7 ms·

Why Clay Shirky just banned technology use in class

112 points by juanplusjuan 12y ago

sghodas 12y ago
For some reason the article didn't link to the actual Medium post: https://medium.com/@cshirky/why-i-just-asked-my-students-to-put-their-laptops-away-7f5f7c50f368 https://medium.com/@cshirky/why-i-just-asked-my-students-to-...
- polarix 12y ago
  Guessing this is because they wanted the more exciting headline, which the Washington Post was more than happy to provide.
- privong 12y ago
  The original was on HN a few weeks ago too, but apparently did not get much traction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8297995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8297995
a3_nm 12y ago
Having both used "technology" (laptops, phones) during classes as a student and taught to students which used them, I still can't make up my mind about this debate. Arguments for technology use: - There are legitimate uses of computers to take notes, so banning technology overall seems misguided, and it's hard to ban specific usages meaningfully. (A better approximation would be to block Wi-Fi/phone in rooms. It takes much more dedication to get distracted with no connectivity, and arguably connectivity isn't necessary if you want to remain focused. That being said, people could still legitimately want to look things up during the class...) - It is each student's choice to pay attention or not, it doesn't look like you would want to force them. (The article does a good job of justifying this claim, though it goes a bit far in saying that students just cannot help but get distracted. Having just a text editor to take notes requires some discipline but it's not entirely impossible either.) - It is a valuable lesson to figure out that multitasking is a sure way to both not get anything done and not get anything out of a class, and maybe you need to experience it yourself. If everyone prevented students from realizing this, maybe they would still need the time to figure it out later. People who were adults when laptops and phones came around are now figuring out about this at the workplace. - Sitting in a class and not paying attention is not even necessarily a mark of disrespect. As a student, sometimes if I had one free hour with nothing better to do, I would go to an a-priori irrelevant class to work on homeworks/projects. So I could work if the class indeed wasn't relevant to my interests, but sometimes I had pleasant surprises and ended up paying attention. Sitting in the class and working silently on something else would seem disrespectful, but what if I was doing this rather than not showing up? Arguments against technology use: - It's a hard lesson to figure out that multitasking is often a bad idea. It may require sometimes kicking you out of the habit for you to realize the difference. (I'm not yet sure if this is a lesson that we are "getting", as a society.) - The second-hand distraction effect is real: of course, it's harder to pay attention individually if people around you are not. (Although it's not clear whether it should be your responsability to not be influenced. The line between passively and actively distracting fellow students is quite a bit blurry.) - Even more viciously than that, even if a student is individually dedicated to paying attention no matter what happens around, a room where 90% of people are listening feels very differently from a room where 10% of people are, from the teacher's perspective. When you're addressing a sparse group of survivors among a mass of people who zoned out, it's hard, you feel bad, and the quality drops. Teaching isn't a one-way process where the teacher is not influenced by the students and the students individually retain what they want out of the teaching, so the simple reasoning about students individually doing what they want doesn't exactly apply. So I don't know what the right answer is. I think a minimal step in the right direction is to encourage people who use computers for other things than work to sit towards the back, and encourage those who want to pay attention to sit towards the front. In this way, second-hand distraction is reduced (you can't see the screen of someone sitting behind you) and the teacher is motivated by what they see in the front row.
- slvv 12y ago
  "So I don't know what the right answer is. I think a minimal step in the right direction is to encourage people who use computers for other things than work to sit towards the back, and encourage those who want to pay attention to sit towards the front. That said, second-hand distraction is reduced (you can't see the screen of someone sitting behind you) and the teacher is motivated by what they see in the front row." Totally agree with you - that's basically what I came up with, too. Screens to the back seems like an easy enough guideline to follow.
- Swizec 12y ago
  As someone who does a lot-ish of public speaking at conferences as such, let me offer my 2c on tech in audiences. At a conference, people are always going to be using technology. They are always going to be checking their phones, and they are always going to have a thousand things going on. That's just the fact. They're there for a whole day, or even multiple days, emails need to be checked, sometimes coding needs to be done, sometimes they just want to check up on what the talks in other tracks are about and consider switching. Therefore it is my job as a presenter to make sure nobody is checking their phone. If I am interesting enough, laptops start closing, phones stop being checked, sometimes they even go into pockets. As soon as I lose the audience, all that tech comes back out. And I think that's what a lot of professors forget - BE MORE INTERESTING. Have a better presentation style. Take public speaking classes. Do something to make yourself stand out above the distraction of internet and devices. Because here's the thing, those professors who [have to] make attendance mandatory, are without exception the worst presenters. Same goes for banning tech. If you ban it, you're just saying "I suck at public speaking and I would rather you deal with that problem than I" And yes, it is an amazing feeling when you start with a room of a hundred people each looking at a different screen and end with a room of a hundred people looking straight at you with all laptops closed and phones/tablets put away. It's got nothing to do with tech and everything to do with winning your audience over.
  - a3_nm 12y ago
    > At a conference, people are always going to be using technology. They are always going to be checking their phones, and they are always going to have a thousand things going on. In computer science conferences in research (the area I'm familiar with) this tends to happen as well, but there is a venue (Schloß Dagstuhl) which has (among other interesting traditions, such as mandatory random seating assignments at meals) a policy of not having WiFi in the conference rooms. I think it is clear that had the WiFi been there almost everyone would have used it, yet somehow I only heard people talk positively of the no-WiFi policy... There is, I think, a sizeable proportion of people who see connectivity-induced multitasking as a weakness, and are happy when given an occasion to not indulge in it. > If I am interesting enough, laptops start closing, phones stop being checked Sometimes this is not enough. If you started with a room full of people doing something else, and the talk is sufficiently technical so that you can't start paying attention midway through, sometimes you can be faced with the very hard task of catching people's attention during the first few minutes when they still haven't noticed that someone else was talking... > those professors who [have to] make attendance mandatory (A side point, but from my experience of the university system (in France), mandatory attendance in classes is usually a policy set by the institution more than by the individual teachers.) I agree with your general point that being anti-tech in classes should not be an excuse for giving bad classes. But I don't think that's enough to dismiss the feeling. There's also another thing: professors teaching their students may not feel like it is their duty to earn their audience's attention, to have a slick and attractive presentation style, so as to compete with any possible distraction... They may feel like they can teach the class as they like, and it is the students' role to adjust. I think this balance between the professor's sense of entitlement and the students' varies a lot across cultures (also depending on how much the students pay for tuition, e.g., much less in France than in the US). But this is something where there can be a difference between classes at university, and conferences.
