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Professors Banning Laptops In the Lecture Hall
Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that professors have banned laptops from their classrooms at George Washington University, American University, the College of William and Mary, and the University of Virginia, among many others, compelling students to take notes the way their parents did: on paper. A generation ago, academia embraced the laptop as the most welcome classroom innovation since the ballpoint pen, but during the past decade it has evolved into a powerful distraction as wireless Internet connections tempt students away from note-typing to e-mail, blogs, YouTube videos, sports scores, even online gaming. Even when used as glorified typewriters, laptops can turn students into witless stenographers, typing a lecture verbatim without listening or understanding. 'The breaking point for me was when I asked a student to comment on an issue, and he said, "Wait a minute, I want to open my computer,"' says David Goldfrank, a Georgetown history professor. 'And I told him, "I don't want to know what's in your computer. I want to know what's in your head."' Some students don't agree with the ban. A student wrote in the University of Denver's newspaper: 'The fact that some students misuse technology is no reason to ban it. After all, how many professors ban pens and notebooks after noticing students doodling in the margins?'"
Here's a thought: Instead of banning distractions, be the distraction yourself. For centuries, teachers have been competing with distractions, including daydreamers and sleepers. Laptops and the Internet are just more things to compete with. Instead, make your lectures interesting. Vary the tone of your voice, provide practical examples, and stay away from the temptation to just stand there and talk. Yes, you're a professor. Yes, students are paying to hear your ideas. No, they are not paying to just hear your voice.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I don't know about you, but myself and a few of my friends found that even though it seemed like both ways of taking notes would trigger the witless stenographer, writing by hand actually locked the information in, while computer note-taking meant you remembered little or none of it. Maybe it's just the time lag involved; in order to keep up while taking notes by hand, you have to buffer the information, reformat it to be shorter or faster to write, then commit it to paper (yes, I was a CS major, and it infects my description of non-CS related things). If you can type at the same speed the professor is providing the information, you're not forced to look for shortcuts, so you don't do any interpretation.
Of course, the other problem is the incessant keyboard clacking. They may simply be trying to reduce the "auditory clutter" in the room. If not for loud keyboards, I couldn't care less if other students are using a computer to take notes; if I'm right and the computer is a less effective tool, that hurts them, not me.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
I'm in a band and the one thing that really makes it hard to play well, or at least enjoy playing the show, is an unresponsive crowd.
I could be totally off base here, but I'm guessing that the prof's need feedback too. If they see every face in the classroom looking emotionless at their laptops, the prof's have no idea if anyone is listening at all. Obviously it's the students' money to burn etc. etc. But it would probably make it hell to teach a class to essentially nobody.
I've been going back to school to get a Master's at night. It's pretty annoying that the classroom is full of kids watching TV or movies on their laptops. While I do what I can to sit near the front so that I don't have any video playing on a screen in front of me, it's not always possible. I have to leave work to get to class, so I can't just show up early enough to get in front of the TV watching idiots.
From a purely anecdotal perspective, I'd say 60-70% of laptops in the college classroom are being used for entertainment, not note taking. At the very least, I'd like to see them confined to the back few rows of the room.
Agree, for any HARD class. E.g., upper-level undergrad and grad-level theoretic courses in your (engineering)department/major. You scribble every last greek character in every equation from the board, in a desperate attempt to try to get down every jot of information (also verbal explanations). You read over your notes later to 'unpack' and store the knowledge, because you were writing so fast you were only using the short-short-term buffer of memory. Before the exam, you recopy your notes neatly, and then you magically can reproduce any arcane derivation on demand. And then again, years later, in preparation for the comprehensive exam.
I completely agree. So far the comments here are very much what I would expect. 'Let everyone learn in their own style,' 'The Professor is an egotistical twit,' 'It's the teacher's fault for not being enthralling enough,' etc.
When it comes down to it, this isn't high school anymore and many of the topics you learn in college are NOT FUN TO LEARN. They are boring as hell, but incredibly useful. That coupled with the fact that most of the time you are half asleep and would die for something else to do and allowing a distraction like a laptop or even a cell phone becomes a really horrible idea.
Given the option of learning about international trade routes during the 18th century or playing Unreal with my slacker friends back in the dorm and it would have been an easy choice. The kicker here is that I *loved* the class, but hated that part, regardless of how important it was to the overall class.
Allowing me the option to fully tune out would have been a mistake, regardless of how much of a blessing it would have been at the time.
I just don't get... eh, ugh... never mind. This post wasn't worth the research I put into it.
I see a lot of people commenting on how fast they need to type/write in order to take notes. I find this a little odd, because if you're taking down more information than you can easily handwrite, you're probably not taking notes properly in the first place.
The point of taking notes is to compress the information into a salient outline structure and then insert only the most important information. Just copying, verbatim, what a professor says isn't, in any real sense, "note taking". Note taking implies that you're selectively recording the parts of what the professor is saying that are most important. Just copying down everything is something else entirely, and is dreadfully inefficient, first because you can easily get the jist of what someone says without recording their exact wording, and second because it makes reviewing the notes mostly a waste of time.
I'm also a prof, and here's my take on it... I give lectures in a couple of different majors. The CS students all bring their laptops, the business students never do, and there are some some classes in between.
First off, I do not require attendance. In fact, I usually explicitly say: "if you want to read your email, play games, etc, please do not come to class". If you're in my class, I want you there because you intend to pay attention to the lecture.
Alarindris (in an earlier post) made a really good point: to make a lecture interesting, you need to be able to interact with the class. If everyone is heads down in their laptops, and asking them a question causes them to look up with an expression of "huh? what's going on?" - well, there is just no way to make the lecture work. Over the years, I have had a couple of groups like this - it is really, really awful.
Regarding note-taking: I have never seen a student take notes on a computer. Mostly they load up the slides I've provided (which contain some, but not nearly all of the content). What goes up on the board is developed interactively with the class, and inevitably involves pictures and diagrams - there is just no reasonable way to take notes like that on the computer.
A few students complain that I don't provide complete material to download - thus making note taking unnecessary. These are the same students who expect to be handed an "A" on the final, without actually having to study or do anything difficult. The point of a lecture is for the professor to ensure that the students understand a topic. The material presented changes based on feedback from the class. "Is that clear, or do we need another example here?" If another example, or an alternative explanation is needed, you make one up on the spot. You go faster or slower, show more or less detail, use fewer or more examples based on the students' comprehension of what you are talking about.
If you find yourself talking to the tops of everyone's heads, you have no source of feedback. Did they understand? Are they even listening? One poster on this thread said that it's the prof's own fault if the students aren't interested. The other side is: if the students don't give any feedback, the lecture is guaranteed to be boring - because there is no way to tailor the presentation to the audience.
If you have a really horrible prof (yes, I know some of those), don't take the class. If you have to take the class, save yourself the boredom and don't go to lectures. If attendance is required, life's a bitch, deal with it. Consider it practice for those really exciting business meetings you'll be attending throughout your professional life: if you don't pay attention when the boss is talking, you'll be walking.
All of which is a long way of saying: laptops in lectures are really pretty useless for the students. I wouldn't bother to ban them - too much fuss - but I can and do ban any sort of distracting activities.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.