that was about to go "mobile" by requiring every student to have a laptop.
After a few tests and faculty round-tables, it was decided that the models that will be provided at steep discounts to students will be tablets just because of the "picket fence" effect that is mentioned in the article.
Furthermore, tablets encourage the use of a stylus which means that (many?) students will still be taking notes by writing and analysing instead of typing.
1. people spending time on slashdot and blogs instead of paying attention. ...
2. people spending time on email and IM instead of paying attention.
3.
4. profit!
Seriously, though, since most courses are podcast nowadays and have the slides presentation on the web, students having to not use their laptops is not a serious problem, especially since many classrooms at university/college are wired.
Well, at least they are here. We even use these clicker things where you answer multiple choice so the prof can see if the students grok what's being taught, or should spend more time on an area. Much more fun than a pop quiz.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The best thing I ever did in College was buy subscriptions to the lecture notes for my classes that offered them. At UC San Diego, a student who had taken the class before (and got an A) would attend class and take notes. These notes were cleaned up and made available each week. I could take cursory notes of what I thought was important and fill in the rest with the lecture notes from someone who already understood the material.
Unfortunately, some professors did not want the service in their classroom since they thought students would skip class. These were usually the same professors who got upset that the entire class was busy scribbling away writing verbatim notes. I found that the lecture notes were not a replacement for going to class. Often the class time had more participation and discussion that was as important as the notes.
--Keith
Back in 1996 I was one of the rare students that actually owned a laptop computer. Good old Compaq P133 with a whopping 24MB of RAM. w00t!
:\
I got in trouble though. You see, at least 3 of my profs wanted us to not only keep notebooks, but turn those notebooks in at intervals for review. WTF?
So...I saved them all was word documents, and turned them in as a zip file. The profs were note amused.
They wanted sprial-bound notebook and handwriting. How could I prove my notes were my own otherwise?
I had to take it to the school's administration and finally they accepted my notes...begrudgingly. I wound up failing one of the classes however because my notes were not..."lengthy" enough? It seems that despite I type faster than I can handwrite (and I can actually ready my typing later!), my notes seemed shorter and smaller because well, they WERE smaller. I was using a variable-width font, about 10 point to be exact. I was so mad. I told her to count letters or words if she must to compare against other students, but to no avail. I think more than anything she wanted to make an example out of me.
Seems I was actually just way ahead of the curve and getting bushwhacked for it.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
...which I assume is the vast majority of readers on slashdot...
First year law classes aren't computer science lectures where everyone sits passively and takes notes. Law Professors practice the socratic method. Which means that the professor calls on a student and asks that student a question. If the student answers correctly, then the professor asks another question. Then the professor asks a question which he knows the student can't answer. Then the professor yells at the student and asks why he is a moron. Then the professor takes the case book and beats the crap out of the student with it. A notebook computer doesn't fit into this routine.
I'm exaggerating slightly, but thats what a lot of first year law students go through.
I think that she teaches first year civil procedure. This is a very hard class that covers the mechanics of filing a law suit. It is very tricky and nuanced and even experienced lawyers don't understand it fully. Since she co-wrote a treatise about Tennessee Civil Procedure it is not surprising that according to Ratemyprofessors.com, Prof. Entman "expects you to be able to recall every detail from every footnote from every case you ever read." Yikes!
Interestingly, Prof. Entman was a social studies teacher in the late 60s and early 70s for 7 years before going into the law. I imagine that notebook computers don't fit into her conception of a learning environment.
I normally wouldn't care what a student uses to take notes, but laptops are a huge distraction for the rest of the class. The constant clicking, the screen glow, the guy surfing Slashdot in front of you on the school's wireless network. If you really want annoying, these same students will stand up and snap images of the whiteboard with their cellphones because they can't figure out how to draw the diagrams on their laptop.
So here I sit, quietly, with my 99 cent Meade folder, 30 cent pencil, and a dollar's worth of notebook paper, taking far more detailed and accurate notes than anyone with a $2000 laptop. What these law students need to learn is that sometimes the most technologically advanced solution is not always the best solution. And cheers to the professor for realizing this.
