F everyone’s I, students Facebooking in class is educators’ own fault. Oh, don’t worry, there’s “science” behind this, if by science you mean an article in the Harvard Crimson claiming that student Facebooking is inversely proportional to how awesome a teacher is.
(In Dr. Evil voice) Riiiiiiiight.
Been there, done that. Torn gazes from Facebook again and again. Seem a million classes and rocked them all. Didn’t like it one bit.
Look, if you’re going to define “teaching” as “successfully distracting you from your other distractions” let’s stop pretending this is education — you know, that thing that used to happen when learning wasn‘t defined merely by dopamine receptors firing? No? You don’t remember that? Of course you don’t, you’re online too much to have any long-term memory.
Yeah, I know, you think you’re “multitasking” and I do it too, Facebooking while emailing while watching TV – but I’d never claim I was accomplishing anything more than the most trivial of tasks, inefficiently. Also, assuming that Facebooking in class is a) inevitable and b) okay tells me you think a student’s mere physical presence in class makes a teacher’s job worthwhile. HAHAHAHAHA. If warm bodies are all that’s needed, bring on the pile of kittens.
I’m sympathetic to some of the article’s criticisms — professors are boring, they repeat what’s in the textbook or act as incorrigible gatekeepers of information when they’re not all that. This happens, true ’nuff. Of course the students fail to self-report how irritated they are when you don’t give them pre-packaged textbook info, or at least an easily digestible guide to “what’s going to be on the test.” And obviously I agree that web/information literacy needs to be front and center in education — but that doesn’t mean kids should always have their laptops open in class. In fact, were I to ever go back to teaching, I think I’d delineate online and non-online time periods in class, to make sure that being online had a specific intent rather than being treated as essential bodily function like respiration.
I kn0w it seems cool to ”disrupt” education if you’ve never had to stand up there and teach. But if you have, I think you can appreciate the irony of computer use being “disruptive” not in the newfangled positive sense of the word but in the old-fashioned sense, as in, not enabling good teaching to happen at all.
Anyway, current educators can have fun with all that. I’m returning to my latest web development project; maybe my next one will be a way to disrupt Facebooking students. ‘Cause according to the new rules, disruption is always good. Right?
This is why I prefer teaching lab-based (or, more generally, practical, exercise-based) classes. The students have to perform some sort of task in class, and I wander around and help them and answer questions. They get practical experience doing something, pay attention better, and I don’t have to lecture as much. Lecturing just doesn’t hold students’ attention. Maybe if I turned every lecture into a Discovery Channel-worthy extravaganza…
I agree that exercise-based learning is a necessary and helpful part of class and I built a lot of it into my classes. But lectures — yes, good-old fashioned, just-me-talking lectures – were also necessary to give them an overarching sense of what we were doing. Also, discussions are needed to get them beyond basic data analysis and into bigger questions.
I of all people have no problem telling teachers that they need better showmanship – but I’d also say that I wouldn’t expect people to have their laptops open at any other kind of performance, so I don’t think they need it open during a lecture. They can take notes the old-fashioned way, as far as I’m concerned.
I dunno, I don’t think I could hack taking copious notes in class by hand anymore, since I type so often and so much faster. Then again, actually putting pen to paper is an exercise in creating a longer-lasting memory by linking an idea to a physical movement.
One of my students this semester takes notes with a pen that has a built-in recording device – the device somehow denotes when he’s written something, so he can correlate his notes with my lecture. I’m a bit creeped out by having my lectures recorded, but it totally works for him.
Laptops are most problematic in large lecture courses, since I can’t really monitor their computer use and can’t forbid laptop use in the classroom. Last semester, I got an email from a student in the middle of lecture (based on the time stamp). He wanted to know why he’d done so poorly on the midterm, so I responded by simply pointing out that he’d written me an email during class and perhaps he should pay better attention. Never got another email from him.
Ah, but that’s the point, NON-copious notes. Good note-taking requires focus and on-the-spot decision making and muscle memory and all that good stuff…typing just means people are able to write down everything and absorb nothing. I also find being taped very very creepy – I mean, come on, what if you’re having an off day? And hey, aren’t we supposed to avoid being canonical gatekeepers, so can we please not put this stuff “on the record.”
I’ve had students do the email in class thing too – nicely played!
I love that anecdote! And I also want to point out that the last I knew, very few laptops, or even netbooks, require Internet access at all times. If you’re using them to take notes (or, at wopro sardonically suggests, to engage in transcription), then do you really need the wireless card to be turned on?
My students know, both from observation AND because I tell them upfront, that despite my sincere best efforts, neither I nor the class discussions will be spellbinding during every second. But if the rule is going to be, “whenever someone isn’t being interesting, I’ll tune out and do something else”, then I’m afraid that quite a few students will find themselves being tuned out by their own instructors…
@Vance That’s a good way of putting it! I’d add that *life* isn’t always spellbinding – where are these people getting that idea – and yeah, what about instructors’ own amusement? Ha!
