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U. of Chicago Law School Blocks Internet Access
Scott Jaschik writes "While some individual professors have banned laptops from classes at various colleges, the University of Chicago law school is going further, cutting off wireless and wired access in its classrooms to confront what officials see as out-of-control Web surfing. The story was first reported in the Above The Law 'legal tabloid' late last month. Students and the university's CIO question the strategy." Things will get interesting when Sprint WiMax service lights up in Chicago later this year.
Let me tell you, they couldn't have made this move any sooner. Some of the law students were having 'independent' thoughts about how the United States legal system should be corrected and it was just causing mass chaos in the classrooms. One student kept reading things online like People Before Lawyers and began voicing concerns about the plaintiffs and defendants (you know, the actual humans involved) in certain cases. Let's just say that individual had to stay back a few years after having to repeat the class Soul Removal 101 and begin the process over. It was very ugly I think they were only eligible to be a para-legal after that incident.
The "internet" (or "anarchist-net" as we've dubbed it here) is nothing more than a distraction for students and could never ever possibly be used for learning. I suppose next citizens will want every single state and federal law posted on there so they can try to interpret it themselves! Not on my watch, we here at U of Chicago produce no fewer than 50,000 lawyers a year and we will see you in court if you try to circumvent the United State's legal system's need for them (Sprint, we're watching you!).
My work here is dung.
I can understand banning net access, that is often a temptation during a lecture.
Am I supposed to go back to WRITING my notes? This is 2008 for fuck's sake.
Blar.
If you spend all your class time surfing the web, you should fail.
If your students are able to pass without paying any attention to you, you must not teach very much in your lectures. And if you don't teach anything, well, why should they pay attention?
To the University of Californy. I hear they still have some internets there.
One would think that an institution of higher education, particularly one dedicated to post-graduate studies, would be able to trust its students to know what was good for them.
If they spend too much lecture time on the intarblags, it will be reflected in their grades.
This isn't high school, it's college . The people there are paying good money to be there (well, at least their parents are...). If a student wants to cheat himself of the maximum benefit of a very costly education bu dicking around on the Web during lectures, that should be his lookout. As long as they're not bothering other students, I don't see how this is an issue.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
University of Pheonix follows suit.
That said, overall I don't have a problem with students wasting their tuition money (or their parents' tuition money) by browsing the internet in class all day. But this isn't some power grab to squelch independent thinking. These students are free to browse the internet in their dorms, or the library, or the dining halls, etc. It might be poorly thought out, but I think people (or at least you) are freaking out over nothing.
I can appreciate the reason they're taking such extreme measures, but wouldn't it be better for everybody if they just let the people goofing off in class fail?
I always assumed that once you hit college the hand-holding by instructors was supposed to stop.
Maybe they could use group projects to fix the problem. I know in my college classes I was a righteous dick to any group members who just goofed off on the Internet rather than contributing towards the project.
I loved my system analysis and design class where we could 'fire' group members for poor performance (and trust me, people did.)
I think if I didn't have internet access in my law school classes my GPA would have definitely been a little higher.
Why would the school or university care if their students are wasting their own time and money by surfing the web in class?
I graduated before the age of ubiquitous laptops and wi-fi, so this wasn't a problem. Even still we had our distractions and it probably irked certain professors to know that they didn't have the rapt attention of every single person in the room. Generally speaking though, we were left alone as long as our snoring didn't disturb others.
I wonder if these profs take a roll call before every lecture. Does the school have truant officers on staff to keep these law students on the straight-and-narrow?
The right solution is, IMO, to simply ban laptops from being open during lectures. It sends the same message as people using laptops during meetings basically: if you can't be arsed to even pay attention (to the lecture, or the meeting), why are you there in the first place. For meetings it may be the case that you are basically "forced" to attend, however this is seldom the case for lectures (at least at my university).
So I fully understand lecturers who urge (or force) people to make a conscious decision *either* to stay in the lecture room and (at the very least pretend to) pay attention, or if you don't feel like paying attention, want to browse the internet, or absolutely *have* to chat with your neighbour about the previous weekend, can you please just go to the lunchroom next door, thank you so much and don't let the door hit you on the way out. Because it's not like anybody is *forcing* you to be there. If you think you'll do fine by reading the lecture sheets and/or the book, you're free to do so (and in many cases that's perfectly possible, too).
If you want to take notes during the lecture (the excuse everyone uses), paper still works just fine, as it has for ages.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
At my law school, students would sometimes view porn on their computers during class--this was very distracting in the tiered rooms, where about 15 students behind the "perpetrator" could see what was happening. It wasn't common but I sometimes heard complaints that "so-and-so would look at porn to try to distract everyone behind him." I imagine it didn't help his own scores either, though. Other students would sometimes send crazy stuff over email during class in order to embarass the person or distract him. Chatting, of course, was rampant during class--that may have been a bit distracting. For example, the teacher will have been silent, and there's nothing to take notes on at the moment, and you hear several people typing like crazy and snickering oblivious to their surroundings--more annoying when that person's right next to you.
Sadly, after the grades came out, it seemed that chatting and porn viewership had a low correlation with scores. (i.e. I actually took notes but was middle of the road for grades)
The problem is that U of C is one of the most respected law schools in the nation. The administrators can do whatever they want--the school has, like, a 5% acceptance rate.
