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?'"

Comments

False analogy.

[samurphy21]

Doodling with pen and paper doesn't absorb the attention to the same degree as playing Facebook games and chatting with friends via IM.

Re:False analogy.

[Anonymous Coward]

And remember, no margin, no Fermat's Last Theorem!

Re:False analogy.

[dwarfsoft]

Yeah, he should have gone with a car analogy instead...

Re:False analogy.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I believe that this would happen in a slightly different fashion today. "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof that all non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function have a real part of 1/2, but the landing zone of my Macbook's hard drive is too narrow to contain the TeX file."

Re:False analogy.

[theIsovist]

Also, the doodles may also be related to what is actually being taught and may be of use. I have many a drawing of monkeys attached to strings, in trees being shot by a hunter at X angle below. it's a lesson in motion, partially elastic colisions and pendular motion.

Re:False analogy.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Perhaps more importantly, doodling isn't nearly as distracting for those around you as video/gaming/whatever(and yes, I have seen "whatever" to include "porn").

Frankly, it isn't my problem what you are or aren't learning in class. It's either your money, in which case it is your problem; or your parent's money, in which case they can always scream at you or cut you off. If you are going to be doing substantially distracting things in the same class where I am trying to learn, though, you've just made it my problem.

When you take a primate whose visual system has been shaped by millenia of evolution in an environment where every movement in the corner of your eye is either dinner or about to make you dinner, and put them a few rows back in a class full of screens showing moving images, their attention is going to suffer, whether they like it or not.

Re:False analogy.

[mcgrew]

Hell, when I was in college you could SMOKE in class, and they never banned slide rules. I never took notes myself; I can't scribble as fast as the professor can talk, can't read my own scribbling later, and taking notes took my attention away from what the teacher was saying.

If there were diagrams on the blackboard, I'd scribble those down after class, unless they were replicated in the textbook, and if the teacher said "write this down" then I'd write it down.

The instructor's role is to better explain what's in the textbook, and discuss things that weren't in the book. If I was in school today I might use a notebook as a speech recorder (lots of students then used tape), but a notebook ban wouldn't bother me, I can record on my phone as easily as on a notebook.

Do professors still party with their students at after school functions? In a lot of ways you guys have it better than I did, but in a lot of other was we had it better. College was some of the best times of my life. Especially the Mississippi River Festival. Maybe I'll journal about that, it was awesome.

Re:False analogy.

[JustOK]

Apple would only allow proprietary Fermats in the iMargin.

Re:False analogy.

[thestuckmud]

More importantly, doodling may actually improve focus.

Re:False analogy.

[frenchbedroom]

I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter (provided it includes drawings of monkeys and hunters, of course)

Re:False analogy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah: "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, but Twitter 140 chars lolol"

Re:False analogy.

[Ukab the Great]

I'm guessing that when you were in college getting a somewhat less menial job that pays somewhat more than minimum wage didn't depend on having a college degree and the folks who did go to college were actually interested in learning (I don't know this for sure. I wasn't around then).

I think a lot of people today go to class just so they can attain that job-hunting license that offers the prospect of not flipping burgers and eating ramen noodles for 30 years.

Re:False analogy.

[Vanderhoth]

and does not take into account the different degrees with which different people are able to multitask and/or focus.

I think I heard that same argument in a discussion about people being able to drive and text at the same time. Sure they may get away with it indefinitely, but they're still likely to be in or cause a crash.

Same thing here. you might get away with playing Facebook games indefinitely, but you're more likely to or cause someone else to miss an import point

Back in my university days, not so long ago, this was a huge issue for me; I never brought my laptop to class. I found it very distracting when I was sitting behind someone playing WoW and had a very hard time focusing on what was going on. So I started getting to classes earlier so I could sit in the front row. It made seeing the overhead screens harder, but I was able to pay better attention. I feel vindicated because the people who thought they could multitask were always coming to me for notes and/or help, which I decided when and to whom I gave it to.

Score: Computer Science Degree for me, MacDonald's for multitaskers

Re:False analogy.

[MrCrassic]

Remember, these are the same professors who don't understand that boredom is incredibly more powerful than it appears, and that uninspired students will find other ways to zone out of boring lectures.

Re:False analogy.

[GTarrant]

When I taught electrical engineering at the college level, I pointed out to students that, given the cost of tuition, and the class being X units (depending on the class) it meant that each lecture was essentially costing them (or somebody), $Y. And that given it was their $Y to spend, I didn't really care how they spent it, but that as long as they were registered for the class, it was a sunk cost, so I recommended they pay attention or try to get their money's worth the best they could.

But, if they felt it was more worthwhile spending that $Y and skipping the class, I told them that was fine - but don't ask me for a review of the lecture afterwards. I flat-out told them if they were out late the night before and fell asleep in the class, fine (as long as they didn't snore). It was their money they were spending (or someone was spending on them) and they could get value from it, or waste it, as they saw fit.

However, I made it quite clear that I wouldn't allow them the liberty to interfere with other student's spending of that $Y. So I was quite stern with students whose cell phones rang, and while laptops for taking notes were fine (and I didn't care about IM either, hell, I would give students a special IM account I setup to ask questions on homework as due dates crept up), movies, games, things that could easily attract eyes (because the eye is naturally drawn to motion, and bright colors can also be a distraction, it's the way we're wired) were out. Loud discussions were not acceptable - not because of me (after all, I'm paid for the students registered regardless of how many of them show up), but because other students are spending their $Y and they deserve the opportunity to use it to actually see and hear the class they're paying for. It was rarely an issue.

If you treat people like adults, most respond in kind. Furthermore, putting it in the perspective of the money being spent by each student made some students realize why I cared about distractions - it didn't distract me, nor did it affect the money I got, nor the time I spent, but it did affect other students who had spent time and money to be there.

Re:False analogy.

[spxero]

I echo your sentiment. My wife has recently gone back to school (she already has a 4 year degree in "business") to pursue a different career path. She continually comes home from class lamenting at the youth in her class that just don't get it. Not understanding the material is one thing, but not even trying to understand the material and then coming into class at the end of the semester asking for extra credit options is common in her new degree path of Early Childhood Development. In her opinion, they would be better off going and getting a job than wasting everybody's time since they are obviously not there to learn.

When the person who does the assignments, understands the material, and does pretty good on the tests pulls a 105+% in the class, something is wrong.

Re:False analogy.