X
What I've learned over my 4 years in college was that if the professor is good, and actually adds value to what they're teaching, students will come, and students will pay attention. Sure, there will be a couple that won't, but a majority of students want to get the most value out of their educational dollar. If a professor wastes everyone's time (Are you hearing this, professors Mitra / LaMont / Chang?), then they'll have to resort to attendance checks and other stuff like that so they can fool themselves into thinking that they're actually teaching. This seems an awfully lot like she's one of those professors, trying desperatly to get students to pay attention.
I graduated college before laptops were commonplace. In fact, I don't remember anyone bringing them to class (1990-1994). But man, I wish I had one at the time. I was often in a position where so much information was being delivered, and I was writing so fast, I couldn't always read my own handwriting. Beyond which, it could be painful.
I hear these responses about how they're distracting or how people don't pay attention, or the professor's ludicrous ideas about how students merely transcribe what he is saying, rather than "thinking" or "analyzing."
When I sat in class, people did crossword puzzles, read the campus paper, magazines, snacked, whatever. The other students were busy furiously scribbling down into notebooks what the professor was saying, and since you can't write nearly as fast as you can type, it was doubly exhausting and doubly attention-killing.
If you get distracted by someone's laptop, maybe you should just quit college altogether. I don't understand this idea that it's anyone's fault or responsibility but *yours* as to whether you pay attention or not. College students had better get a grip on technology and its appropriate place in life fast, because it's going to be the same challenge after college when you're in an office full of computers and other distractions and things are far more tedious and boring than most college classes are.
I've never understood why professors take attendance. If you can pass the class without showing up, that says a lot about the professor, frankly. If you fail because you don't show up, you own that too. I had great professors and I had crap ones. I was able to get an A in a class I showed up to three classes for the whole semester, Shakespeare 350 in a huge cavernous lecture hall. Did I miss out on something? It's 14 years later and I really don't think so. I read the plays - to my surprise I enjoyed them - and understood them. On a few occasions I went to the library to look at some discussions of parts I didn't understand. That was all it took.
In the end, you're paying for it anyway.
Professors are *really* idealistic if they think that class is about thinking and analyzing. Class is about grades. It's about graduating with a good GPA and being able to out-compete your fellow students for jobs. On the way, if you're lucky, and you have good professors and are in a curriculum you love, maybe you'll have some insights and epiphanies. I certainly did (mostly in history classes), but let's not kid ourselves. 99% of what I've learned I've learned in my spare time, reading what I wanted to read, because I was interested in it, not because I had to fill in some bullshit core curriculum requirement in a class I didn't care about then, and don't care about now.
To get the grades, you're going to need to know your stuff. To know the stuff, you're probably going to need good notes. If you have good notes, you'll have time later to reflect on what they mean. Most of the thinking and insight is going to come as you study, not while you're sitting there taking furious notes.
You can take better notes with a laptop. You can format them, clean them up later (and maybe in so doing, read them again and internalize the information therein). Maybe you'll be at the student center doing the cleanup, and you'll have an insight or epiphany with a mouthful of pizza.
Students should be left to their own devices in terms of what technology they use (if any), and whether or not they attend class, and how they learn. Every person is different, for one, and second, because they are paying for it. If typing furiously on a laptop isn't working, they'll know it long before the exam rolls around. Professors have huge egoes; the insight they claim to impart through the classroom experience is *usually* highly overrated (there are certainly exceptions; god bless the ones who can still enthrall).
Beyond which, there is the basic idea of learning how to positively interact with technology. This involves
A teacher with brains and courage.
Kudos to her!
My reason for always carrying my laptop with me is that I have ALL the books and lecture notes in PDF/PPT.
Just by downloading the books from eMule I've saved more than $500 just in this semester, one third of the cost of my laptop. As a bonus I can chat with cute chicks from other faculties during lunch, on the bus during my 20min commute or even at boring classes ^____^
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse"
Proper respect for professors? Grow up? This is university, not preschool.
She's overstepping her bounds, and even if she wasn't her reasoning is flawed. Who's to say students aren't using shorthand and trying to write every word? Who's to say they aren't 'making eye contact' yet daydreaming? If students are typing every word she says, that's up to them, they are paying for it for the right to be there and learn in the way that suits them best.
If she wants to help, how about providing a full and detailed copy of her notes for the class at the beginning of the semester? Then students already have most of what she is going to say, can review it before hand, and can use the class time to ask questions they may have and spawn intelligent discussion. It would be a step forward if that idea were mandated.
