Professor Bans Laptops from the Classroom 1260
An anonymous reader writes "USAToday is reporting that students are up in arms over a University of Memphis Professor who has decided to ban laptops from her classroom. Earlier this month Professor Entman sent an email warning to her students to bring paper and pens to take notes and leave the laptops at home. From the article: '"My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing," Entman said Monday. "The computers interfere with making eye contact. You've got this picket fence between you and the students."'"
obvious solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:obvious solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:obvious solution (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a growing trend for schools to offer podcasts [google.com] of lectures as well as information about the admissions process.
Re:Emailing Students (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Purpose of lecture time (Score:1, Interesting)
Now that I am a University tutor/TA, I have students in my tutorials and workshops sitting with their laptops chatting on MSN Messenger constantly. This isn't a problem as far as I am concerned, I really don't care if they want to pay attention, it doesn't hurt me.
However, one thing I can't stand is when students sit on MSN Messenger relaying the tutorial to students who were too lazy to come along. They constantly interrupt with questions from the students they are chatting to. These questions are often totally irrelevant to the discussion. What is worse is when they relay the information incorrectly to the others, leading to students insisting that "John said you said X", when X is blatantly false.
Man I'm torn. (Score:5, Interesting)
I got in trouble though. You see, at least 3 of my profs wanted us to not only keep notebooks, but turn those notebooks in at intervals for review. WTF?
So...I saved them all was word documents, and turned them in as a zip file. The profs were note amused.
They wanted sprial-bound notebook and handwriting. How could I prove my notes were my own otherwise?
I had to take it to the school's administration and finally they accepted my notes...begrudgingly. I wound up failing one of the classes however because my notes were not..."lengthy" enough? It seems that despite I type faster than I can handwrite (and I can actually ready my typing later!), my notes seemed shorter and smaller because well, they WERE smaller. I was using a variable-width font, about 10 point to be exact. I was so mad. I told her to count letters or words if she must to compare against other students, but to no avail. I think more than anything she wanted to make an example out of me.
Seems I was actually just way ahead of the curve and getting bushwhacked for it.
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:obvious solution (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's next? (Score:2, Interesting)
At least for a chemist worked (me!), I did not took notes, and if I did, it's about 10% every other classmate did.
I used (not in school anymore) to focus my attention on what was being said, and where could I read it if needed, solve samples and problems, that's it
I don't keep more in memory by writing than actually reading from sources, so I didn't took notes almost as a rule unless some teacher required it to pass the assignature.
It took me up to a Ph.D. that I haven't finished yet, but hopefully do this year, and I cant tell that I know enough of my field as others, and I even took time to learn the sysadmin job and web developer (yeah with php but I do productive stuff with it!).
I guess there is always someone for everything
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:1, Interesting)
Whan I went to school... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, laptops weren't quite as elegant in the early-to-mid 90s and the geekiness factor of toting a laptop with you wherever you went was much higher. However, "the laptop guy" was pretty high up on the "piss of the class list"--probably higher up than the "just doesn't get it and asks too many stupid questions that should be saved for after class guy". Why was "laptop guy" the target of such derision?
* he was being a showoff--"look at the fancy toy I bought courtesy of the Bank of Mum and Dad...too bad for you with your big loans and Kraft Dinner Diet that you can't be elite like me" (remember this was before the age of mandatory laptops for students)
* the laptop screen projected an "attention force field" that caused him to zone out and fall out of the loop...at times this would get bad enough that he became "just doesn't get it" guy.
* the constant clicking on the keyboard annoyed all neighbouring classmates
* his occasional bitching about the prof changing the overhead transparency too quickly, before he could transcribe it into his machine, grew annoying within a few weeks.
Perhaps you're personally a pretty nice guy, but I'd be willing to bet a number of people have quetly labelled you a "laptop loser", and if your professors knew you attitide towards their teaching methods (basically that they couldn't possibly know anything about teaching people) they might be somewhat offended.
There is another problem with "laptop losers" in the classroom...they're becoming "laptop losers" in the boardroom as well. The problem is getting bad enough that laptops are banned from most meetings where I work (for non-presenters only of course since we are still addicted to powerpoint here). So speaking from the corporate perspective I might offer this suggestion: if you plan to have a career outside academia then youd best be putting away your laptop during lectures so you can "learn to learn" effectively in an informational meeting and be a meaningful contributor to discussions when in the boardroom.