slvv 12y ago
"I’m coming to see student focus as a collaborative process." To me, this statement feels deeply condescending. I would much prefer to treat students as people making their own choices - for good or ill - so that they can deal with the consequences. If a student chooses not to pay attention in class to their disadvantage, they have every right to do that! I hope professors aren't pressured to become babysitters.
- 001sky 12y ago
  "If a student chooses not to pay attention in class to their disadvantage, they have every right to do that!" This misses the point. You should respect people when in their presence. Its a basic tenet of social interaction. People who (are so self absorbed to) dis-regard this ultimately do so at their own peril. Its not condescending--its literally the opposite.
- robotresearcher 12y ago
  Remember the students start at 18, and many have not had these choices before. They can really benefit from having expectations clearly explained to them. Profs in first year are responsible for setting norms. This is not the same as babysitting - it's part of the students' education. Not all 18 year olds make great decisions without some help.
- gault8121 12y ago
  This is akin to saying people have a right to smoke cigarettes in a room, because it is their choice. This behavior has a clear impact on other people. When you see the people to the right and left of you glued to their screens, its like they are not even there at all. This is extremely demotivating, and causes a chain reaction of inattention.
- chasing 12y ago
  Yeah, what do those stupid professors know about education? How dare they attempt to engineer an environment in which students can engage with new ideas and information, even if it's a little dry or difficult to understand at first. You should totally be allowed to waste their time and energy and occupy a seat in their class that could've gone to someone who might've valued the experience a bit more.
tomrod 12y ago
I've found Mike Munger's thoughts on this to be wise: http://www.theihs.org/academic/2011/12/19/faculty-debate-should-professors-allow-laptops-in-class/ http://www.theihs.org/academic/2011/12/19/faculty-debate-sho... He's for it.
kpennell 12y ago
Really wish my profs at UW Seattle would have done this. So many of my classes lacked discussion or engagement because so many people were chillin on Facebook. I think I also met fewer friends because of it. Very few of the people actually cared about getting an education and were instead just there to get the credits and then get a job (this was in the business undergrad). Having no devices might have forced people to engage out of sheer lack of an alternative.
- TheCowboy 12y ago
  I think it's true that it is more of a default now because of Facebook and phones, but it's incorrect to assume that classes were ripe with discussion and engagement before the 'Mobile Age'. Students have always been able to tune out and not participate in a class. It will likely always be dependent upon the abilities of the professor, and the students themselves. I also wouldn't dismiss people for being interested job prospects. The HN community may not have to worry about possible future un[der]employment, but it's a legitimate concern for most people.
  - sopooneo 12y ago
    While students have certainly always been able to tune out, I would argue there is a difference in degree when facebook is available.
thrush 12y ago
I think that in an ideal world, it is more effective to refrain from multi-tasking and instead to focus on an influx of information provided by a skilled teacher. Unfortunately, many classrooms do not represent the ideal world. Teachers may be unengaging, uninformed, or just plain not good. Students may be unprepared, overqualified, or uninterested. Sometimes there is simply a mismatch in expectations and understanding. If the professor and students are driven to overcome these inefficiencies, and work incredibly hard to avoid them, then and only then do I think that this "rule" should be put forth. Although, one could argue that students and professors should strive to achieve this goal in every setting.
guard-of-terra 12y ago
Why a leading professor of new media even teaches in class? Teaching in class to a medium-sized set (more than five but less than a thousand) of students is sooo old media.
cbd1984 12y ago
I wonder if he makes exceptions for assistive technology.
- leoc 12y ago
  He'd have to, or else lawsuits.
hawkice 12y ago
My first semester in college, in a general chemistry course, a professor eventually was tired of seeing all the kids on laptops, almost all of them assuredly playing solitaire, etc. So he told the entire class to stand up and turn around, and took every computer and pulled out the battery. Now, let me be clear: this guy was a great educator. I would show up an hour early every class and talk nonsense about chemistry, science, sometimes news-of-the-world. And he was literally the last full time Chemistry professor at the school, so he was invaluable as well -- if he left then they would have to scrap the chemistry major. After this event, I took a considerable amount of effort to make sure the event wouldn't be replicated, including a multipage report on failings and missed opportunities to the head of math and sciences. He was fired one semester later, the chemistry program shut down. I have no regrets. I honestly cannot imagine I was even the only one in the class to do anything. This is all by means of saying: be careful about your use of power. In the end, being right or wrong on that one issue is meaningless if your compulsion to exercise control over others is too rough or invasive.
- EliRivers 12y ago
  be careful about your use of power because you never know when some whiny, self-righteous snot with a massively inflated sense of preciousness will go crying to mommy.
- Crito 12y ago
  You, a freshman, got a chemistry department shut down because a professor pulled the battery out of your laptop? Bullshit. Which university was this?
- deleted 12y ago
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markbnj 12y ago
This is a tremendously good and well-written piece. I absolutely love the metaphor of the elephant and the rider, and of devices and social media "whispering" to the elephant. Although that is not the author's invention, bravo for a great use of it. I know a few young programmers who should read this about six times and have it tattooed on their forearms.
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Vektorweg 12y ago