[NervousWreck]

I call bull on the stereotype. Last time I "consulted" (quotes because he was both friend of a relative and relative of a friend so it was kinda informal) for a physicist it was to set up some of his OS 9 programs to work properly in OSX's classic mode.

Re:False analogy.

[cgenman]

I'm rather shocked to be back in Grad School, and to see that everyone is here (without fail) to change careers. The people in my curriculum have zero experience and zero prior study in the field, they just didn't like the job their undergraduate degree got them. The first year of graduate school feels like a condensed version of a real undergraduate degree, for those people who probably should have read a book on this stuff before deciding to jump on the hot career.

I was expecting to find people who loved the subject. Instead, I find people unified in their hatred of whatever else they're doing.

Re:False analogy.

[BrokenHalo]

Try "liberal arts major".

Err, no. I guess I would have to say I'm now mostly a Mac user (probably 60% of the time, the remainder Linux), and I did a double degree in molecular biology and mathematics.

Re:False analogy.

[rtb61]

The current school generation does have a harder time maintaining focus upon a single subject. I have noticed that notebooks brought into lectures are not always used for taking notes and more often than note are used for, playing games, social networking, working on assignments for other subjects and, doing tutes (about 1 in ten are logged into the school network and have one window open on the lecture presentation notes, reference material mentioned and another window for notes) . The biggest note takers are the exercise book crowd, with an exercise book per subject.

They on the whole do represent a distraction as they often chat amongst themselves whilst playing with their notebooks, although they generally skulk around the back of the lecture theatre moderating the distraction generated. Most Lectures seem unable to establish and maintain control over the lecture environment and lack the willingness to remove disruptive elements. An alternate was to record all lectures and make the available to view so that students could 'er' fail in their own time (the trend) and, be less disruptive.

The big fail has been in changing the curriculum to make it digitally interactive, so material could be worked through in simulation, in line with the lecture, enabling the incorporation of more in depth references during the lectures and combing digital indirect tutoring during the lecture (question could be put through to lecture assistants, lecture chat in effect, without disturbing the class), also full motion digital material could be delivered and viewed on the notebook whilst notes are discussed at the lectern. It could take quite a few more years, possible decades, for teaching methods to catch up (old habits and techniques are being repeated much like qwerty versus alphabetic keyboards, regardless of how nonsensical it is).

Re:False analogy.

[dcollins]

"I pointed out to students that, given the cost of tuition, and the class being X units (depending on the class) it meant that each lecture was essentially costing them (or somebody), $Y. And that given it was their $Y to spend, I didn't really care how they spent it, but that as long as they were registered for the class, it was a sunk cost, so I recommended they pay attention..."

This is an enormously common line of thinking, but I've discovered it to be fundamentally not true (at least where I teach). I've been told that the majority of my students, for example, are on full financial aid (including health benefits & pocket money). So there's some loan they need to pay off arbitrarily far in the future, I guess (and it's safe to say that many can't rationally balance that abstract fact). And in fact they're pocketing cash on top of it, so in some sense mere attendance in my class is their current job. Changes the dynamic a lot.

All the time when I'm telling stories my friends say, "But they're paying for it!", and I sigh and launch into my "No, they're actually not..." routine.

Re:False analogy.

[J Story]

It seems to me that instructors could improve the way they deliver their lectures. Why not provide prepackaged lecture notes in advance of the class, so that students can review in advance and be ready to participate in a class discussion?

The question of laptops in class is a red herring. More likely is that poor teachers with ego issues don't like to be reminded that their lectures are boring.

I had the same problem with pen and paper, I was too busy trying to write down what was being said rather than paying attention. With a computer at least I can write quite fast, so I could spend more time listening to the words and less frantically trying to write quickly but legibly. I stopped taking notes after my first year of University, when I didn't even use any of my notes to revise. I revised using lecture notes, and very occasionally I'd use a textbook.

Re:False analogy.

[tehcyder]

Remember, these are the same professors who don't understand that boredom is incredibly more powerful than it appears, and that uninspired students will find other ways to zone out of boring lectures.

No-one cares if "uninspired" students aren't interested in the lectures (although why they bother turning up in the first place is a bit of a mystery - do you get marks just for attending lectures in the US or something?).

It's when they interfere with the people who are interested that they become a problem.

Re:False analogy.

[apoc.famine]

I can bring a different prospective to that:

It's been 10 years since my undergraduate degree, and I've finally found what I love. But going into a graduate program, they won't teach me the basics of it. But I can't get a bachelor's degree, because I already have one from a decade ago, and a MA from 4 years ago. Most colleges refuse to accept you for a BS after you already have one. At the same time, most graduate programs will take you, even if your BS doesn't have to do with what you're getting a PhD in.

So I, and a couple of other people, are dropped into a graduate program, doing what we LOVE, but we don't have a Bachelor's degree in the subject. Our backgrounds mean we're woefully unprepared for this, yet there's no other way to do it.

I'd LOVE to be in a condensed undergraduate degree this first year. Instead, there are a couple of us who are pretty much being set up to fail. We were accepted despite lacking a lot of background information. Then we were expected to have a BS in our field, and pretty much failed the first semester because we didn't.

Witless stenographers?

[Thyamine]

I don't know what they think is happening, but I had the same thing happen with pencil and paper. Trying to keep up with some profs who are scribbling madly on the chalk/whiteboard, or just droning on and on. Stuff gets written down with little or no thought so it can be studied later. I'd be happier having it in a nice doc I can search while reading my books or through other pages of notes. They just don't like the fact that their audience isn't as mentally trapped if they are boring or unable to retain student attention.

Re:Witless stenographers?

[bcmm]

I am dyslexic, and writing on paper at any decent speed pretty much takes my full attention, but I can type faster than most without thinking about it. I'm sure a lot of other people are like this.

I wonder how long it will be before someone challenges this as discrimination.

Re:Witless stenographers?

[ShadowRangerRIT]

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.

Re:Witless stenographers?

[Gribflex]

I think it will never fly as discrimination.
If you are dyslexic, you can claim that you have a disability, and require special accommodations. This can be verified by a qualified third party, and you can then apply for an exemption to the rule (which I assume the school will grant automatically).

Re:Witless stenographers?

[Pojut]

My fiancee found that (with her profs permission, of course) having an audio recorder up close to the guy while he was going through his lecture really helped her. She would write down the general idea of what he was talking about, then later that night listen to the recording and type out more complete notes, using her written notes from class as reference. Doing it twice and hearing it twice helped her retain more.

Granted, this won't work for everyone, but it certainly worked for her.