I'm a 3L at Northeastern, and they never used to allow internet access in the classrooms. Access points were carefully spaced so that they wouldn't reach the classrooms. Then this year, the University finally came to the law school and said "No. You have to have 100% wireless access throughout the entire school." Basically, the University strong-armed the school into 100% wireless because they wanted to be able to brag to US News /etc that the entire University was 100% wireless.
The result? Well, I'm sitting in class right now, so you take your pick.
-Daniel
Doesn't the law school know that some of of the 20 somethings today can die without a constant net connection? FFS, you could at least try scaling them back to handhelds first!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
As much as an internet junkie as I am, I don't think the classroom (in general) is the place for it, any more than talking on a cell phone, or cooking a meal would be appropriate. It's a place where you're supposed to pay attention and take part in a discussion, not check your facebook constantly. If you don't want to go to the lecture, don't; get someone else's notes, read the text, or whatever. But if I'm a prof (and I was, part time, awhile back) I'm not going to waste my time interacting with a class that is doing something else at the time.
And it's not just people doing other things. I did a couple of seminars on Java in its early days, at a progressive local university, that had internet (wired) at every seat. Only a couple of people were using it, but it's awfully hard to get across concepts when people are constantly googling what you say and trying to point out problems or sound smart before you finish getting a point across.
A lot of the time in teaching, you have to start with generalizations to get the general concept across, some of which aren't 100% correct, technically; then you delve into the details clarifying those points. (As a broad example in another field, teaching newtonian physics as a basis for relativistic stuff.) One smartass with Google/Wiki can ruin that process for the whole class.
(On the other hand, those who are genuinely curious about something that is said and want to take a quick detour, I could support; but like most liberties, where there's a tendency towards abuse, you sometimes have reduced those liberties in certain agreed upon circumstances. It's similar to the cell phones on planes arguments. There are those that would use it respectfully, moderately, and quietly; but there would typically be a more noticable inconsiderate contingent that would just drive everyone nuts.)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
They've already paid. What they do during lectures is there business. Plenty of people--in general--can pass classes without paying attention. Many people just go for the wittle piece 'o paper saying that they do indeed know the material, despite already being well versed in it.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Surfing the internet during class is one of the more benign uses of a laptop. Besides actually interrupting class, having someone with a full-screen SNES emulator playing a flashy RPG in front of you so you can see their screen is way more egregious. Seeing someone watch a movie during lecture is also
If my boss tells me to do something a certain way, despite my explanations, I can do it or be fired. There are always other programmers waiting to take my place and toe the line.
Politicians almost seem to have a union mentality. They look out for their class first, then do their job second. You fire one politician, your only choice for replacement are generally more people with the same attitudes.
Maybe we need MORE politicians, so some can be out of work, and hungry for employment, and will actually obey their bosses (We the people.)
Just a thought...
Blar.
from inside my classroom.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I teach courses in literature, most frequently poetry, at a major Southern university.
This semester I've been trying to decide how to deal with students texting in class and with students who use laptops recreationally in class. I haven't come up with an ideal solution, but I'm leaning toward banning cellphones. The laptop thing is harder; many students use them to take notes and for reference, which is laudable. I think I might tell students using laptops to be prepared to e-mail me notes on demand at the end of class so that I'll know who's using a laptop to take notes and who's goofing off.
So that's background. I'm posting in response to some ideas from the student perspective that I see repeated here.
Several posters say that students are capable of multi-tasking. This is true, but research indicates that you're not capable of doing anything well nor of retaining it when you multi-task.
Several posters suggest that they should be allowed to be the judge of what's worthwhile. I'm all for agency, but if you decide to tune out, you might miss something that would interest you. Furthermore, some material isn't so exciting, and though a teacher should attempt to generate interest, some students expectations are unreasonably high when it comes to the entertainment value of literature. Maybe, too, it would be well to look on a lecture as a form of work.
A few people say they can pass without paying attention in lectures. That is probably true. I often find myself dumbing down my lectures, assignments, and exams so that students who have tuned out during class can pass. If I fail too many students, my enrollments go down, my evaluations suffer, and I may even lose my job, as I am on one-year contracts and get rehired based on student evaluations. If I do that, for fear of my job, the content of the course suffers.
Finally, a few people here say lectures are outdated and that content should be online. What about procrastination; would students just shrug off all this content until finals? What about dialog; will all exchange in your life take place via chat? What about seeing others modelling an interest in material only understood or valued by a minority? Do you want to give those faculty who are already distant from students one more excuse to tune you out completely?
I guess I'll conclude by saying that the small minority of students who text in class or play on their laptops in class are the worse students in my class. They waste a lot of my time asking me about things covered in class or begging for favors and special attention. And they tend to earn poor grades. I wouldn't want to be their boss and certainly not one of their fellow employees. Though as their boss, I could fire the lot of them, and that would be very gratifying.
As a professor I just don't see the issue. It's stupidly egoistic to think that what I have to say is soooooo important that if every student doesn't listen to me then they're missing out. If the student can surf all class whilst still doing well in the class, then good for them. More likely than not though, the more general it is becoming for students to do this, the more likely the average student will become below-average. But this isn't my problem. If student's want to do poorly by not paying attention, that's their issue, not mine. The only time this is an issue is when the student is being disruptive to students who are trying to pay attention. Short of that, let them waste their time and money in showing up.
In my experience, being a 2L at a top-ten law school, the reason you're closer to the median on final exams is BECAUSE you're dumping "as much black letter law onto the page as possible." That's what I tried to do my first year, and it didn't end well. This year, I've been focusing much more on analysis, and I did much better, grade-wise.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.