As many pointed out, its a lack of motivation, flexibility and etiquette. * Instead of stoking motivation and interests, teachers often go the easy way and squeeze knowledge into students. Which leads to even more bored students with no chance that they start to learn by there own motivation. * There is a lack of flexilibity. You must learn specific things in specific time. Not even free courses can handle the temporar interest of the student and the students own specific interest. * And bad etiquette. When its up to you to visit a lecture or not, many students go anyway, because thats what society expects. Even when its a big waste of time and motivation.
shanusmagnus 12y ago
Shirky quotes Sana et al [1]: The results demonstrate that multitasking on a laptop poses a significant distraction to both users and fellow students and can be detrimental to comprehension of lecture content. I want to kiss all these people on the mouth. I feel like a cross between Don Quixote and the stay-off-my-lawn guy for fuming whenever someone sits down next to me when I'm trying to concentrate, and engages in a constant stream of messaging, or playing some game that's chirping and beeping and booping. There is such a thing as a 'tragedy of the attention commons' but it seems like nobody gives a shit about it. But maybe this piece, and this research, means the tide is about to change. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131512002254?np=y http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131512...
- wyager 12y ago
  > engages in a constant stream of messaging, or playing some game that's chirping and beeping and booping. That sounds like a people problem, not a technology problem. Might it be better to ask them to be quiet than to advocate the banning of all computers in the classroom, thereby screwing over everyone who uses computers for a good reason?
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sauere 12y ago
When i was still in school Tablets didn't exist so i can only tell from my experience using Laptops (old old shit, like first Intel Celeron generation). It was stupid. Work did not get done and i always felt we are just using them for "HAY WOW WE TECHNOLOGY NAO", not to actually do anything that increases production. Don't get me wrong. There are scenarios where Laptops are a great tool if a teacher knows how to use them, but overall i always felt they we're a big distraction. I could be wrong. Things have changed.
chasing 12y ago
I agree with his conclusion. Open laptops degrade the classroom experience -- especially when the classes (like Clay's) are meant to be both lectures and conversations. Behind laptops, too many students seem to treat the class itself like a television program that happens to be running in the background. Instead of something they need to actively engage with. Note-taking is the only thing I'm concerned about interfering with. I think note-taking can actually increase engagement with the content. Going back to pen and paper feels weird. But so does expecting students to just take notes on a device that, as Shirky notes, is pretty much designed for distraction.
- rjsw 12y ago
  I'm old enough to have been at college before laptops, back then it was perfectly possible to take written notes without really thinking about the lecture. The discipline has stayed with me though, I don't power up any of my toys if I'm at a conference.
- tfederman 12y ago
  When I take notes because I need to retain something, the writing part is more valuable than reviewing it later. And writing on paper is important, typing isn't effective for that part. When I take notes just to record details that I can look up later on demand it's faster to type and there's no downside. But that matches work more than it does school.
austenallred 12y ago
The notion of using a computer to be productive in class is desirable, but walk into your average college classroom and you'll see ~50% of the computer users on Facebook. In one of my classes the kid in front of me would straight up watch Netflix or The Daily Show. And bear in mind this was a top private school. I used a computer through most of my classes in college to "take notes." Personally I took a computer to every class, and was taking notes <10% of the time. Most of the time I was reading stuff that I did care about (and do use today, as opposed to most of what was being taught to me in class), but the notion of using a computer in the class to be more productive in the class was just a cop-out I used to pursue what I was interested in.
z3t4 12y ago
While multitasking is bad for productivity, most workplaces require multitasking ... Some people even perform better while multi-tasking. So I think it varies a lot from person to person.
beloch 12y ago
I went through undergrad at a time when it was relatively uncommon for students to use a laptop in class. There were usually a couple students in a typical lecture using them and they got a lot of flack from their neighbors if they were typing too loudly. In grad school, I recall sitting in on some lectures of a course I was TA'ing. In just a few years it seemed that a technological revolution had occurred. More students had laptops open than not. It was like sitting in a field of frantically mating crickets. The subject being taught was classical mechanics (for non-physics majors), so there were plenty of equations and diagrams. The students nearest to me seemed to have a variety of solutions. Some had tablets that allowed them to draw directly in their notes. Some had a pad of paper that they switched to. Others seemed to be ignoring anything they couldn't type. Suboptimal, to say the least! The really disturbing thing was how many laptops were not engaged in anything that remotely resembled note-taking. People were writing emails, browsing, sending text messages, watching T.V. shows, you name it. There was one kid sitting in the front row, happily watching South Park with a giant pair of headphones on. She clearly didn't care about the class, nor did she care about letting both the prof and everyone sitting behind her know about it. Why did this kid even bother showing up? I was just there so I'd know what was being covered, but I think I missed half of that class just gawking at how technology was being (mis)used. Even once I'd gotten over the initial shock and started paying attention, my eyes were repeatedly drawn to South Park being played on a huge 17" monitor in the first row. Hats off to Clay Shirky. I'm normally in favor of treating students like adults (even the childish ones), but laptop use has a big impact on people who aren't using them. If I'm running a lab or tutorial and people are being noisy in the hall, I close the door. I do what I can to give my students a good learning environment. Banning laptops and phones is no different.
- theoh 12y ago
  FYI it's "flak" not "flack". From, you know, the German.
  - Tenhundfeld 12y ago
    I agree with you, but FYI, many dictionaries are now listing flack as a variant spelling of flak. So, I wouldn't consider the OP technically wrong, despite flak being clearly better.
ahomescu1 12y ago
I'm surprised to see that the increased use of electronics in lectures hasn't started to make people doubt the merits of the lecture system itself. In my opinion, university has two main benefits: learning and socialization with like-minded people. Even before the occurrence of laptops and tablets, I always thought that lectures are a terribly inefficient way of achieving either of those goals. If I want to learn something, I go pick up a book and read it myself, at my own pace. On the socialization side, a 30-to-1 forced conversation that takes 3 hours (or 1 hour, depending on the length of the lecture) is silly. Besides, I've seen very few professors who come to class to engage their students in a conversation; most just come with a set of slides and do a 3-hour slide-assisted monologue. I have always found the latter boring. I think universities need to get rid of lectures, and start to focus more on dynamic, spontaneous interactions between students and professors. For example, instead of having a 3-hours lecture every week, the professor could have 15 10-minute office hours sessions in his office.