Re:Witless stenographers?

[MichaelDelving]

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.

Re:Witless stenographers?

[CaspianXI]

I think it's a matter of personal preference. I, personally, tend to be more of a "witness stenographer" when taking notes with pen and paper. Because I can type faster than I can write, using a computer allows me more opportunities in class to stop and ponder the material.

I don't think there's any hard and fast rule that says that paper is better than computers or vice versa. Forcing students into using what the professor finds more helpful handicaps students who want to find the method which works best for them.

Re:Witless stenographers?

[wjc_25]

I don't know about the other universities mentioned, but speaking as a student at the University of Virginia, I can tell you that in cases where there are disabilities the students talk to the teachers and have an exception made. One of my classmates has a sight impairment and has to use his laptop, and professors of course allow him to use his laptop.

It's not as if every class disallows laptops - all my CS professors so far have allowed laptops, for example. In math and lit classes, not so much. It's entirely up to the individual teacher; I can think of several classes I've taken where the teacher required attendance and allowed laptops, and for that reason everyone was up on Facebook for every lecture. I can think of other classes where laptops were allowed but the class was challenging and people only used them for note-taking.

Re:Witless stenographers?

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

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).

I always just sat there and paid attention, without being distracted from what the lecturer was saying by furiously writing it all down. Any decent professor (i.e., one whose ego isn't wrapped up in being the sole font of information needed to learn the class material) will have chosen a textbook that has the same general content as their lecture.

I found it more useful to treat the lecture as a general introduction to the material, and then go and figure out the details by reading the text and doing sample problems. Being able to "reproduce any arcane derivation on demand" may be good for passing exams, but it's not worth shit when you come up against a real-world problem that doesn't fit neatly into the categories covered in class.

This is College

[rotide]

Seeing how this is college, I'm dumbfounded by the "nannying" going on here.

The way I see it, unless laptops as a whole are distracting to _other_ students then they are nothing more than another medium to take notes on. On the other hand, if I happen to have a laptop that makes a lot of noise (intended or not) and it is distracting the professor or other students, then I see a problem.

Re:This is College

[starcraftsicko]

Unless you are in the back row, your WoW or YouTube or Facebook (or Slashdot) are a visual distraction to _others_ even with ear buds or if muted. The "nannying" happens because you (or a meaningful number of your classmates) can't keep themselves from providing this distraction. You (they?) simply can't stop. Even now.

Re:This is College

[beakerMeep]

You sound like Alliance.

Re:This is College

[Angostura]

It's madness, I know. The idea that teachers might want to think about the best way to ensure that the information they are trying to impart is absorbed and retained by their students.

When I was a student, I found the best way to enjoy lectures was with my eyes closed, listening to my Walkman. I didn't disturb anyone, so I have no idea why the lecturer took exception to my stance.

Re:This is College

[bwalling]

The way I see it, unless laptops as a whole are distracting to _other_ students then they are nothing more than another medium to take notes on. On the other hand, if I happen to have a laptop that makes a lot of noise (intended or not) and it is distracting the professor or other students, then I see a problem.

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.

Re:This is College

[starcraftsicko]

As long as they aren't distracting other students...

I think that the point here is that in many cases, they are in fact distracting other students. This doesn't mean that other students are going to make a public complaint.

I offer this analogy: "People should be able to drive as fat as they want, wherever they want, so long as they don't endanger others." OK? But sometimes simply driving fast creates the danger. And sometimes, the driver fails to notice this. For example, I think that I don't endanger anyone when I drive 60mph through university parking lots at 9AM...

So the university (or city or whatever) could wait for complaints or deaths, or they can regulate speeds. I concede that over-regulation occurs, but is the regulation itself unjustified?

Re:This is College

[starcraftsicko]

If you can see the screen, it is a distraction. The human eye is drawn to motion. Even in a best case scenario, your brain will have to check on your neighbor's WoW progress from time to time even if only to classify it as unimportant.

You may do a great job mentally managing these distractions. Others may be less efficient in doing this.

Just because it does not distract you does not mean that it does not distract _others_. You may not be the best person or in the best position to evaluate the distraction.

Re:This is College

[DerekLyons]

You're suggesting it's wrong for a teacher to care about his students and their education?

Re:This is College

[Ismene]

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.

I'm a college librarian - I teach research classes and am always out in the computer lab section of our library. I'd venture to say that 90% of ALL computers at a college or university are being used for: Facebook and YouTube. I have students who can't get a computer to type out an essay because the computer lab is full (and I'm not even exaggerating) of students checking their facebook. (We can't ban facebook because they might need it for "educational purposes"). We get a report here that tells us essentially where all our bandwidth is going: Facebook, Youtube, Google Video, Myspace.

I teach in a computer lab. As funny / not terribly boring as my lecture is (I mean, really, the topic is research, I can't make it THAT thrilling) - I simply can't compete with texting / facebook, etc. And the computers FACE me. I find it distracting for me, the lecturer. When I do say something like "Oh, I can see you are telling all your friends how great the library is on Facebook", they all look at me like "What?? You know what facebook is??" (Yes, my dear students, I'm only thirty... not dead.)

Well...

[scross]

I bet there's someone in a lecture reading this right now.

good move

[nerdyalien]

I am a TA and I attended a math tutorial class as an observer earlier today. I was sitting in the last row. I saw one or two guys with laptop open, playing first-person shooting games.

When I attended university as a freshmen 8 years ago, laptops are still clunky and not easy to carry around like netbooks. So somewhat we were forced to take down notes by hand.

In practical lab classes like signal processing, in my day we had to manually copy the signal traces on analogue oscilloscope to the lab notebook. But now, with camera phones, its a matter of taking a snap.

I am not against new technology. But technology that hinders the education.. should be kept outside classroom!

Re:good move

[kainewynd2]

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.

Re:good move

[Vanderhoth]

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.

Wow, did you pick the wrong area of education. Sure sometimes you have to do stuff you don't like, but there is almost always a way to make things more interesting.

As an example in my first year of CS I didn't really find linear algebra, discrete mathematics, algorithms or calculus as intense as playing WoW, but I was able to make it interesting by learning how to apply what I was learning to a homemade graphics engine... Okay, discrete mathematics wasn't fun, but it is useful.

Maybe I'm an oddity, but my interest extend outside CS so when I was given chances to take courses like Accounting, Management, Chemistry, Philosophy, Political Science, etc... I was ecstatic.

