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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?'"
Doodling with pen and paper doesn't absorb the attention to the same degree as playing Facebook games and chatting with friends via IM.
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.
I bet there's someone in a lecture reading this right now.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
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 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).
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.
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.
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.
Living With a Nerd
If students are able to not pay attention, and still do well (enough) in classes, then make the classes more difficult.
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?
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.
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.
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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.
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...
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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.
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