One of the greatest challenges a professor faces today is how to handle technology. Today’s Wall Street Journal had a great little article by a professor about “E-Etiquette.” I agree with most of his recommendations, so I think it is worth a read.
I have a love – hate relationship with technology. I find computers, tablets and phones to be really useful tools in the classroom. I love having students look up a topic we are discussing to share more with the class, and I have totally embraced text response polling. But we have all lost our ability to sit and listen, which is how I learned in college. I don’t judge my students; if I sat with my laptop in front of me for an hour, I too would be tempted to check Facebook or Rue La La (by the way, I never should have scheduled my class for 11:00 a.m. because all the best Rue flash sales will be sold out before I get back to my office). Even Senator McCain played poker on his phone during an important senate hearing. I aspire to be so interesting that you can’t turn away for the entire class, but all of us have boring moments. The problem is that abuse of technology is a huge distraction for everyone else.
The kicker is that I struggle with this at home now that my children are old enough to use technology. So I basically spend most of my waking hours yelling at someone to get off their computer. And then spend hours on my own iPad. The bottom line is that I have not found the answers yet. I try to use technology for good, not “evil,” and encourage all my students (and my kids) to do the same.
3 Comments
Philip Chen posted on September 8, 2013 at 3:59 pm
I agree that using technology in class could have mixed results among students, especially in large classes where its harder for the professors to see who’s getting distracted. In my experience, when somebody goes on facebook, the person next to him/her will also feel like its okay to get distracted since “everybody else” is also on facebook/instagram. I know this because it’s actually happened to me in previous classes.
Nick Li posted on September 8, 2013 at 4:42 pm
I’m definitely guilty of this in certain classes, especially large lecture halls. However most of the time I know when I’m screwing myself over by ignoring what the teacher is saying by reading the news instead of paying attention to what’s going to be on the next exam.
Smaller classes with an emphasis on discussion and class participation (20% of your grade!) definitely help to mitigate the issue with people surfing the net in class.
KP posted on September 10, 2013 at 7:23 pm
I definitely agree that it is extremely hard to stay focused during class while using any sort of technology (phone, laptop or tablet.) Even when I try to take notes on laptop I tend to open internet and surf various websites. Therefor I believe that it is much better for learning itself to stick to no technology in classroom. Or there are great options like the computer class in SMG (with huge screens next to each table) where people can use computers if needed but the whole class sees what are you doing. Therefor people stay focused and actually learn.