High school is boring, you're forced to take the same generic classes as everyone else that may or may not apply to your interest or hopeful profession. University is where you get to make your own choices, you choose what to be educated in and you choose the electives that can be outside your choosen field that interest you.

Re:good move

[TerranFury]

Tools are amoral. The have no character, no conscience.

I kind of like this worldview; the belief in personal responsibility I think improves behavior. But one thing I find interesting is the amount of research indicating that we might not be as "in control" as we like to think we are; psychologists of a certain school call this the "fundamental attribution error." The basic conclusion is that the situation plays a much, much larger role in determining people's actions than who the people themselves are. Applied to the laptop issue, this would mean that perhaps the situation of being in the classroom with your laptop in front of you is more important in determining what you do than are any individual variations in self-control. In other words the laptop isn't neutral; it creates a situation in which people typically react in one of a few ways.

Still, from a rights perspective it may not be the professor's job to prevent people from putting themselves into bad situations. That sometimes people actually do use laptops or tablets to take notes would tend to reinforce this view.

Re:good move

[newcastlejon]

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.

Speak for yourself! In high school I sat there bored because I was forced to learn about subjects that had neither practical nor any interest at all, I came to university and chose a subject that I found interesting. Calculus may have been dry and mechanics may have been (still is) difficult but they're both still interesting. If anything, the only part so far that has bored me has been the 'Professional Development' BS that businesses want us to learn: seems like everyone has to have the same "we're all special" wishy-washy, touchy-feely PHB mindset.

My attitude is if you don't find it interesting then why are you studying it? If you're doing a degree simply because you want a well-paid job out of it then you can just fuck off to the Business/Law school with the rest of them*. Art students may be a bit flakey, but at least they're there because they enjoy the subject.

*My apologies to people who are actually interested in law, but you seem to be surrounded by utter cocks and it's hard to tell you apart. (Even if you aren't wearing Ug boots or a body warmer/plaid combo) //

Re:First Post

[K. S. Kyosuke]

There

Hey, stop surfing around and reading /. and start taking notes!

A novel idea: be a better teacher

[Sarten-X]

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.

Re:A novel idea: be a better teacher

[gsslay]

College students are not kindergarten kids. Professors are not teachers.

College learning isn't fun and games, before a five minute nap and a carton of OJ. If the students are so attention-deficit that they have difficult maintaining concentration on anything that isn't presented like a shopping channel, then perhaps they should go play and leave the college learning to the grown-ups.

Re:A novel idea: be a better teacher

[Sarten-X]

It'd be nice if maturity worked that way, but it doesn't. Humans in general are easily distracted, no matter how mature they are or what kind of media you're working in. Everything is a competition for attention. Whether it's a sales pitch, a lecture, or a political debate, the presenter with the most substance AND the most interesting delivery will come out the victor. Sure, it's possible for a student to force himself to pay attention, but that will just make the class seem like a hostile environment, no less than draconian rules and bullying do the same for elementary school.

Re:A novel idea: be a better teacher

[thebagel]

Professors are not teachers.

I don't understand this mentality. Professors ARE teachers. They may not be kindergarten teachers, but the idea is the same - their job is to get ideas into your head. If that means they have to try to make things more interesting, that shouldn't be a problem. Yes, students should be paying attention. However, if professors and lecturers truly want their students to be paying attention, they need to be giving them a reason to pay attention.

Laptop notes

[LikwidCirkel]

Laptop/tablet note taking has drastically reduced my paper load and improved the quality of my notes. If I were in any of these schools, I would take this issue as far as I possibly could.. I actually have in the past with individual professors, and I always came out the victor because there is simply no sane justification for such a policy. That said, I have a big problem with students playing games in class where I can see their screen. I've told people in the past, that if they're going to play games, at least sit in the friggin back row so no one else can see. Disruption is, and has always been a problem, but banning laptops is not the answer. I could handle blocking wi-fi in lecture theatres.. that helps just a bit.

Re:Laptop notes

[Paradigm_Complex]

I actually have in the past with individual professors, and I always came out the victor because there is simply no sane justification for such a policy

Consider yourself lucky that the lack of sane justification is sufficient to stop such nonsense wherever you go to school. In my experience that's rarely in the case.

I could handle blocking wi-fi in lecture theatres.. that helps just a bit.

For what it's worth, I've found internet access to be quite helpful in class. It's not unusual that I've forgotten something the professor assumes you've remembered. This hits me particularly hard in the autumn after a summer away from academia. When I can simply Google "taylor series" for a quick reminder and actually understand what's going on in class I benefit quite a lot more then just sitting there lost.

None of there Buisness

[SirBigSpur]

I ran into this issue at my school and had a few professors get frustrated by students with laptops. However we talked about it in class and came to the determination that the people who are using laptops to screw around are only hurting them selves. And besides whose paying the tuition? This would be one thing if this was High school but not college.

Re:None of there Buisness

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell from the way you write that your education was remarkably effective.

Other students

[Rtmm]

My biggest problem with those who come to lectures just to play games/chat on facebook or what have you, is that they are distracting other students. Its fine if you don't want to learn, just don't come to class. Other students paid money to come to class and generally don't want to be distracted by someone playing counterstike or watching youtube all class.

It's probably for the best

[bsDaemon]

It's probably for the best. I sort of slagged off in my 4th semester of Latin and would just look up translations of Cicero online and have it ready if I got called on. Caesar I'd just do, but technology enabled me to be even lazier in the second semester of my Senior year than I otherwise would have been. Not that Cicero is much relevant to my actual career, although the BOFH motto seems to be 'Auc Caesar, Auc Nihil' (and if it's not, it really should be).

That said, I didn't have a laptop at all when I was in high school, let a lone bring one to class. The first couple of years at college, I had eRacks setups in my dorm room and convinced IT to delegate me static IPs, so I could shell to my machine from anywhere else on campus, or get back in through the tunnel set up by the Comp Sci department on the Linux cluster if I were at home. I paid more attention in class back then.

I totally get the point of the ban, and frankly in a lecture hall setting there probably isn't a real need for the laptop as opposed to a seminar or lab setting. If I were to go back to school for another degree, chances are I wouldn't bring the laptop with me to class, however if I were told I couldn't, hell yeah I'd be pissed off.

Re:It's probably for the best

[jittles]

I'm going back to school for a masters and I cant STAND the students taking notes on paper. The teacher has to repeat an important definition 5 times while they slowly scribble it down and I've typed it word for word on the first go.

People will pay attention if they want and preventing me from being able to quickly take notes so that I can spend time actually thinking about what the teacher has to say isn't going to make my learning experience better.