All my freshman classes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:3, Interesting)
Case in point: a university has two professors teaching thermodynamics: one who is tolerable, and one who nobody likes. Predictably, everybody signs up for a section taught by Professor Tolerable, and yet somehow, by some "clerical mistake," the professors swapped sections just before the first day of classes. After showing up for the first day of classes and seeing who would be teaching, easily one-third of the students in that class dropped it then and there.
Schools don't like the idea of "don't take classes taught by professors you don't like," because otherwise the lousy-but-tenured professors become a cash sink, teaching no more than that handful of students that didn't know any better. It is to their advantage to use tactics like the bait-and-switch to all but require students to take classes taught by bad professors (the very same professors who seem to be loudest about "It's my classroom!").
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you ever been in a classroom where one guy is clicking away so loudly at the keys that you can hardly concentrate? So, you sit on the other side of the room.
But now, in front of you are two people IM'ing each other, and showing each other music-video websites.
It IS distracting. It's hard enough to focus, but it's even worse with so many more distractions.
Come to class if you want to learn, but if you want to socialize, take your laptop and go sit somewhere else.
As for the loud typer, please be gentler to your laptop - you don't have to hit the keys so damn hard...
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to know a lawyer who as a law student modified a briefcase so he could conceal a tape recorder to tape his law school classes in the early 70's. From the tapes, he would the lectures to paper and then sell copies of the transcribed lectures to other students. While he was at work making deliveries, he would listen to the tapes instead of the radio as he drove.
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you think a theacher has to accept that a student tells him with a loud voice that he does not give a shit about his course ? Listening to a mp3 player is exactly that.
Your argument about "it does not disturb others" is typical of geeks: it totally ignores the social dimension.
Another Good Way (Score:5, Interesting)
He would lead a discussion of the topic by prompting questions and answers from the students. During the discussion, he would create (on the chalkboard) a running outline of the topics with some details, but not EVERYTHING we talked about. As he wrote on the board, we students wrote in our notebooks, and then went back to the discussion.
I learned more from this method than any other I have used since.
Mr. U., your teaching methods kicked ass!
She has every right, but she's still wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bad note taking habits have nothing to do with the tools you use. Some students take too many notes with paper. Some take too few on a laptop. She's essentially saying that good note taking habits cannot be taught; that sort of defeatism doesn't make her sound like that great of a teacher to me.
Besides, I think she'll be amazed when some of her students manage to avoid thinking about the material even without the assistance of modern gadgetry.
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would you want a laptop to record what was said? A micro recorder is cheaper and doesn't weigh as much. I never bothered to conceal it ether. I just walked into class and set it on the desk. I would use it later that night to review the notes I had taken.
Personally, I would never bother to carry a laptop to school unless I had all the books in pdf, or some other format, on it. I was averaging between 20 and 30 pounds of books between classes. Adding another 6 to 10 pounds? No thanks.
To bad someone can't come out with a nice ebook reader about the size of a good text book, a standard ebook format for all the books, and sell it for under 200 bucks.
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:5, Interesting)
My aunt once told me that teachers have the biggest egos in the world; I found it rather interesting that she would say this, because she was an English teacher for more than 20 years. However my recent personal experience has supported this. I got a new boss not too long ago and couldn't seem to get along with him no matter how hard I tried, which was something I'd never experienced before. Every time I disagreed with him on a technical issue, he would get so mad you could practically see steam shooting out of his ears. I explained the situation to a friend of mine who worked as a project manager for another company and he asked me to tell him about my new boss. I said, "Well, he's done some programming, some management, and he teaches programming part time at the local university."
"Hold it right there", my friend said. "Every time I've had to work with someone who came out of a university teaching environment, it was very difficult. The reason why is because they come from an environment where they're always right."
He had hit the nail right on the head.
Realizing what type of person I was dealing with, I backed off and quietly tried to just do my job. However after about a month of him constantly looking over my shoulder, rushing me, and criticizing my work, he got what he wanted: I made a mistake on a project. He then pulled me into the VP's office and wrote me up for "poor performance". I then told the VP that I wanted to go back to my old department (a demotion which I gladly accepted), and have since been working happily for a nice boss who has a strong technical background and, more importantly, a laid back personality.
Lesson learned.
OT but relevant (Score:3, Interesting)
In real life, bleating that you did something good 2 months ago isn't going to help you solve the problem you are facing now ! Similarly, more and more exams are using multiple choice systems for the answers. well, I'm sorry, either you know it or you don't. You can take an "educated" guess when the answer is written in front of you - real life isn't like that.
