4 ms·

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 deb

by 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.

by a3_nm 12y ago

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.