Ahem. Got to crawl behind the shield of anonymity for this one.
I could go on for days about this matter. I actually have started incorporating dedicated computer lab time into my classes–I often teach comp courses that stretch on for 3+ hours–and, provided that I have good stuff going on in the non-computer lab time, things work just fine. Students don’t complain, the class is productive, I can ban all electronic gadgetry from class at certain times while embracing it wholeheartedly during others. Everyone wins.
However, in my other position in a disability services office, I have become quite suspicious of the way that “laptop use” is given out as an official accommodation for students. I haven’t worked in this job forever, but I’ve worked here long enough to know that I have seen very, very, very . . . very, very, very few students whose fine motor skills make it excessively burdensome to hand write notes. Frankly, I don’t know why we uncritically think that using a laptop helps students “process” information more efficiently. Most of them can’t type well at all–home keys? what are they?–and even those who can type do not need to type out everysinglelastwordtheprofessorssayswhenhesaysitwitjoutpausefortheentirellengthoftheclasswithoutinterruption . . . And that is how most of them type, which leads me to believe 1) that they are not doing a whole lot of processing (they’re mindlessly copying at best) and 2) they’re just screwing around online, because oftentimes, they’ll keep typing when the professor isn’t saying anything. I regularly run workshops for law students, and I see that behavior all of the time.
I think is exactly how it should be done: DELIBERATELY. Because, yeah, sure there are very constructive and helpful ways to use computers in the classroom, and I’m all for a division between computer time and non-computer time. It just seems to me that these tech types really do assume that the computer MUST be helpful at all times, which is just as bad as thinking that they’re harmful at all times (what they accuse teachers of). Balance, right??
Re: the typing, I’m 100% sure it doesn’t help anyone (who doesn’t have a disability, I mean). See above – they’re not making any choices about what material to highlight and they’re sure as hell screwing around in the meantime.
Hmm. If I was on Facebook during class, it was usually because the professor was lame. That might have been because I always took notes by hand, though, so pulling out my laptop was either to look at PDFs of class readings/Google something that no one in the class could figure out or to go on Facebook because I was bored. I’m sure if I’d had it open on a regular basis I would’ve ended up on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or whatever.
btw, Sgt – your students can’t type? That REALLY surprises me. Starting in about third or fourth grade (1998) we were all required to take touch-typing classes as part of our school curriculum. I don’t know anyone my age who isn’t a pretty decent typist, but then my class biases are probably showing.
Well I don’t deny the basic premise, namely that bored students are more likely to screw around on their laptops. Sure. But that rather predictable obversation has been twisted into yet another messed-up “standard” of good teaching, viz. that a good teacher should be able (or required?) to compete with Facebook — like somehow, Facebook/laptops must be involved at all times. And, as always, there’s no discussion of what the students’ responsibilities are here.
No, I agree. In my roundabout way, I was trying to say that if you have your laptop out, you’re probably going to end up on FB at some point because no lecture is ever riveting for every single second of every single minute of every single class. I don’t think that laptops are good for taking notes, probably at least in part because I’m a pretty good typist who can type quickly without quite realizing what’s appearing on her page.
Eileen,
I might be overstating my point. I do that from time to time. My point is that *oftentimes* laptop use is granted as a means to allow students to process information more efficiently. There are other reasons that laptops are granted as accommodations, but let’s just stay here for a second.
I agree that this kind of accommodation can work in some cases. However, as a professor who does research and as someone who works full time in an office environment, I type–*a lot.* Am I efficient? Sure. But can I type? Not really.
What I mean is that right now, as I’m typing this very comment, I have to look at the screen, back down at my hands, at the keys themselves, then work backward to proofread–all because I learned to type DiY style, which makes me about as good at this sort of thing as Kurt Cobain was at playing the guitar. I’m a passable mess at typing.
In other words, I’m not a typist. Typists don’t do all of the things that I do and that, judging by the quantity of typos I see in student papers, my students do.
Therefore, I have to wonder how much the laptop is actually helping students process information when the interface–again, in some circumstances–actually inserts more distractions into the whole process of notetaking. Sure, notes do not need to be in pristine condition. However, they do need to be taken efficiently so that students can actually focus on what is going on in class. I don’t know for sure that laptops universally allow for that kind of attention.
To be clear, paper and pen notetaking doesn’t allow for that, either. I’m just calling foul ball on the argument that laptops are some kind of panacea for attentional difficulties.
No, I agree with you! I was just surprised to hear that your students aren’t automatic touch-typers, given that they’re likely about my age and my experience has been that people my age learned to touch-type almost as soon as we learned to write.
This is a very interesting piece as you are looking at the issue from multiple angles. On the one hand, it is important for professors to reimagine their role–we are a long way from the time when the professors job was to “profess” because professors had a monopoly on content–and so the idea that professors deliver, or even enhance content, must be discarded. (This is not to disparage the traditional lecture format, which can be important and useful, but has become less effective as content delivery.)