Re:It's probably for the best

[DragonFodder]

Either I'm missing something in your motto, or you mis-typed..

Auc Caesar, Auc Nihil --- In the founding of the city Ceasar, in the founding of the city nothing?

Thinking maybe you meant to type "AUT Ceasar, AUT Nihil" which is more along the lines of "Either Ceasar or nothing" or more likely "All or nothing" roughly translated.

Lecturers should not be overzealous nannys

[kaptink]

Student who want to use laptops legitimately should not be punished by those who don't. And as others have pointed out, students traditionally doodled or read books or slept so why should this be any different. I think some of the older lecturers are stuck in old ways which are inevitably counter productive. Laptops do more good than harm. Besides its up to the student to pass the exams and it is not the lecturers job to 'nanny' students.

Prof's need feedback

[Alarindris]

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.

Re:Prof's need feedback

[tophermeyer]

Just an FYI, lecture halls usually have 100+ students (easily) and don't go beyond some human up front talking for the _whole_ period only stopping to take a breath from time to time.

It's not a classroom setting, it's a lecture.

I remember once asking my minor advisor how they handled a big lecture hall. My minor was classics, so this person usually lectured to huge classes in ancient history. She told me that she usually picked out 4 or 5 people that she thought would represent a range of comprehension (one smart person, one dumb person, and two or three in the middle). She would keep an eye on those few individuals to make sure that her lectures made sense and that people were following.

She joked that her goal was to explain things in a way that everyone understood, but would be satisfied if everyone but the dummy got it.

Re:Prof's need feedback

[DerekLyons]

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.

From my experience as an instructor in the Navy, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head here. You watch the students, and their body language as well as their facial expressions, to see whether they are "getting it" or not. Teaching, especially good teaching, is an interactive process.

Re:Prof's need feedback

[Asclepius99]

A lot of colleges have many of your classes (especially higher level ones) in classroom settings. And while the title of the article says "Lecture Hall" the articles say "class" and "classroom"; so we're not only talking about 100+ students, we're also taking anywhere from 15+.

i agree

[emkyooess]

Most of my faculty lately have said, "You can bring a laptop if you ask me explicit permission and you vet your notes past me for a few weeks'." AKA, he wants to make sure they're actually using it for that purpose for the first couple weeks.

Classes I've been in with open-laptops policy have been terrible -- I can't pay attention to the lecture because (a) all the clicking/keying around me but, more importantly, seeing (and sometimes even hearing) what they're doing. It certainly is NOT related to the class in any way. I'd see maybe one out of a dozen actually using the laptop in a decent way.

another way to attack this

[Goldsmith]

If students are able to not pay attention, and still do well (enough) in classes, then make the classes more difficult.

Re:another way to attack this

[TeethWhitener]

If students are able to not pay attention, and still do well (enough) in classes, then make the classes more difficult.

Two words: grade inflation.

Re:Internet

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I've seen plenty of offline distractions as well(DVDs, local video, games, etc.), though the internet is of course the most common source.

In contemporary campus environments, though, how relevant is the difference? The campus, or at least all the academic buildings, are almost certainly blanketed by wifi, controlled by an IT department that isn't about to start taking "Please shut down all APs accessible in room X during times Y and Z" requests if they can possibly help it; and a fair few laptops either have integrated cellular modems or are tethered to phones with decently zippy internet access.

I'm sure that there are plenty of professors(and not just flakey humanities technophobes, the fact that you were writing formal CS proofs in TeX back when it was new doesn't automatically translate to a working knowledge of contemporary consumer electronics) who don't necessarily grasp the distinction; but I strongly suspect that it is a distinction without meaningful difference in most contexts.

The other issue is that, since most laptops have their screens sticking up vertically from the desk they are sitting on, you get the physically troublesome "wall of monitors" effect, no matter what is happening on those laptops.

Pen and paper?

[jbernardo]

I can't write with pen or pencil at a decent speed, if I want to be able to read it afterwards. My handwriting is awful, always was, and no matter how much I tried to improve it always remained awful and slow. On the other hand, I am a decent, fast typist. That is why I bring my notebook to all meetings, or to any course I attend (did you think you'd stop studying after leaving college?). I can imagine what would be if I was suddenly forced to use a inferior solution just because someone abused the efficient one.

In which century are these teachers living, btw?

I agree

[koan]

I'm older and going back to school with a laptop taking notes in class was not working for me, I was easily distracted by either the program I was using, some technical issue, or fighting for the one power socket in the room and in the end I found I had poor recall and reviewing notes on the computer was, frankly, a drag.
Switching to paper kept me engaged, no technical issues, easy on my eyes to review, and the information stayed with me longer.
Not sure how it is for younger folks but paper note taking works best for me.

Re:and...?

[ircmaxell]

Actually, I wonder if you're on to something there. Is this ban a "I don't want to see it ever", or a "If you're disruptive, I'll kick you out"... I mean seriously, we're talking about college. It's not up to the professor if you learn anything, it's your job. If you're off screwing around on your laptop instead of taking notes, then it's your own dam fault. And a teacher that cares that you're not paying attention is one that I'd argue isn't doing his/her job. The reason I say it that way, is that at the end of the course, the teacher is responsible for verifying that you know the material. Not that you learned it in his class.

I had that happen to me in an intro to C course. I'd been programming in C for some years by that point but the school wouldn't let me skip the course (even though I demonstrated advanced knowledge). So after 3 classes, the teacher noticed that I was constantly surfing the net during the time when we were supposed to be working on his problems (He counted attendance). After the third class, he asked me to see him after. When he did, he told me I'd need to do the work if I expected to pass the class. I showed him every problem that he'd given us to do (that I completed in a few minutes). I then explained that I first ventured into C years ago, and felt comfortable with the material. So what did he do? The next class, he gave me a rather hard problem from the end of the course. He said if I can finish it by the end of class, I'd get an A and not have to show up any more. So I got my A, and had one less class to attend.

The moral of the story? Just because someone's goofing off doesn't mean that they don't know the material or that they should be punished. Learn WHY a student is goofing off before punishing them (After all, it could be because you fail at teaching). But then again, that's asking teachers to do their jobs...

Re:Not your dime...

[chronosan]

That's a very one-sided view of things. The success of every student should be top priority for a professor.It may be that they (the professor) is a genuinely good person who cares about other people and how their education will affect society years later when the student is in the real world, or that in the university's eyes the success of the student reflects the effectiveness of the professor. In any case, education ... hey, get that sniper on the crane... HEADSHOT!