She should be attacking the problem. She's attacking the computer, and the computer is just a tool.
I'm wrong and so are you.
...we'd call people like you losers.
Of course, laptops weren't quite as elegant in the early-to-mid 90s and the geekiness factor of toting a laptop with you wherever you went was much higher. However, "the laptop guy" was pretty high up on the "piss of the class list"--probably higher up than the "just doesn't get it and asks too many stupid questions that should be saved for after class guy". Why was "laptop guy" the target of such derision?
* he was being a showoff--"look at the fancy toy I bought courtesy of the Bank of Mum and Dad...too bad for you with your big loans and Kraft Dinner Diet that you can't be elite like me" (remember this was before the age of mandatory laptops for students)
* the laptop screen projected an "attention force field" that caused him to zone out and fall out of the loop...at times this would get bad enough that he became "just doesn't get it" guy.
* the constant clicking on the keyboard annoyed all neighbouring classmates
* his occasional bitching about the prof changing the overhead transparency too quickly, before he could transcribe it into his machine, grew annoying within a few weeks.
Perhaps you're personally a pretty nice guy, but I'd be willing to bet a number of people have quetly labelled you a "laptop loser", and if your professors knew you attitide towards their teaching methods (basically that they couldn't possibly know anything about teaching people) they might be somewhat offended.
There is another problem with "laptop losers" in the classroom...they're becoming "laptop losers" in the boardroom as well. The problem is getting bad enough that laptops are banned from most meetings where I work (for non-presenters only of course since we are still addicted to powerpoint here). So speaking from the corporate perspective I might offer this suggestion: if you plan to have a career outside academia then youd best be putting away your laptop during lectures so you can "learn to learn" effectively in an informational meeting and be a meaningful contributor to discussions when in the boardroom.
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.
were taught in classrooms with NeXT pizza boxes on every student's desk, with a copy of Mathematica. By the time I finished that first year, I knew the material so well that I can still do multi-variable regressions, transforms & D.E., model an E&M problem, and solve for algorithms -- this after I tranfered schools, changed majors, and haven't used most of it in 15 years. Computer's are not easy to integrate into classrooms, and I think there is a valid argument for keeping them out of many hummanity classrooms. But anyone who thinks they can't add massively to an understanding of physics, mathematics, chemistry, etc. just hasn't seen them used correctly.
If a professor is genuinely doing things wrong, then the type of drive you spoke about will indeed be sucessful. Indeed, when I was an undergrad I petitioned to get sweeping policy changes implemented - but the fundamental point here was, the majority of good professors AGREED with me, that the changes were needed.
The school backed me up with this student 100%. You want to know why? Because the kid was a spoiled jackass who deserved to fail a class and learn a lesson about respect. That's not me being pompous, it's me putting a stupid kid in his place.
You know NOTHING about what the student's complaint was. You know nothing about the way I was treated. Yet you assume I was a pompous and self absorbed asshole because I removed a student who not only questioned my authority, but disrupted my classroom and negatively affected the learning experiences of the other twenty people in the room. Be careful when you make assumptions about things you don't know, you might find you come across as the self centered, pompous one.
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
As a student I've run into professors like you. Unfortunately not all of us roll over quite so easily. On the contrary, some of us are quite vocal and will work to make things change our way. I led a petition drive that successfully reverted a policy change implemented mid-semester; similar to this case. I was also an RA at the time and went to bat for several students who were getting pushed over by manipulative professors.
Any sane ombudsman will see right through the "I'm paying your salary" bullshit and side with the professor who threw out a disruptive student. On the other hand, professors who grade people who disagree with them lower (especially in contentious topics) should be roundly smacked around by that same ombudsman. Each case will be different, and just because you've met some awful professors in your day doesn't mean that the gp is one of them.
The teacher is responsible for maintaining a learning environment for everyone in the class. One spoiled child can and should be thrown out of a class in order to restore a decent learning environment for the rest of the class. Even more on-topic, ubiquitous wireless internet means that most students with laptops are not paying attention, but are browsing the web, taking care of personal business, etc. If you aren't participating in the class, take yourself elsewhere. Removing the laptops from the classroom is just about the only way to limit that sort of highly disruptive behavior and actually give other students what they're paying for.