trfen 12y ago
My main question is who is Clay Shirky, and why does what he does matter?
ThomPete 12y ago
I can't help to wonder whether the underlying questions isn't tech or no tech but class or no class.
Hoffmannnn 12y ago
It really is an interesting question, and made me think over the implications: On one hand, I exchanged $X,000 for the knowledge I would potentially gain from the class. It seems like I'm within my rights to intentionally NOT learn, and thus waste my money. On the other hand, other people also paid $X,000, possibly with the expectation that they would get engaging discussions with the whole class, rather than just the professor. So which is it? When you pay good money for a class, do you expect, in return, that the whole class participates? It seems like everyone would get better results that way, but then again, the whole class isn't getting compensated by you, so why should you expect anything from then in return? It is indeed a tragedy of the commons.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  The elephant (ha!) in the room is the fact that lectures are as good at passing on facts as any other method, but very bad for softer teaching goals, including debate and inspiration. Here's an informal article: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/lectures-dont-work-but-we-keep-using-them/2009141.article http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/lectures-dont-wor... And formal research: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic38998.files/Bligh_Ch1_and_Ch3.pdf http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic38998.files/Bligh... I'd guess Shirky's classes are more about promoting debate and asking questions than plain 'learn this' science/math/engineering lectures. So the lecture format - even with discussion - probably isn't very efficient for teaching anyway. Whether people are distracted by devices seems secondary. Perhaps it would be more useful to students to (say) work out a way to dramatise the effects of device addiction or some other Internet experience, so they can discover it for themselves and make their own decisions about distractions and cognitive loading. Banning devices might have some of that effect by accident. But I'd guess teaching a class on internet sociology while taking notes on paper is going to be kind of weird. (Full disclosure: I always used to hate writing paper notes. It's not unusual to lag behind the content, and it certainly never helped me understand what I was supposed to be learning.)
was_hellbanned 12y ago
I went to college in the late 90's, before laptops were really viable for use in lectures (despite what I recall from the 1986 movie Back to School). We did have our math class in the computer lab, so we could graph functions. Of course, I spent most of my time reading newsgroups and mailing lists, the equivalent of modern students on Facebook. Looking back, I really regret the use of technology. I'm talking about the computer distraction, but also the heavy reliance on advanced calculators like the TI-92 that did symbolic integration and differentiation. The classes were focused on making the graphs appear and getting answers, not on grasping the fundamental, underlying concepts. I'd prefer a strict paper and pencil analysis course. I also remember the countless student questions, "will this be on the test?" The basic concept of testing student knowledge is that you can only administer a test where a small set of questions are randomly distributed across the much larger subject matter. You aren't supposed to memorize the answers to some questions, you're supposed to demonstrate that you learned everything. I didn't even learn what learning is until a good fifteen years after I was done with school. I suspect the students engaging in these behaviors, also, don't understand what learning is, and will graduate having passed some tests without knowing much.
- jimmaswell 12y ago
  On the other side, I get annoyed at having to do a quadratic equation or matrix multiplication by hand for the millionth time because I can't have advanced calculators on the tests or quizzes. After you understand the concepts of those it becomes pointless to do them by hand so much. What am I getting out of manually multiplying two matrices? It prepares you for a situation that will pretty much never exist - not being able to look up a formula or make wolframalpha do some tedious algebra for you. This is what I like about physics tests; they tend to just give you a sheet full of all the formulas because if you don't understand the concepts of the material, then all the formulas in the world aren't going to help you. Physics professors tend to understand what's important more, in my experience.
- ScottBurson 12y ago
  I think the right answer to "will this be on the test?" is "I don't know yet".
Tenhundfeld 12y ago
My favorite lecture-style classes were ones where the prof (or more often a TA) would post notes for each lecture online. You still benefitted from taking your own notes, especially to remember what concepts the prof was really hammering home (and likely testing on). But it freed you up to appreciate and mentally digest the lecture, without worrying about recording every little fact. I've never understood why every lecture-style class doesn't work this way – except for the minimal extra effort required.
- gioele 12y ago
  > My favorite lecture-style classes were ones where the prof (or more often a TA) would post notes for each lecture online. > I've never understood why every lecture-style class doesn't work this way – except for the minimal extra effort required. Because: 1. The effort is not minimal if you want to produce decent _notes_ (not dry slides). 2. What is written black on white will bite you back. Unhappy students will complain loudly to your school about your incompetence for a missing comma in a code snippet. This will have a non-positive impact on your career. So, notes are not posted mostly because of problem 1, but in many environments problem 2 also plays a big role.
WalterBright 12y ago
For 100+ years, and likely much longer, students attend lectures with paper and pencil to take notes on. There's not a shred of evidence that having laptops, phones, tablets in class has engendered the slightest improvement in results. I don't even know how one takes notes on a laptop. My college notes were full of diagrams, arrows, freeform jots, etc. The only way to do that with a laptop is using a stylus, at which point might as well just go back to paper, and then after class run it through a scanner.
mcculley 12y ago
I was struck by how this article talks about how hard it is to focus in the modern world while it had annoying advertisements after every few paragraphs.
anotheryou 12y ago
that's just tackling the symptom. In this case it might work, but please teach the kids some self-control. and btw: I dim my laptop down, keep the lid open wide so it makes less of a wall and usually just type plain text black on white or google relevant stuff. Given the lecture is remotely interesting. I'd come to class with a noisy typewriter there.