Speaking as an old coot...

[IANAAC]

When I first went to college, the only place you could find any type of computer was in the lab, so taking notes by hand in a spiral-bound was the only option.

I went back to school 20 years later to get another degree, Tried taking notes on a laptop and went back to simple handwritten notes. Here's why: I found that I retained much more when I went back over my handwritten notes, then reorganized them on my laptop. Yes, it was more time-consuming, but I was effectively going over all the information twice and reinforcing what was taught. I was also keeping up my handwriting skills, something I believe is sorely lacking in today's youth.

I wonder how many students today just enter their notes on a laptop and forget about them until finals.

Re:First Post

[Alvare]

and get them to concentrate

Why would you want people to concentrate? People should want to concentrate, they are the only ones who can decide that. If they wanna play WoW during class they should be allowed, as long as they don't disturb the ones who want to learn.

It's their choice and nobody else's. Personally I intercalate between doing fun stuff and paying attention, because I decided to, and I face the consequences quietly and in my own.

Note taking isn't stenography

[ENIGMAwastaken]

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.

They are right

[gweihir]

Taking notes on paper in real-time was the most valuable learning method during my studies. It forces you to understand what the lecturer is explaining, because you are typically to slow to copy verbatim, you you have to accurately summarize. Yes, it is stressful, but it is effort well spent.

Re:and...?

[CastrTroy]

I very much agree with this. By the time you get to college, it isn't the teacher's responsibility to ensure that you are paying attention. The professor is supposed to present the material in a way that gets the point across. If you don't want to listen, that is your own problem. In my day, laptops weren't so popular. Probably about 1 in 20 people had a laptop. We still had tons of other things to not pay attention with. Be it Tetris on the TI-86, or just doodling with a pen and paper, or doing your assignment for some other class that is due in 3 hours. If the student doesn't want to pay attention, they won't. They are adults. They should be at least responsible enough to do what needs to be done to learn the material. That doesn't always include going to class and listening to the professor. With the quality of some professors, you could learn more my specifically not going to class.

Stop whining.

[Anonymous Coward]

The comments here are pretty appalling.

The professor's job is to educate his students. Not entertain them. By and large, he is accountable to the parents, who pay hefty tuition and expect in return that their children will come out of college having actually learned something. For the flip side of this issue, try talking to a professor about just how hard it is to get students to pay attention nowadays, and to take personal responsibility for their scholarship.

The professors are also accountable to their institutions. Their meager livelihoods depend on successfully imparting knowledge and understanding to an increasingly under-prepared and distracted student body. They have to put up with unfair job reviews and pin-headed bureaucrats, just like software developers do. And they live in fear of having their careers destroyed by anonymous slander on teacher review websites. Since the tenure system is now largely history, most professors are effectively temporary contractors, like software engineers. The big difference is that software engineers earn decent money when they have a job; professors, for the most part, do not. So signing up for a life of teaching is a commitment to a life of frustration, fear, and poverty. Is it any wonder there are so many questionable teachers out there?

So I have an alternate proposal for you. How about acknowledging the fact that learning is hard work, frequently tedious, and the last thing students need is a computer on their desks to distract them during lectures? How about admitting that you do actually take frequent breaks to check Facebook, email, CNN, or whatever during class? How about facing the fact that the human brain is physically incapable of multi-tasking, and every little distraction significantly degrades your ability to absorb information?

Children, pay attention. Someone paid to send you to college. You chose freely to walk into that lecture hall. Now you owe your professor the courtesy and respect to pay attention to his lecture without dicking around on your laptop computer. It is the professor's job to determine the manner of instruction in his classroom. If he deems, quite reasonably, that students will be more engaged and focused by taking notes using pen and paper, then you, as students, should respectfully comply. If you have a disability that prevents you from taking notes by hand, surely you can discuss it with the teacher and obtain an exception. If you disagree with the policy, don't take the class. And if the class is required and you still feel that strongly about it, by all means vote with your feet and your tuition money by choosing another college.

Re:First Post

[xaxa]

If they wanna play WoW during class they should be allowed, as long as they don't disturb the ones who want to learn.

Why? They will almost always be disturbing people (anyone behind them, and anyone that can hear their computer's fans or keyboard/mouse presses). if they want to play WoW they can go to the common room, or just stay at home.

Learn by intraction

[realsilly]

The problem or problems with laptops is that they are distracting. Even if someone is truely typing notes and doing it in a way that summarizes the lecture, for other people sitting near, seeing a display screen or hearing clicking can be vastly distracting.

While it is true, people learn in different ways, people need to be able to learn with out a monitor in their face. I fear one reason that students are opposed to this is simply because they don't know how to write using pen and paper. It has been stated in past Slashdot articles that the art of writing is dying. The thing about writing that people don't get today is that because we write slower than we listen, we force ourselves to remember what the professors said. If we miss what was stated, we asked for the statement to be revistied or repeated, thus adding to the natural way people learn and comprehend.

Some other posted suggested that the professor give the students the notes, well I almost spit my coffee out when I read that. Does not every class have a book that goes with it? I know I had a book for each class I took in college. Students are already expected to read before coming to class, and I suspect the majority of students rarely crack the books before the lessons, but rather only to cram for the exams.

College isn't about making your life easy. It is a place for higher education. It is a place for one to challenge themselves to learn and take in all this wonderful new information. Classroom discussions with professors are the ones students most remember and are very informative when people get involved. The purpose these professors have in mind is for students to interact more. Teaching isn't about spewing out a bunch of notest to students it is about exciting them and teaching them and prompting them to think outside of the box and explore the subject matter at hand.

Close those notebooks and listen. You'll be amazed at how much more you'll comprehend and take in, I promise....

Re:First Post

[Alvare]

As I said,

as long as they don't disturb the ones who want to learn

It was an example, but I agree that if an individual bothers me shouting "Headshot!" just once, I would kick him out of the room personally.

But filtering/censoring is not an option, because of the usual problems like who would decide what is appropiate and what is not and the kind of stuff ./ discusses every day on foreign countries.

Ban laptops or jam the Wi-Fi

[illumnatLA]

20-some years ago, I started my bachelor's degree at Ohio University. I ended up in Los Angeles working in the film & TV business as an editor where they really don't care if you have a degree or not.

Fast forward to now... Economy crash, writers' strike, production slow down... so I decide use that as an opportunity to return to college to finally finish a bachelor's degree in Visual Effects.

