Tbers,
Iąd be interested in how many of you (the teaching faculty) have had similar
experiences to what is described here and if you have policies limited
technology use in your classes.
Mr. James B. Greenberg
Director Teaching, Learning and Technology Center
Milne Library
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, New York 13820
email: [log in to unmask]
phone: 607-436-2701
fax: 607-436-3081
IM: oneontatltc
"Ignorance is curable, stupidity lasts forever"
Computers in college classrooms: 'A new way to not pay attention'
By ANDREA JONES
<http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/1005/mailto:[log in to unmask]>
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/18/05
Click, click, click. Tap, tap, tap. Those are the modern-day sounds
signifying that college students have mentally checked out of class.
Forget glazed-over eyes or drool pools on desks. Don't bother to check
whether magazines are stuffed in their textbooks. Crossword puzzles are out.
E-mail checking is in.
In the past five years, colleges across Georgia and around the country have
raced to create campuswide wireless networks that allow students to connect
to the Internet wherever they are, from tree-lined quadrangles to
trigonometry classes. And the instant access has generated some problems for
instructors, who are trying to figure out how to get students to log off
their computers long enough to listen.
Some instructors have banned laptop computers altogether. Others require
that students with laptops sit in the front row so that classmates behind
them can see exactly what's on their screens. Some say that if students
decide to surf the Web instead of pay attention in class, it's not the
instructor's job to play lifeguard and rescue them if they drown
academically.
Georgia Tech junior Joseph Duero said he learned from experience to keep his
computer stored securely in his backpack during lectures. Duero, a computer
science major, said he used to try to type his notes on the computer during
class but found himself wandering to non-class-related Web sites and chat
rooms.
"It's distracting, and it's hard to not play on the Internet," he said. "If
people are on their laptops, they are usually not listening to the
professor."
Duero said he and other students once saw a classmate surfing pornography
Web sites in the middle of a lecture. "The females in the class sitting
behind him were really offended," he said. "They ended up telling the
professor."
If students are given a chance to browse the Internet in class, they
probably will, said Cornell University researcher Helene Hembrooke, who has
co-authored studies of student laptop behavior for Cornell's Human Computer
Interaction Laboratory.
In 2001 and 2002, Hembrooke and other researchers gave a group of students
laptop computers and unrestricted access to the Internet. They then
monitored students' usage and compared it with their end-of-course grades.
The study showed that those who spent just a brief time clicking around
different sites during class were not negatively affected, but the longer
students browsed, the lower their grades.
Even when students knew they were being watched, they still went outside
their course content, clicking on everything from stock-trading sites to
social networks, Hembrooke said.
"If they got sucked into sites, they weren't getting the lecture content,"
she said.
Georgia Tech professor Bridget Heneghan, who teaches English composition to
undergraduates, said she asks students who bring computers to sit up front.
Just a few of the 25 students in her class bring them, but she said she's
noticed them furtively clicking back to class-appropriate Web sites when she
walks around the room.
"This is just a new way for them to not pay attention," Heneghan said.
Colleges, for the most part, have left laptop policies up to individual
instructors.
Del Dunne, vice president for instruction at the University of Georgia, said
UGA does not have an overall policy on using computers in classrooms. "The
overall advantages [of the wireless network] far outweigh any negatives," he
said.
Frank Limehouse, a professor in UGA's Terry College of Business, said he
encourages students to bring laptops to class to help in taking notes. He
said he doesn't take attendance in his large lecture classes, which have 200
to 300 students, and lets students decide how often to attend and what to do
with their computers once they get there.
"If they come to class, I assume they are here to learn," Limehouse said.
Some instructors say they ban computers and other electronic devices to
protect students sitting around the users from being distracted.
D.J. Wu, an associate professor in information technology management at
Georgia Tech, said he enacted a no-laptop and no-cellphone policy to limit
interruptions and extraneous noise during class discussion.
As for keeping students on task?
"We have lots of pop quizzes," Wu said.
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