112 points by juanplusjuan 12y ago

For some reason the article didn't link to the actual Medium post: https://medium.com/@cshirky/why-i-just-asked-my-students-to-put-their-laptops-away-7f5f7c50f368 https://medium.com/@cshirky/why-i-just-asked-my-students-to-...

polarix 12y ago
Guessing this is because they wanted the more exciting headline, which the Washington Post was more than happy to provide.
privong 12y ago
The original was on HN a few weeks ago too, but apparently did not get much traction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8297995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8297995

a3_nm 12y ago

Having both used "technology" (laptops, phones) during classes as a student and taught to students which used them, I still can't make up my mind about this debate. Arguments for technology use: - There are legitimate uses of computers to take notes, so banning technology overall seems misguided, and it's hard to ban specific usages meaningfully. (A better approximation would be to block Wi-Fi/phone in rooms. It takes much more dedication to get distracted with no connectivity, and arguably connectivity isn't necessary if you want to remain focused. That being said, people could still legitimately want to look things up during the class...) - It is each student's choice to pay attention or not, it doesn't look like you would want to force them. (The article does a good job of justifying this claim, though it goes a bit far in saying that students just cannot help but get distracted. Having just a text editor to take notes requires some discipline but it's not entirely impossible either.) - It is a valuable lesson to figure out that multitasking is a sure way to both not get anything done and not get anything out of a class, and maybe you need to experience it yourself. If everyone prevented students from realizing this, maybe they would still need the time to figure it out later. People who were adults when laptops and phones came around are now figuring out about this at the workplace. - Sitting in a class and not paying attention is not even necessarily a mark of disrespect. As a student, sometimes if I had one free hour with nothing better to do, I would go to an a-priori irrelevant class to work on homeworks/projects. So I could work if the class indeed wasn't relevant to my interests, but sometimes I had pleasant surprises and ended up paying attention. Sitting in the class and working silently on something else would seem disrespectful, but what if I was doing this rather than not showing up? Arguments against technology use: - It's a hard lesson to figure out that multitasking is often a bad idea. It may require sometimes kicking you out of the habit for you to realize the difference. (I'm not yet sure if this is a lesson that we are "getting", as a society.) - The second-hand distraction effect is real: of course, it's harder to pay attention individually if people around you are not. (Although it's not clear whether it should be your responsability to not be influenced. The line between passively and actively distracting fellow students is quite a bit blurry.) - Even more viciously than that, even if a student is individually dedicated to paying attention no matter what happens around, a room where 90% of people are listening feels very differently from a room where 10% of people are, from the teacher's perspective. When you're addressing a sparse group of survivors among a mass of people who zoned out, it's hard, you feel bad, and the quality drops. Teaching isn't a one-way process where the teacher is not influenced by the students and the students individually retain what they want out of the teaching, so the simple reasoning about students individually doing what they want doesn't exactly apply. So I don't know what the right answer is. I think a minimal step in the right direction is to encourage people who use computers for other things than work to sit towards the back, and encourage those who want to pay attention to sit towards the front. In this way, second-hand distraction is reduced (you can't see the screen of someone sitting behind you) and the teacher is motivated by what they see in the front row.

slvv 12y ago
"So I don't know what the right answer is. I think a minimal step in the right direction is to encourage people who use computers for other things than work to sit towards the back, and encourage those who want to pay attention to sit towards the front. That said, second-hand distraction is reduced (you can't see the screen of someone sitting behind you) and the teacher is motivated by what they see in the front row." Totally agree with you - that's basically what I came up with, too. Screens to the back seems like an easy enough guideline to follow.
Swizec 12y ago
As someone who does a lot-ish of public speaking at conferences as such, let me offer my 2c on tech in audiences. At a conference, people are always going to be using technology. They are always going to be checking their phones, and they are always going to have a thousand things going on. That's just the fact. They're there for a whole day, or even multiple days, emails need to be checked, sometimes coding needs to be done, sometimes they just want to check up on what the talks in other tracks are about and consider switching. Therefore it is my job as a presenter to make sure nobody is checking their phone. If I am interesting enough, laptops start closing, phones stop being checked, sometimes they even go into pockets. As soon as I lose the audience, all that tech comes back out. And I think that's what a lot of professors forget - BE MORE INTERESTING. Have a better presentation style. Take public speaking classes. Do something to make yourself stand out above the distraction of internet and devices. Because here's the thing, those professors who [have to] make attendance mandatory, are without exception the worst presenters. Same goes for banning tech. If you ban it, you're just saying "I suck at public speaking and I would rather you deal with that problem than I" And yes, it is an amazing feeling when you start with a room of a hundred people each looking at a different screen and end with a room of a hundred people looking straight at you with all laptops closed and phones/tablets put away. It's got nothing to do with tech and everything to do with winning your audience over.
- a3_nm 12y ago
  > At a conference, people are always going to be using technology. They are always going to be checking their phones, and they are always going to have a thousand things going on. In computer science conferences in research (the area I'm familiar with) this tends to happen as well, but there is a venue (Schloß Dagstuhl) which has (among other interesting traditions, such as mandatory random seating assignments at meals) a policy of not having WiFi in the conference rooms. I think it is clear that had the WiFi been there almost everyone would have used it, yet somehow I only heard people talk positively of the no-WiFi policy... There is, I think, a sizeable proportion of people who see connectivity-induced multitasking as a weakness, and are happy when given an occasion to not indulge in it. > If I am interesting enough, laptops start closing, phones stop being checked Sometimes this is not enough. If you started with a room full of people doing something else, and the talk is sufficiently technical so that you can't start paying attention midway through, sometimes you can be faced with the very hard task of catching people's attention during the first few minutes when they still haven't noticed that someone else was talking... > those professors who [have to] make attendance mandatory (A side point, but from my experience of the university system (in France), mandatory attendance in classes is usually a policy set by the institution more than by the individual teachers.) I agree with your general point that being anti-tech in classes should not be an excuse for giving bad classes. But I don't think that's enough to dismiss the feeling. There's also another thing: professors teaching their students may not feel like it is their duty to earn their audience's attention, to have a slick and attractive presentation style, so as to compete with any possible distraction... They may feel like they can teach the class as they like, and it is the students' role to adjust. I think this balance between the professor's sense of entitlement and the students' varies a lot across cultures (also depending on how much the students pay for tuition, e.g., much less in France than in the US). But this is something where there can be a difference between classes at university, and conferences.