Regards,
Ross
Long story short a vocal student can get what he wants just as easily if not easier than a professor. The whole point of the university system (beyond generating papers and research for more funding) is to educate. If I can't optimally absorb knowlege then there is a problem, and I will make sure damn sure that problem is resolved. Quite honestly, the students don't need your self-centered, self-absorbed pompous self either.
Aww shucks... there are two sides... sometimes teachers can be jackasses, sometimes students can. Big surprise.
The point remains that if a professor finds talking to a roomfull of laptop lids with the odd boop beep to break up the white noise of typing to be unproductive or uninspiring he (or she) should be able to change that. If your little student union wants to "make damn sure that the problem is resolved" then you should be right in there with him (or her) to find some sort of compromise.
Rresolving the problem might be to make the course available on tape, or to have full course notes made available so that laptops aren't needed. Neither side should be allowed to just railroad over the other -- as neither side wins from that. You are paying the professor very good money to lecture you -- ensuring they are in top form should be priority number one. They aren't going to be in top form if they aren't happy with the classroom arrangement.
Student unions are great tools for ensuring universities are responding to the needs of students... unfortunately the people attracted to positions of power in those student unions tend to be power tripping jackasses. Precisely the last sort of people that are really needed there.
Just because I have written down a bunch of notes doesn't mean I understand what I've written, and just because I've written down nothing at all doesn't mean I don't understand what's being taught.
Notes have never done me any good, and I've never taken them. My high-school biology teacher gave me a public dress-down for not taking notes about various Latin-named microscopic organisms. I still didn't take any notes, and got an A- on the test. The teacher apologized to me.
Also, just because I pass a test doesn't mean I understand the material.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
He would lead a discussion of the topic by prompting questions and answers from the students. During the discussion, he would create (on the chalkboard) a running outline of the topics with some details, but not EVERYTHING we talked about. As he wrote on the board, we students wrote in our notebooks, and then went back to the discussion.
I learned more from this method than any other I have used since.
Mr. U., your teaching methods kicked ass!
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
The first time a professor handed out his lecture notes I was amazed, moreso by the fact that it was an obvious but overlooked solution and I'd never seen it before than by his willingness to share.
I always did the same in my ownb classes. Time spent madly scribbling what I write is a simple waste of time, and stops students from paying attention. They always had a reduced version of my slides (whose main point was really to make sure that I didn't skip a planned topic).
hawk
First, I think a teacher has every right to completely control her classroom environment. But I think she's exercising poor judgment here.
Bad note taking habits have nothing to do with the tools you use. Some students take too many notes with paper. Some take too few on a laptop. She's essentially saying that good note taking habits cannot be taught; that sort of defeatism doesn't make her sound like that great of a teacher to me.
Besides, I think she'll be amazed when some of her students manage to avoid thinking about the material even without the assistance of modern gadgetry.
Yet you assume I was a pompous and self absorbed asshole because I removed a student who not only questioned my authority[...]
No, we assume you're a pompous ass, because you believe you have authority. With regards to teaching, you are paid for one purpose, to impart knowledge and to determine the student's grasp of that knowledge.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
In real life, bleating that you did something good 2 months ago isn't going to help you solve the problem you are facing now ! Similarly, more and more exams are using multiple choice systems for the answers. well, I'm sorry, either you know it or you don't. You can take an "educated" guess when the answer is written in front of you - real life isn't like that.
Consequently people are leaving schools thinking that they've learned a few subjects, when all they've done is memorise a few aspects. Utterly useless in the workplace. and it seems to spread into all their other dealings where they are expected to think and evolve solutions. People take a driving test, and then drive that way for the rest of their life, except they get worse as they forget what they learned. The test is to demonstrate a basic and safe understanding of driving. It is the minimum not the be all and end all. But they have the certificate so that's all they ever aspire to.
As for laptops in the classroom, well that is just exacerbating the problem, unless you can touch type without looking at the screen, and are highly skilled at it, then you aren't listening to the tutor at all. The only reason you are taking the "notes" is to cram them the night before the exam. Which means you aren't learning, or understanding, just parroting someone elses thoughts. And then political pressure arises because so many people are so average, that they lower the standards so that people feel better.