Consequently people are leaving schools thinking that they've learned a few subjects, when all they've done is memorise a few aspects. Utterly useless in the workplace. and it seems to spread into all their other dealings where they are expected to think and evolve solutions. People take a driving test, and then drive that way for the rest of their life, except they get worse as they forget what they learned. The test is to demonstrate a basic and safe understanding of driving. It is the minimum not the be all and end all. But they have the certificate so that's all they ever aspire to.
As for laptops in the classroom, well that is just exacerbating the problem, unless you can touch type without looking at the screen, and are highly skilled at it, then you aren't listening to the tutor at all. The only reason you are taking the "notes" is to cram them the night before the exam. Which means you aren't learning, or understanding, just parroting someone elses thoughts. And then political pressure arises because so many people are so average, that they lower the standards so that people feel better.
And so the cycle goes. It's amusing that the UK govt. is now talking about streaming different ability levels in schools. They're the ones who abolished it in the first place !. No one was allowed to be any better than anyone else, so they all had to take the same courses in the same classes. Now they reap the consequences.
When I did maths at school, calculators were only allowed if you were in the top stream, ie you had demonstrated that you could do it in your head anyway. These days, calculators are required for all pupils. They can't add, subtract, multiply or do division of even simple problems without a gadget to do it for them. That sucks, and they are worse off for it, and so are we.
As another poster pointed out, the govt. doesn't want an educated population, because they might actually realise what's being done to them. It amuses me that all these kids with their degrees are worthless in the real world, but it doesn't matter because they all end up in the "service industry" ie office workers. And they think they're clever. As long as they've got a shiny BMW and the latest TV and HiFi they think they are the dogs bollux. In actual fact the govt. has them by the bollux, because they can't do anything else.
</RANT>
(breathe....)
what was the movie ...... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a modern day version of this. The next optimization will be that the teacher will put the entire lecture up on the projector as a powerpoint; scheduled to start at 13:01.
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:2, Interesting)
This is true far too often. Sucks for the student a lot of the time. I just wish there was some sort of discussion about ethics in the university setting. Is it really appropriate/ethical for someone to be working a job where there's a solid portion of it they do REALLY BADLY? Or even what's ethical for professors in general. I've had teachers in the past teach stuff wrong. Then re-teach it different, but still wrong. The didn't know the material. I've had teachers announce on the first day of class that there is an extra weekly class meeting that we are all required to go to despite the fact that this was not listed anywhere in official registrar time schedules (and to think that I moved to a new city to attend this program because it was clear that we had Friday's off -- I needed the day to work and pay bills or else I couldn't do school). Another teacher actually thought it was appropriate to use an entire class, for the entire semester, for an experiment he was running that wasn't even related to the course material. And he even admitted that there was a good chance that the students wouldn't learn nearly as much from what he was doing. It was clear that not once did he stop to ask if this was ethical.
Feynman might agree. (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a physics professor, I think it was in a lab class, who used to tell a story about Feynman -- which I can't find any reference to online, so it may be apocryphal, but it made a good story -- that he tought a very small advanced E&M class once, and on the first day of class, when the students were all sitting there, with their notebooks and pencils ready, he walked in and told them to put everything away. No notes, no calculators. The theory being that most of the time when you're struggling to copy down an equation or a diagram off of the board, you're not listening to the lecture, or really thinking about the concepts that are being presented. Given that you're not really going to memorize most of the equations -- they're not really the "take home" knowledge that you retain at the end of the semester, but the concepts are, it's better to pay attention to those. You also end up better prepared for a no-notes test that way. (Although you can argue about the validity of closed-book tests as actual simulators of real-world knowledge.)
My professor (the one who was relating the story) didn't go quite this far, but took a good compromise; he put all his notes and diagrams up on the board before the beginning of class, and gave everyone ten minutes to copy them down before class began. You weren't prohibited from taking notes during the lecture, but it wasn't recommended.
Although I don't want to give that particular aspect of his style all the credit (the guy was also an excellect lecturer as well as being an all-around brilliant physicist), I remember more of the material from that class than I do from anything else I've taken at that level.
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember talking with her the first time we met and she was mentioned that she got turned down for tenure. She had three different offers from other schools, and the lowest offer had her at over double what my school had been paying her. Frankly, it pissed me off a bit. Here we had what I understood to be an excellent teacher and she essentially lost a popularity contest and was leaving.
Re:I Wouldn't Call Her a Luddite (Score:2, Interesting)