On the other hand, it is also true that it has become very difficult to teach when the job is to distract from other distractions, as you put it very nicely. The additional issue is simply the empirical fact that students are not reading outside of class. So although I have tried to style my class as an analysis of content rather than delivery, it is impossible to do that work if the pre-work of actually *reading* the content has not been accomplished.
Thanks!
Thank you! And I agree, lectures aren’t so much about delivering canonical content (what students used to get by doing the reading) as about supplementing and (dare I say it) motivating. I too had had to re-design classes based on non-reading, another reason I get kind of steamed when people assume that students are always prepared and eager to learn, ha! But of course I realize some profs are just…boring.
My university is a dropout factory (though not officially so listed due to a technicality). It’s everyone’s fault (except mine, of course). My “no texting” policy during elementary Math courses, the courses most likely to make a student quit, led to such howls of protest that my chair and dean urged me to stop.
So now I say “fuck it”, let them play in the matrix, fail them, and accept the praise for improving my teaching evaluations.
Machiavelli would approve, on many counts.
“I think I’d delineate online and non-online time periods in class, to make sure that being online had a specific intent rather than being treated as essential bodily function like respiration.”
Maybe we need to flip it and think about when and why “non-online” has a specific intent? Mostly we haul students from far and wide into the room because we’ve always done it.
Sometimes I start a class by pointing out to students the value of the time that they’ve agreed to put aside in being in the room, both in the context of the remaining hours in their life and in terms of the things they could do with the time instead. Morality and lost earnings: either can be focusing. So, that time commitment to all being together at the same time having been made, why not use it well? In general, provided there’s enough time to get settled into the idea of not trying to be in six places at once via the social web, it seems to work.
I have a colleague who starts her classes with a meditation. Weirdly, this works too.
Keeping the emphasis off Facebook has the handy side effect of keeping the emphasis off Facebook …
I think it’s a good idea to consider the intent of whatever we’re doing; I was also a big fan of non-classroom time, i.e. one-on-one conferences, or time off for students to work on papers. I also think there can be a very productive place for online chats and such. Still, I find it easier to assume that the act of gathering together, in a real space, without distractions is going to be more valuable than attempting e-chats with people you hardly know.
Of course that’s only true if everyone at the gathering is invested; if not, fuck ‘em, fine, let’s make this as convenient and non-useful as possible for everyone involved, and let everybody choose which online game to play while not paying attention to Skype.
[...] the classroom” article, but I will mention that the response to it that I liked the best came from Worst Professor Ever, who noted: I know it seems cool to “disrupt” education if you’ve never had to stand [...]
For two years in grad school, half of my classes were in computer classrooms. It made sense that they were in there (only classes that required use of computers for class material, like programming were held in that room), but even when I wanted to not be tempted by Facebook and Twitter, it was incredibly hard to resist, and I’m convinced that the fact that the temptations were there actually actively made the professor less interesting. The only option to avoid the temptation would have been to turn the monitor off.
In a similar vein, I found that articles which I printed out and read while holding a pen stayed with me much better (and still do!) than those articles which I merely read on the screen. During class, I could recall better what articles said when I had printed them out, even if I left the printout at home, than if I had read it on a screen and had the article open on the computer in front of me.
And regarding typing, I’ve had to do transcribing from scanned pdfs of 17th century print material (no cut and paste available for those yet) so that I could quote it in a paper. I always was amazed at how easy it was to type whole paragraphs with almost no mistakes in typing but without really noticing what any of the words meant. The situation when listening and typing is probably slightly different, but I could easily imagine students typing word for word and not following much of the meaning at the sentence level.
I really do think tech is addictive; I’ve got pretty good self-control, but I do reach for my smart phone like a teddy bear, and sure, if I’m online I just start clicking around. And I’ve had similar experiences with pen/paper and transcribing archives. This is yet another reason I find it irritating to be told, without evidence, that computers are solve everything by making classrooms more “efficient”. I become more and more obvious to me that modern “efficient” means paying no attention to the actual end result.
[...] Krauss (a.k.a. Worst Professor Ever) argues that students Facebooking in class is not just an indicator that professors are boring, as a [...]
Old picture, but look – everybody does it!
http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/solitaire.asp
Obviously, the problems of the American people are failing to keep our politicians engaged, and it’s entirely the fault of the American people.
I am a professor in a humanities discipline at a small liberal arts college. I write into my syllabi and announce in class on the first day that NO laptops are allowed in the classroom. None, ever, period.
I assign a lot of readings on PDF and I bring them up on the classroom computer so that we can refer to them on the screen as needed. This means that no-one has any reason to open a laptop in class, and I tell them right away that they’re not allowed to use their laptops. So far, this has worked (for several years now).
I don’t know if this would be possible at a large university with large lecture classes — my largest classes have about 35 students in them. But in this setting, it seems like the obvious answer to me.