And so the cycle goes. It's amusing that the UK govt. is now talking about streaming different ability levels in schools. They're the ones who abolished it in the first place !. No one was allowed to be any better than anyone else, so they all had to take the same courses in the same classes. Now they reap the consequences.
When I did maths at school, calculators were only allowed if you were in the top stream, ie you had demonstrated that you could do it in your head anyway. These days, calculators are required for all pupils. They can't add, subtract, multiply or do division of even simple problems without a gadget to do it for them. That sucks, and they are worse off for it, and so are we.
As another poster pointed out, the govt. doesn't want an educated population, because they might actually realise what's being done to them. It amuses me that all these kids with their degrees are worthless in the real world, but it doesn't matter because they all end up in the "service industry" ie office workers. And they think they're clever. As long as they've got a shiny BMW and the latest TV and HiFi they think they are the dogs bollux. In actual fact the govt. has them by the bollux, because they can't do anything else.
</RANT>
(breathe....)
This is a modern day version of this. The next optimization will be that the teacher will put the entire lecture up on the projector as a powerpoint; scheduled to start at 13:01.
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.
Trying to engage with a classroom where even a small number are "elsewhere", whether reading a paper, IM'ing with friends, checking phone messages, sleeping, etc. is extremely difficult and many times almost impossible.
Don't get me started on cell phones.
Reminding people to mute their laptops each and every time they come to class gets old real fast. And having two or three confrontations about laptop/cell noises per class is it's own serious disruption of the learning environment. Getting it all out of the way on the first day with a "no laptops" rule and a "phone rings, leave the classroom immediately" rule just makes it clear where your priorities are: in the classroom.
Finally, for the few people who actually want to be there and who intend to take notes on a laptop, transcribing written notes into your computer is much more effective than simply typing notes in the first place (assuming you most effectively learn from notes/note taking). If you haven't made this observation so far, consider my classroom an opportunity to test it out for yourself.
On attendance policies, it depends on the subject area. If the class is a discussion-type class, attendance is important and should be part of the grade. On the other hand, if the class can be self-taught (where the lectures are more Q&A sessions), then attendance policies force people who have no desire to be there to attend and be bored, interfering with the students who really want to be there.
Regards,
Ross
As a recent grad I've found that the best way to deal with notetaking in class is for the prof to provide you with their lecture notes. Some only made notes available after the class while others had their full notes available before you even sat down for your first day. While it strongly depends on the subject having notes available frees students from having to copy down notes during class - the professors who did not make notes available often expected you to copy them down from their slides during class - and allowed you to pay attention to the class. Those who didn't often had various reasons for it (more than a few felt that writing down notes during class helped you to learn better... I and my sore writing hand strongly disagreed) but the end result was that after the lecture you typically only remembered what the slides were and relied much more on the professor to write good slides. One memorable class (Biology of the Cancer Cell) didn't have a book and none of the notes were available online. If you missed a few words or didn't make it to class that day you were beyond screwed.
As long as you're concerned with taking down notes you'll never be able to actually take valid, intelligent notes about what the professor is saying. Whether you use a laptop or wear out your hand writing down complete notes on paper the only way to really pay attention to a lecture is to know that you have the freedom to actually listen to the lecture itself for once.
By the time a person reaches college he should be able to pay attention with a couple of minor distractions.
It isn't elementary school anymore where a person can get sent to time out for distracting the other students from story time.
But also by the time a person reaches college he should know that he is paying to listen to a professor, and if that professor wants his classroom a certain way he'll get it.
So this should have nothing to do with the students. If they don't like it then they can take a different class with a different teacher, or just deal with it. It has everything to do with the professor. People with authority can make things how they want them. If you want power over the classroom then become a teacher.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I believe you're a pompous ass because of the way you referred to the event in question - which as you say we know nothing about. Thus, I can only infer your attitude from the "tone" of your discourse.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How do I know? First, my credentials: I went to Princeton, than Harvard for grad school. So I've sat through many a lecture. Then I worked as a business guy at several significant tech companies, so I have tech blood in me. And finally I taught as a professor for several years at a large university-- classes on managing technolgy, in fact. So I have some experience with teaching.
The first day, students (class size = ~40) brought laptops. "No problem," I thought. Then I discovered two things:
So I said "from this moment on, no more laptops: it's distracting, and you're not really paying attention." Everyone closed his laptop, and I never heard another complaint about it.