The classes are held in computer labs and because the systems are used for many different kinds of classes including web design and as generic open labs, they are connected to the internet.

There is nothing as annoying and distracting as someone sitting there working on their Farmville while the instructor is lecturing or while we are supposedly critiquing each others work. It leads to the instructor having to go over simple concepts multiple times due to students not paying attention which really pisses me off as it's wasting my time & money... Mommy & daddy aren't paying for my college classes... I am. We have a limited amount of time as it is... I want to get my money's worth by getting in as many concepts as possible--nott going over the same thing over and over and over because some idiot was tending to his crops.

Now chances are, these idiots who aren't paying attention in class would've found ways to not pay attention in class back in the pre-WiFi internet days, but for the most part, they would've been less distracting to other students who did want to pay attention. (They'd be doodling in a notebook or just sleeping.) If they were doing something that was distracting to other students, it would be much easier for an instructor to monitor and deal with... 'Take those headphones off,' 'stop talking back there,' etc.

These days, the instructor has a bunch of laptop lids pointed in their direction and the students could be doing anything from dutifully taking notes to running their virtual mob to reading Slashdot.

The point I'm eventually getting around to making is that these sorts of distractions that having full internet access in the classroom causes is unfair to the students who do want to pay attention.

I really don't give a shit if someone wants to waste their time and (parents') money by not paying attention in the classroom... but I get royally pissed when it wastes my time and my money.

Personally, if I was teaching I would have a policy in place where first time caught on the internet during a lecture or critique would get a warning, second time... auto fail.

But... I digress...

Re:Ban laptops or jam the Wi-Fi

[illumnatLA]

I don't know that removing the laptops would necessarily help. My gf is in school for nursing and she complains a lot about people who are slow to understand or ask "stupid" questions -- i.e. questions that were already covered during that class, or were covered in the readings (that were assigned to be completed before that class).

True... there is no cure for stupidity!

Re:Ban laptops or jam the Wi-Fi

[illumnatLA]

Nope... University professors aren't babysitters, nor should they have to be.

The problem is when flashing graphics from internet surfing and so forth distract other students from being able to pay full attention. The human eye is naturally drawn to motion and the flashing graphics on computer screens will cause others to be distracted by it... especially if it's accompanied by the *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* of someone harvesting their damn crops.

This is not about how laptops effect university professors. It is about how inappropriate usage laptops and internet in the classroom effects fellow students.

If another student is causing distraction in the classroom be it talking during a lecture or playing games or surfing the internet during the lecture, they are taking away from my classroom experience. I am paying for my own classroom experience not Mommy & Daddy. You take away what I am paying for with your inability to pay attention to something for a couple of hours and you are stealing from me.

I am in college to learn. It is not an extension of high school.

Another prof's take on this

[bradley13]

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.

Bring the noise

[elrous0]

Ever sat next to someone on a plane who was clackity-clacking away on their keyboard for the entire flight? Well, multiply that by about 30-50 times and you'll get an idea of just how annoying a classroom full of people taking notes on the laptops can be. I wouldn't care if people used laptops, if it wasn't so fucking noisy. If they want to keep laptops in the classroom, fine, but they should require students to use some sort of quiet keyboard. The last class I was in, I just wanted to pull my hair out.

Fail

[GerryHattrick]

If you give the sort of 'lecture' where notes on a laptop (or even in pencil) are an adequate result, you don't deserve your Chair. A proper lecture motivates, enthuses, explains, gives insights into creativity - no notes can ever do justice to that. So: no laptops please, nor... lecturers backs turned while they fill space with impenetrable garbled equations. You can get that stuff in your own time from standard references. On the topic, I want(ed) to know what makes that particular Professor tick. The best of them used eye-contact - to a girl at the top-back of the lecture-theater: "do you like being alone?"

Re:and...?

[IsoRashi]

Towards the end of college, I had to take a "general" class to graduate. I ended up taking "intro to music" since I had played in concert band throughout middle- and high-school. The teacher had some hands-on activities planned for the class and figured out pretty quickly that I had a clue as to what I was doing and ended up using me as a TA for the rather large class. It was actually kind of fun helping out, and when I showed up for the final she thanked me for my help, said I had an A, and then excused me.

Re:Wait....

[Atraxen]

Do you recall ever being given a blurb in a syllabus that strongly suggests that the optimal approach to learning in a class is to:
- read the materials before class (even a cursory read will do)
- come to class to gain connections, context, and detail for the more subtle points
- study after class to do the 'heavy lifting' of mastering the details?
Following that approach may help you with the "can't really use what I've been taught or contribute to discussion/examples until I've tried out [whatever technique/method we're learning] on my own in my own time" issue.

It's a lecture, and not a class, because with large dining halls, a fleet of academic/social/athletic buses, computer labs that require constant updating, etc., most campus administrations have moved to larger-sized intro-level courses and reserve the good instructor:student ratios for higher level courses (where the effort will support their discipline's students) rather than using scarce resources on intro/gen-ed classes. That's why it's a 'lecture', and not a 'class'. However, most of your profs have made a major commitment to educating (take hard science faculty - they choose beginning salaries in the $40k-50k range, rather than $120k+). Trying to maximize your learning gains IS the prof's business, actually (in the business/career sense), along with using the rest of their hours to contribute to the field.

The good (and still energetic) faculty try to offset these large-sized classes by using approaches that try to build back in some of the in-the-moment feedback from a small-class setting - both for the students and themselves. e.g. That's one of the things we're trying to do when we have you use those 'clickers'. For many of us, it's the reason for online homework systems - not because we're lazy, as we're often portrayed, but because we see the same common mistakes over and over and these systems do an improvingly-passing job of giving feedback as you're learning. We try to spur on classroom interaction. Are we always successful? Nope - and the still-energetic faculty also have to overcome the difficulty of learning this trade (teaching the highest-level classes) IN ADDITION to being a top-tier participant in their field. (Those who can, do, those who can try to do everything well at the expense of a life and sleep, teach.)

Why do I keep referring to 'energetic' faculty? Because, as time goes on it's simply too draining to fight the room full of 50/130 students staring at their screens. Seeing solitaire cards (or worse...) reflected back throughout the room. And not interacting/participating/responding to your efforts to reclaim the small-class opportunities for them. You see, those students on their laptops, the ones tuned-out, the ones 'showing up' in body, but not caring about the class - they're the control rods in a reactor. And by inserting them in the classroom, it has the same effect - it kills any amplification you get from having many minds in a room together, and reduces the classroom into a YouTube video - but there's now actual YouTube videos in the room that have skateboarding dogs, and stoichiometry can't compete with that for many people.