slvv 12y ago

"I’m coming to see student focus as a collaborative process." To me, this statement feels deeply condescending. I would much prefer to treat students as people making their own choices - for good or ill - so that they can deal with the consequences. If a student chooses not to pay attention in class to their disadvantage, they have every right to do that! I hope professors aren't pressured to become babysitters.

001sky 12y ago
"If a student chooses not to pay attention in class to their disadvantage, they have every right to do that!" This misses the point. You should respect people when in their presence. Its a basic tenet of social interaction. People who (are so self absorbed to) dis-regard this ultimately do so at their own peril. Its not condescending--its literally the opposite.
robotresearcher 12y ago
Remember the students start at 18, and many have not had these choices before. They can really benefit from having expectations clearly explained to them. Profs in first year are responsible for setting norms. This is not the same as babysitting - it's part of the students' education. Not all 18 year olds make great decisions without some help.
gault8121 12y ago
This is akin to saying people have a right to smoke cigarettes in a room, because it is their choice. This behavior has a clear impact on other people. When you see the people to the right and left of you glued to their screens, its like they are not even there at all. This is extremely demotivating, and causes a chain reaction of inattention.
chasing 12y ago
Yeah, what do those stupid professors know about education? How dare they attempt to engineer an environment in which students can engage with new ideas and information, even if it's a little dry or difficult to understand at first. You should totally be allowed to waste their time and energy and occupy a seat in their class that could've gone to someone who might've valued the experience a bit more.

tomrod 12y ago

I've found Mike Munger's thoughts on this to be wise: http://www.theihs.org/academic/2011/12/19/faculty-debate-should-professors-allow-laptops-in-class/ http://www.theihs.org/academic/2011/12/19/faculty-debate-sho... He's for it.

kpennell 12y ago

Really wish my profs at UW Seattle would have done this. So many of my classes lacked discussion or engagement because so many people were chillin on Facebook. I think I also met fewer friends because of it. Very few of the people actually cared about getting an education and were instead just there to get the credits and then get a job (this was in the business undergrad). Having no devices might have forced people to engage out of sheer lack of an alternative.

TheCowboy 12y ago
I think it's true that it is more of a default now because of Facebook and phones, but it's incorrect to assume that classes were ripe with discussion and engagement before the 'Mobile Age'. Students have always been able to tune out and not participate in a class. It will likely always be dependent upon the abilities of the professor, and the students themselves. I also wouldn't dismiss people for being interested job prospects. The HN community may not have to worry about possible future un[der]employment, but it's a legitimate concern for most people.
- sopooneo 12y ago
  While students have certainly always been able to tune out, I would argue there is a difference in degree when facebook is available.

thrush 12y ago

I think that in an ideal world, it is more effective to refrain from multi-tasking and instead to focus on an influx of information provided by a skilled teacher. Unfortunately, many classrooms do not represent the ideal world. Teachers may be unengaging, uninformed, or just plain not good. Students may be unprepared, overqualified, or uninterested. Sometimes there is simply a mismatch in expectations and understanding. If the professor and students are driven to overcome these inefficiencies, and work incredibly hard to avoid them, then and only then do I think that this "rule" should be put forth. Although, one could argue that students and professors should strive to achieve this goal in every setting.

guard-of-terra 12y ago

Why a leading professor of new media even teaches in class? Teaching in class to a medium-sized set (more than five but less than a thousand) of students is sooo old media.

cbd1984 12y ago

I wonder if he makes exceptions for assistive technology.

leoc 12y ago
He'd have to, or else lawsuits.

hawkice 12y ago

My first semester in college, in a general chemistry course, a professor eventually was tired of seeing all the kids on laptops, almost all of them assuredly playing solitaire, etc. So he told the entire class to stand up and turn around, and took every computer and pulled out the battery. Now, let me be clear: this guy was a great educator. I would show up an hour early every class and talk nonsense about chemistry, science, sometimes news-of-the-world. And he was literally the last full time Chemistry professor at the school, so he was invaluable as well -- if he left then they would have to scrap the chemistry major. After this event, I took a considerable amount of effort to make sure the event wouldn't be replicated, including a multipage report on failings and missed opportunities to the head of math and sciences. He was fired one semester later, the chemistry program shut down. I have no regrets. I honestly cannot imagine I was even the only one in the class to do anything. This is all by means of saying: be careful about your use of power. In the end, being right or wrong on that one issue is meaningless if your compulsion to exercise control over others is too rough or invasive.

EliRivers 12y ago
be careful about your use of power because you never know when some whiny, self-righteous snot with a massively inflated sense of preciousness will go crying to mommy.
Crito 12y ago
You, a freshman, got a chemistry department shut down because a professor pulled the battery out of your laptop? Bullshit. Which university was this?
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markbnj 12y ago

This is a tremendously good and well-written piece. I absolutely love the metaphor of the elephant and the rider, and of devices and social media "whispering" to the elephant. Although that is not the author's invention, bravo for a great use of it. I know a few young programmers who should read this about six times and have it tattooed on their forearms.