During my first three years of teaching, I was elected Professor of the Quarter three times and then Professor of the Year. OK, now I'm bragging, but my point is simple: sometimes technology helps, and sometimes it gets in the way. At least for the kind of class I taught-- similar to the give-and-take of a law course-- students quickly understood that it was getting in the way, and were happy to put pen back to paper.
The first time a professor handed out his lecture notes I was amazed, moreso by the fact that it was an obvious but overlooked solution
... (grumble) ... I need a drink (grumble) (mutter) (curse).....
This is common practice in medical schools. A course syllabus with all the lecture notes are given out at the beginning of the semester in most (if not all) medical schools to my knowledge. It's nice, but it's now without its hazards, as some profs sometimes to decide to make exam questions on material they they specifically talk about during class but don't put in the syllabus notes, so you have to be familiar with the material in the syllabus before the lecture so that during class you have to be like "Wait, he said something that wasn't in the course notes, better write that down." It was a hard learned lesson when during my first year, I kept getting burned on exam quesations where I challanged them saying "This topic wasn't in the course notes" and the response was always something like "Well, the professor talked about it for 20 seconds in class 3 weeks ago, so it's a fair question". This particular system always pissed me off, because you'd think that if a topic was important enough to be talked about in class and included on an exam, why the hell isn't it important enough to be in the course notes, espically since 98% of our studying is done from the course notes, espically for classes that were several weeks ago. Oh, it makes me so angry. It's ironic that a school meant to train me in a field that's supposed to be about compassion and understanding is so adept at filling me with ire and rage towards the world. So full of hate
I understand your professor's point, and I think it has a lot of validity.
I had a physics professor, I think it was in a lab class, who used to tell a story about Feynman -- which I can't find any reference to online, so it may be apocryphal, but it made a good story -- that he tought a very small advanced E&M class once, and on the first day of class, when the students were all sitting there, with their notebooks and pencils ready, he walked in and told them to put everything away. No notes, no calculators. The theory being that most of the time when you're struggling to copy down an equation or a diagram off of the board, you're not listening to the lecture, or really thinking about the concepts that are being presented. Given that you're not really going to memorize most of the equations -- they're not really the "take home" knowledge that you retain at the end of the semester, but the concepts are, it's better to pay attention to those. You also end up better prepared for a no-notes test that way. (Although you can argue about the validity of closed-book tests as actual simulators of real-world knowledge.)
My professor (the one who was relating the story) didn't go quite this far, but took a good compromise; he put all his notes and diagrams up on the board before the beginning of class, and gave everyone ten minutes to copy them down before class began. You weren't prohibited from taking notes during the lecture, but it wasn't recommended.
Although I don't want to give that particular aspect of his style all the credit (the guy was also an excellect lecturer as well as being an all-around brilliant physicist), I remember more of the material from that class than I do from anything else I've taken at that level.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I've tried teaching college courses where I made material available to the students ahead of class on a web site. When you do this, there is no incentive for the students to come to class. They think they will do just fine if they download the notes. The exact same thing happens if I post the notes online after the lecture. The problem is, students who skip lectures and just use the online notes miss out on the discussion in class. I've found that the people who rely on the online notes and skip class do worse in a course than the people who make the effort to come to class and pay attention. The people who actually come to lectures are always the ones who do the best in a course. I don't know if having the online notes really helps the best students retain the material or not - the main thing is that these students actually want to learn, and make an effort to do so.
I could provide handouts in class, but if you have a very large class, you often do not have a large enough photocopying budget to hand out copies of each day's lesson. I did try this once for a complicated homework project. I passed out the assignment and then went over a very detailed step-by-step example of how to complete the assignment. Only about half the class sat through the whole thing. Some people left immediately after getting the handouts or about 15 minutes into class. The people who skipped class habitually and just downloaded the notes didn't even bother to come, even though I had posted a notice on the website saying I would go over the project in class. Of course, only the people who listened to the entire lecture actually completed the assignment correctly.
They also thought it was a really cool assignment. The people who didn't listen to the entire example in lecture struggled through it, and complained the homework was too hard when it was due. The only people who actually asked me for help with the assignment outside of class were also people who had been in class when I did the example and were doing just fine - not the people who really needed help.