So, it's a negative feedback loop - you complain that the class is pointless, so you entertain yourself instead. Blunting any efforts on the part of the prof to improve the experience for yourself and those around you, and make it NOT pointless. The prof burns more hours/energy trying to overcome this. Finally, many simply give up and give over-rehearsed slides/monologues to the large classes, and save their energy for the 10 person majors-only class that really digs in with you, and feeds off of one another to construct a deeper knowledge of the material than any of them had from the textbook alone.

Yeah, feel free to roll your eyes at this - to say that no (or not enough) profs try as hard as I'm claiming. Whatever - you can pick it apart point-by-point, and we can have a running text battle for weeks! The big idea is: this is the view p

Re:and...?

[neochubbz]

With the quality of some professors, you could learn more my specifically not going to class.

I totally agree with this statement. I'm a engineering sophomore right now and there are just some teachers who are just plain horrible. I specifically recall one physics lecture where my grade IMPROVED when I stopped going to lecture. This semester, there are some other classes with the same "quality" teaching, which I'd really like to skip, but the professor has an attendance policy. So, my laptop has become my saving grace. Mind, I dont do anything too distracting, usually just surfing the web or working on other assignments. I've come to find that the classes with attendance policies either mean either the class or the professor is worthless.

Re:First Post

[BobMcD]

Total and absolute BS. Most college educations are completely worthless. Psychology, French Lit, History?

While the education is likely worthless, the degree is not. Try getting a job without one. It isn't easy, and as a college drop-out, I should know.

If you'd like to label my comment as 'absolute BS', I'd request you back that up. Find me the high school guidance counselor that recommends skipping college. Find me the recruiter who doesn't even ask if you have a degree.

I'd say most people would be much better off financially if they skipped college and used the money that would've gone into that somewhere else.

You're delusional. First they'll have a much tougher time finding a job. Second, and most importantly, it isn't real money. People get these things called 'student loans'. It isn't as if you can get those and invest the funds into the stock market. You kind of need to be a student. Third, if you're referring to investing the money paid out for Ramen, I highly doubt this would add up to anything close to the job-seekers-permit they would have otherwise received.

Or do you really think people can still pay cash for college?

Now take fields like engineering, law, computer science, and so on, those are totally great fields of study. But if you can't be bothered to pay attention during class then society would probably be better off with you not graduating in the first place. I don't want to drive on a bridge designed by someone who had to be made to stay off Facebook by his mommy professor during class.

Well you'd want to take that up with the education system, as these people should not pass. Yet they do.

College isn't what it used to be.

Notes from my Father: 4.0 top of med school class.

[2obvious4u]

The most successful person I've ever known, my father, told me the secret to good grades in school. He would take a tape recorder to class and record the lecture, then after class he would go home and transcribe the notes. He was amazed how much he would miss during the lecture. The other students in his class would complain at test time that the professor never covered the material, but my father always had the answers. There were there in his transcriptions.

When I went to college I attempted this method, but I didn't have the stamina. I ended up with a B/C average when I graduated, but I had a lot of fun. I'm not making seven figures like he does, hell I'm not even earning six figures yet. So was having no social life worth the seven figure salary? Definitely, but how to you train yourself to have that level of self discipline?

The reason transcribing works so well is that during the lecture you miss a large percentage of the material to distractions, then on top of that you only remember a fraction of that. By transcribing the lecture you get exposed at least once to 100% of the material covered, then you can re-enforce what you've covered later when you review the transcripts.

you don't learn much in college, except...

[spineboy]

You don't learn much in college, except HOW to learn. The learning comes in grad school. Thus it's not the French degree that's important, but the completion of the degree proves that you have the skills/desires to complete the degree.

As far as them being totally worthless, my one semester of French in college has helped me talk to Haitian immigrants to diagnose their medical problems, so I say it is. Calling it totally worthless is like calling basic science research totally useless -there is something one can do with the basics of a good, solid education, regardless of what you do with it later.

Re:First Post

[dgatwood]

Hey, stop surfing around and reading /. and start taking notes!

The problem is that there are different types of learners. Some people learn visually, some aurally. Having some portion of the lecture notes on overhead slides helps the visual learners, but it isn't equivalent to being able to have precise notes that you can read, and people just can't take notes as rapidly by hand.

By taking away computers in the classroom, you unfairly bias grades towards the aural learners to a rather significant degree, so they'll just come up with other coping mechanisms like bringing camcorders, audio recorders, spy pens with camcorders built in, etc. so that they can record things, copy down copious notes, then read them later to study. This doesn't help those students. It merely means that they have to endure the lecture twice, once in person, once while copying it down.

This also means that a lot of those students will band together and have one person record it, so your class attendance will likely drop. Reduced attendance, in turn, discourages the discourse that is critical to higher levels of learning.

If processors were serious about making the learning environment better, they would give the students lecture notes and allow the students to read along if desired while they lecture, then take those notes with them as a study aid. When you do that, ta-da! No more distracted students desperately trying to take notes in class. Suddenly the students interact with you, and proper learning can take place.

Then, if students are still using laptops in class, it's either minimally to note things that the student thinks are important and/or note clarifications from in-class discussion or they're playing games/browsing the net. Either way, at that point, banning computers would be okay, though not particularly necessary.

As for the argument that requiring students to take notes by hand forces them to be selective about what they take notes on, and thus makes them better at filtering, to a large degree, that ability is dictated by biology. Some people (auditory learners) are wired for being able to quickly interpret things through their ears and separate the wheat from the chaff. Others (the visual learners who need the notes in the first place) are not. Maybe this ability can be taught to some degree, but it's more likely that you'll just get all the visual learners taking shorthand classes or using voice recorders, and unless you're training stenographers, you're really no better of than you would be just giving them a copy of the lecture notes in the first place.

surfing

[Anonymous Coward]

Surfing the web in class not only destroys any chance of you learning anything in class, it distracts everyone around you.

3.8/4.0 never brought my macbook to class

Ban teaching by powerpoint before you ban laptops

[jdbuz]

I've been out of academia since '95 but back then professors wrote on the board (with the occasional overhead graph) and students wrote on paper. My girlfriend recently went back to school and almost every class is taught by powerpoint presentation which nearly begs the students to bring in their laptops. If you want to ban the laptop then ban the lazy practice of teaching by powerpoint.