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Vektorweg 12y ago

As many pointed out, its a lack of motivation, flexibility and etiquette. * Instead of stoking motivation and interests, teachers often go the easy way and squeeze knowledge into students. Which leads to even more bored students with no chance that they start to learn by there own motivation. * There is a lack of flexilibity. You must learn specific things in specific time. Not even free courses can handle the temporar interest of the student and the students own specific interest. * And bad etiquette. When its up to you to visit a lecture or not, many students go anyway, because thats what society expects. Even when its a big waste of time and motivation.

shanusmagnus 12y ago

Shirky quotes Sana et al [1]: The results demonstrate that multitasking on a laptop poses a significant distraction to both users and fellow students and can be detrimental to comprehension of lecture content. I want to kiss all these people on the mouth. I feel like a cross between Don Quixote and the stay-off-my-lawn guy for fuming whenever someone sits down next to me when I'm trying to concentrate, and engages in a constant stream of messaging, or playing some game that's chirping and beeping and booping. There is such a thing as a 'tragedy of the attention commons' but it seems like nobody gives a shit about it. But maybe this piece, and this research, means the tide is about to change. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131512002254?np=y http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131512...

wyager 12y ago
> engages in a constant stream of messaging, or playing some game that's chirping and beeping and booping. That sounds like a people problem, not a technology problem. Might it be better to ask them to be quiet than to advocate the banning of all computers in the classroom, thereby screwing over everyone who uses computers for a good reason?

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sauere 12y ago

When i was still in school Tablets didn't exist so i can only tell from my experience using Laptops (old old shit, like first Intel Celeron generation). It was stupid. Work did not get done and i always felt we are just using them for "HAY WOW WE TECHNOLOGY NAO", not to actually do anything that increases production. Don't get me wrong. There are scenarios where Laptops are a great tool if a teacher knows how to use them, but overall i always felt they we're a big distraction. I could be wrong. Things have changed.

chasing 12y ago

I agree with his conclusion. Open laptops degrade the classroom experience -- especially when the classes (like Clay's) are meant to be both lectures and conversations. Behind laptops, too many students seem to treat the class itself like a television program that happens to be running in the background. Instead of something they need to actively engage with. Note-taking is the only thing I'm concerned about interfering with. I think note-taking can actually increase engagement with the content. Going back to pen and paper feels weird. But so does expecting students to just take notes on a device that, as Shirky notes, is pretty much designed for distraction.

rjsw 12y ago
I'm old enough to have been at college before laptops, back then it was perfectly possible to take written notes without really thinking about the lecture. The discipline has stayed with me though, I don't power up any of my toys if I'm at a conference.
tfederman 12y ago
When I take notes because I need to retain something, the writing part is more valuable than reviewing it later. And writing on paper is important, typing isn't effective for that part. When I take notes just to record details that I can look up later on demand it's faster to type and there's no downside. But that matches work more than it does school.

austenallred 12y ago

The notion of using a computer to be productive in class is desirable, but walk into your average college classroom and you'll see ~50% of the computer users on Facebook. In one of my classes the kid in front of me would straight up watch Netflix or The Daily Show. And bear in mind this was a top private school. I used a computer through most of my classes in college to "take notes." Personally I took a computer to every class, and was taking notes <10% of the time. Most of the time I was reading stuff that I did care about (and do use today, as opposed to most of what was being taught to me in class), but the notion of using a computer in the class to be more productive in the class was just a cop-out I used to pursue what I was interested in.

z3t4 12y ago

While multitasking is bad for productivity, most workplaces require multitasking ... Some people even perform better while multi-tasking. So I think it varies a lot from person to person.

beloch 12y ago

I went through undergrad at a time when it was relatively uncommon for students to use a laptop in class. There were usually a couple students in a typical lecture using them and they got a lot of flack from their neighbors if they were typing too loudly. In grad school, I recall sitting in on some lectures of a course I was TA'ing. In just a few years it seemed that a technological revolution had occurred. More students had laptops open than not. It was like sitting in a field of frantically mating crickets. The subject being taught was classical mechanics (for non-physics majors), so there were plenty of equations and diagrams. The students nearest to me seemed to have a variety of solutions. Some had tablets that allowed them to draw directly in their notes. Some had a pad of paper that they switched to. Others seemed to be ignoring anything they couldn't type. Suboptimal, to say the least! The really disturbing thing was how many laptops were not engaged in anything that remotely resembled note-taking. People were writing emails, browsing, sending text messages, watching T.V. shows, you name it. There was one kid sitting in the front row, happily watching South Park with a giant pair of headphones on. She clearly didn't care about the class, nor did she care about letting both the prof and everyone sitting behind her know about it. Why did this kid even bother showing up? I was just there so I'd know what was being covered, but I think I missed half of that class just gawking at how technology was being (mis)used. Even once I'd gotten over the initial shock and started paying attention, my eyes were repeatedly drawn to South Park being played on a huge 17" monitor in the first row. Hats off to Clay Shirky. I'm normally in favor of treating students like adults (even the childish ones), but laptop use has a big impact on people who aren't using them. If I'm running a lab or tutorial and people are being noisy in the hall, I close the door. I do what I can to give my students a good learning environment. Banning laptops and phones is no different.

theoh 12y ago
FYI it's "flak" not "flack". From, you know, the German.
- Tenhundfeld 12y ago
  I agree with you, but FYI, many dictionaries are now listing flack as a variant spelling of flak. So, I wouldn't consider the OP technically wrong, despite flak being clearly better.

ahomescu1 12y ago

I'm surprised to see that the increased use of electronics in lectures hasn't started to make people doubt the merits of the lecture system itself. In my opinion, university has two main benefits: learning and socialization with like-minded people. Even before the occurrence of laptops and tablets, I always thought that lectures are a terribly inefficient way of achieving either of those goals. If I want to learn something, I go pick up a book and read it myself, at my own pace. On the socialization side, a 30-to-1 forced conversation that takes 3 hours (or 1 hour, depending on the length of the lecture) is silly. Besides, I've seen very few professors who come to class to engage their students in a conversation; most just come with a set of slides and do a 3-hour slide-assisted monologue. I have always found the latter boring. I think universities need to get rid of lectures, and start to focus more on dynamic, spontaneous interactions between students and professors. For example, instead of having a 3-hours lecture every week, the professor could have 15 10-minute office hours sessions in his office.

trfen 12y ago

My main question is who is Clay Shirky, and why does what he does matter?