The really sad thing is, the assignment I gave my college students was originally designed as an exercise for K-12 students. I figured that college students would be able to do it without much trouble, since they should have a stronger math background. I know of people who have done this exact same exercise with talented middle school/high school students. The younger students usually do it correctly, and with less complaining, even though they may ask for a lot of coaching along the way. For some reason, there is a big change in the attitudes of a lot of students towards school and learning over the summer between high school graduation and their first semester of college.
THIS IS A BLOODY OUTRAGE!!!!! HOW DARE SHE?!!?!? How will the students access AIM and facebook during lecture without laptops? Laptops are a VITAL component of the college classroom experience. Good job, professor. Typing makes too much noise anyway
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.
You are paying for the privilige of attending the school. The professors are not your employees.
Professors are usually given (by their actual employer) fairly wide latitude in setting rules for their classrooms. If you do not like it, you can drop the class, complain to the professor and/or the professor's superiors, or drop out of the school.
Sorry, but the "student-as-consumer" model, while popular for admissions and retention discussions, has never been a functional model for classroom interactions.
This is a hard issue to take sides on, as there is equally valid arguments for both.
...and when the camera pans around to the front of the hall we discover that the professor isn't there either! He's left a tape player to deliver his lecture!
One of my first professors in college (teaching an introductory course to software engineering) talked about how people get carried away with technology until it goes too far. He illustrated this point by describing from memory a movie about college life (he couldn't remember the title) which showed a lecture hall full of students. One of the students, however, was absent -- in his/her place was a running tape recorder. The professor teaching the course keeps glancing at the tape recorder, somewhat distracted, as he gives the lecture.
As the movie progresses, we keep coming back to the same lecture course, only each time there are more and more absent students -- each leaving a tape machine to record the lectures. It's like a mundane version of "Invasion of The Body Snatchers."
Finally, in the closing scene, we return to the lecture hall for the last day of the course. We are treated to the ludicrous sight of tape recorders replacing *all* the students in the course! Meanwhile, the professor's voice delivers the final lecture, seemingly unfazed by the fact that there is no one in the hall to listen to him
Just thought I'd throw that in, for what it's worth. (And, no -- I don't know which movie it is).
"All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
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.
Like it or not, a course has a syllabus. This is not an arbitrary set of things the professor wants to get through, it's usually the most important things that you need to get from that class in order to understand the next one. If you fall behind, you're setting yourself up for problems later on.
I've said this many times, but I'm going to keep repeating it. Lecture is not a discussion section. Lecture is a presentation of the material by the professor to the students. It's fine to ask a question there, but if it's too detailed, should have been covered by a prerequisite, or simply delves into something the professor has decided there's not time for in that class, then he has every right to refer you to ask again after class or in recitation or in office hours. He's not denying you the answer, he's just managing his limited class time.
A lecture is fundamentally different from reading a book. First, you typically get a different overall persective on the material since the book was not usually written by the lecturer. Plus, seeing things presented gives a different temporal sense. For me, even if it's the same derivation, seeing it done in real time and hearing the professor talk about the steps makes it a very different experience.
As for your infuriating experience... well, I dunno about yours, but every class I've ever taken made it very clear what the penalty for late work was. If you don't want to suffer that penalty, then turn your damn project in on time. Hell, you turned it in late and still got a passing grade, that seems reasonable. How many other students would have debugged their B-grade programs and handed in working ones if they'd taken an extra day? As a comparative measure, you weren't graded on equal footing because you had extra time.
Welcome to real life. You have deadlines and those need to be met. If you have a real, unforseen hardship that prevents you from getting your work done on time, that's one thing. If not, then learn how to manage your time. It is an inconvenience to the graders to get late work to grade, it's unfair to students who actually respect the deadlines, and it's in your own interest to keep up with the course. If you don't have time to do the work, then either don't take the class or audit it instead. If you don't actually need to do the work to learn the material, then why are you taking the class?
This sense of entitlement among students really bothers me. Yeah, a professor should have respect for his students and do what he can to help them succeed, but respect is a two-way street. If you don't show respect to him in the first place, do you seriously expect that he's going to be interested in interacting with you? Respecting a teacher means paying attention in class, asking questions politely, and doing the homework he assigns, among other things. It doesn't mean whining and threatening him when he enforces his (what sounds to be fair) late homework policy.