ThomPete 12y ago

I can't help to wonder whether the underlying questions isn't tech or no tech but class or no class.

Hoffmannnn 12y ago

It really is an interesting question, and made me think over the implications: On one hand, I exchanged $X,000 for the knowledge I would potentially gain from the class. It seems like I'm within my rights to intentionally NOT learn, and thus waste my money. On the other hand, other people also paid $X,000, possibly with the expectation that they would get engaging discussions with the whole class, rather than just the professor. So which is it? When you pay good money for a class, do you expect, in return, that the whole class participates? It seems like everyone would get better results that way, but then again, the whole class isn't getting compensated by you, so why should you expect anything from then in return? It is indeed a tragedy of the commons.

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
The elephant (ha!) in the room is the fact that lectures are as good at passing on facts as any other method, but very bad for softer teaching goals, including debate and inspiration. Here's an informal article: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/lectures-dont-work-but-we-keep-using-them/2009141.article http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/lectures-dont-wor... And formal research: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic38998.files/Bligh_Ch1_and_Ch3.pdf http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic38998.files/Bligh... I'd guess Shirky's classes are more about promoting debate and asking questions than plain 'learn this' science/math/engineering lectures. So the lecture format - even with discussion - probably isn't very efficient for teaching anyway. Whether people are distracted by devices seems secondary. Perhaps it would be more useful to students to (say) work out a way to dramatise the effects of device addiction or some other Internet experience, so they can discover it for themselves and make their own decisions about distractions and cognitive loading. Banning devices might have some of that effect by accident. But I'd guess teaching a class on internet sociology while taking notes on paper is going to be kind of weird. (Full disclosure: I always used to hate writing paper notes. It's not unusual to lag behind the content, and it certainly never helped me understand what I was supposed to be learning.)

was_hellbanned 12y ago

I went to college in the late 90's, before laptops were really viable for use in lectures (despite what I recall from the 1986 movie Back to School). We did have our math class in the computer lab, so we could graph functions. Of course, I spent most of my time reading newsgroups and mailing lists, the equivalent of modern students on Facebook. Looking back, I really regret the use of technology. I'm talking about the computer distraction, but also the heavy reliance on advanced calculators like the TI-92 that did symbolic integration and differentiation. The classes were focused on making the graphs appear and getting answers, not on grasping the fundamental, underlying concepts. I'd prefer a strict paper and pencil analysis course. I also remember the countless student questions, "will this be on the test?" The basic concept of testing student knowledge is that you can only administer a test where a small set of questions are randomly distributed across the much larger subject matter. You aren't supposed to memorize the answers to some questions, you're supposed to demonstrate that you learned everything. I didn't even learn what learning is until a good fifteen years after I was done with school. I suspect the students engaging in these behaviors, also, don't understand what learning is, and will graduate having passed some tests without knowing much.

jimmaswell 12y ago
On the other side, I get annoyed at having to do a quadratic equation or matrix multiplication by hand for the millionth time because I can't have advanced calculators on the tests or quizzes. After you understand the concepts of those it becomes pointless to do them by hand so much. What am I getting out of manually multiplying two matrices? It prepares you for a situation that will pretty much never exist - not being able to look up a formula or make wolframalpha do some tedious algebra for you. This is what I like about physics tests; they tend to just give you a sheet full of all the formulas because if you don't understand the concepts of the material, then all the formulas in the world aren't going to help you. Physics professors tend to understand what's important more, in my experience.
ScottBurson 12y ago
I think the right answer to "will this be on the test?" is "I don't know yet".

Tenhundfeld 12y ago

My favorite lecture-style classes were ones where the prof (or more often a TA) would post notes for each lecture online. You still benefitted from taking your own notes, especially to remember what concepts the prof was really hammering home (and likely testing on). But it freed you up to appreciate and mentally digest the lecture, without worrying about recording every little fact. I've never understood why every lecture-style class doesn't work this way – except for the minimal extra effort required.

gioele 12y ago
> My favorite lecture-style classes were ones where the prof (or more often a TA) would post notes for each lecture online. > I've never understood why every lecture-style class doesn't work this way – except for the minimal extra effort required. Because: 1. The effort is not minimal if you want to produce decent _notes_ (not dry slides). 2. What is written black on white will bite you back. Unhappy students will complain loudly to your school about your incompetence for a missing comma in a code snippet. This will have a non-positive impact on your career. So, notes are not posted mostly because of problem 1, but in many environments problem 2 also plays a big role.

WalterBright 12y ago

For 100+ years, and likely much longer, students attend lectures with paper and pencil to take notes on. There's not a shred of evidence that having laptops, phones, tablets in class has engendered the slightest improvement in results. I don't even know how one takes notes on a laptop. My college notes were full of diagrams, arrows, freeform jots, etc. The only way to do that with a laptop is using a stylus, at which point might as well just go back to paper, and then after class run it through a scanner.

mcculley 12y ago

I was struck by how this article talks about how hard it is to focus in the modern world while it had annoying advertisements after every few paragraphs.

anotheryou 12y ago

that's just tackling the symptom. In this case it might work, but please teach the kids some self-control. and btw: I dim my laptop down, keep the lid open wide so it makes less of a wall and usually just type plain text black on white or google relevant stuff. Given the lecture is remotely interesting. I'd come to class with a noisy typewriter there.