I remember sitting in the back of Physics 1301 and 1302 and seeing multiple people watching whole movies in class which was pretty distracting.
A University of Minnesota student waxes nostalgic while commenting on “Laptop Dystopia,” an opinion piece in the campus newspaper.
The piece just came out. UD expects other commenters will join this one to add their own memories… But it’s not just the sweetness of old college days filled with watching other people’s movies that UD wants to evoke; it’s the phenomenology, if you will, of the wired classroom theater.
The closer we can get to the way it actually looks and feels in real time to have twenty screens pressing up against you on which endless random images jigger for fifty minutes, the better.
We need to understand the laptop in the classroom — not as an abstraction, as in Everyone knows that personal computers facilitate learning! but as a physical, intellectual, emotional reality.
The opinion piece is particularly good on the emotional part.
[I]t’s time to stop lying to ourselves. If all you’re doing is taking notes, by all means, carry on. But if you’re spending precious class time playing solitaire or checking Facebook, I’m losing my patience. And I’m not the only one.
In talking to students on campus about the issue of laptop misuse in class, I uncovered the root of the problem. “I check my Facebook during class, but I’m only hurting myself. If you choose to stare at my computer screen, that’s your problem,” said a sophomore. When those words rolled off her tongue, I had an epiphany. Classroom Internet surfers aren’t trying to bother anyone; they just think they’re invisible — or, rather, that they have every right to do as they please.
… [S]tudents aren’t always comfortable exercising what looks like control over their peers, and I don’t blame them. Though I’ve been an “adult” for quite some time, I’d rather people feel good about me while I sit and grimace internally than fight for my right to a clear visual field. Sad but true.
Come to the University of Minnesota and fight for your right to a clear visual field!
Good come-on for high school seniors.
The writer is describing that social reality, that thing, you sometimes see on subway cars and places like that … A person is behaving badly, annoying and maybe even alarming fellow passengers, but no one intervenes… Everyone sits there like sheep, trapped, and there’s no…
There’s no professor! There’s no one in the car leading passengers in some communal activity… Everyone’s scrunched down in their seat doing their thing – iPod, cellphone, Bible, laptop – and the conductor is some invisible presence way up there in car #1…
“Elementary school kids are better at policing themselves than we are,” said a student who works as a school bus driver. “All I have to do is look in the rear-view mirror and they tell each other to sit down and shut up. We, as adults, are afraid to question each other’s values.” She’s absolutely right, but we have to move past this. Our education is wildly expensive, and admissions are increasingly competitive. If we don’t speak up, the alternative is craning our necks in a front row seat or spending 75 minutes battling a dwindling faith in humanity.
“I’m the first one in my family to go to college, and I take it very seriously,” said a senior. “When I see someone surfing the Internet in class I get angry, like this opportunity means nothing to them.” Even if it were feasible to tune out the flashing light of scrolling screens, the sheer effort necessary to ignore such distractions breeds bitterness that detracts from the learning process. Other consequences can be purely subliminal.
“Extracurricular Web surfing sends a signal to everyone else in class that whatever is going on is unimportant and not worth attending to. Even subconsciously, this can influence others to zone out and become disengaged,” said Ben Denkinger, an instructor in the psychology department. Boredom is a demon that lurks in even the most fascinating lectures, but that’s no excuse to wage war on your classmates’ peripheral vision or to slowly erode your mental capabilities.
Right, so it’s more like a bus, where we can see the driver. Only now that we’re not children anymore, a strange ethos prevails in which some passengers ignore the driver in contemptuous and socially destructive ways, while other passengers, grimacing internally, afraid to question the others’ values, do a slow bitter burn and struggle with a dwindling faith in humanity.
What a triumph for the professor. I try to ensure that my students seethe with rage and lose their faith in humanity while I teach.
February 1st, 2010 at 12:02PM
“Right, so it’s more like a bus, where we can see the driver. Only now that we’re not children anymore, a strange ethos prevails in which some passengers ignore the driver in contemptuous and socially destructive ways, while other passengers, grimacing internally, afraid to question the others’ values, do a slow bitter burn and struggle with a dwindling faith in humanity.”
This experience is not just limited to university lectures, to be sure; it sounds a lot like how people behave at my workplace, as well. The laptop problem is really just a symptom of a much larger problem: the age of political correctness has made everyone afraid to question others’ values, bringing about the death of common courtesy. Because how can people learn courtesy if everyone is too afraid to tell them to stop being discourteous, for fear of seeming intolerant?
February 1st, 2010 at 1:02PM
I was teaching Sociology 101 when I first started noting the MAJOR problems with student laptop abuse, tardiness, inattentiveness, ill-preparedness, etc. After doling out lots of ineffective reprimands (and thus trying to be the metaphoric bus driver), I tried a different tactic.
The text had a section on Broken Windows theory (a decent summary is online here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixing_Broken_Windows). I tried to get them to connect the bad behavior to the theory, but, sadly, only the bright ones got the connection, most likely because they already understood it. And as you note, they are often too complacent to apply positive peer pressure to get their slacking colleagues to stop goofing off.
Sometimes even profs have little power, especially when we’re underpaid, under-supported, and seen as disposable if we cause too much trouble among the undergrad populace. Suffice to say, I was not rehired as an adjunct by that department ever again.
February 1st, 2010 at 2:06PM
Excellent point, Carolyn. And the implication is this… when we turn our heads and ignore what’s happening, we share responsibility for the decline of courtesy and manners and grown-up behavior in the classroom.
UD, I’ve read about half of all Delillo has written (after I picked up on your interest in and praise for him). Has he written about the laptop and other devices (multi-app cells, blackberries,etc.) and their influence on us and our world? Given his critique of popular culture, I would think these things would have figured prominently in his work at least at some point, but I’m drawing a blank on whether I’ve read anything like that by him or not. (I’m recalling TVs, and “the data”…)
February 1st, 2010 at 4:06PM
Wow. Am I glad my children finished college just before the laptop revolution. I would sure hate to have paid what we paid for them to sit in classrooms like that. Professors, you need to figure this out, too. Like maybe have the web surfers sit in the back rows?
February 1st, 2010 at 10:04PM
Thomas: The novel that comes to mind is Underworld, which ends with a meditation on the nature and power of internet – the way it offers us a weird sort of immortality.
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:34AM
It is a whole lot easier than that, Jane. I make them turn off and put every device out of sight. The laptoppers are not usually resentful, because most of them freely admit that they can’t control themselves. Sorority girl texters, though… I hear tales of TheProfessor voodoo dolls with spikes driven through the chests. Over half of the faculty has adopted a blanket ban, so the sullen resentment is now more diffuse.
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:00PM
UD, I’m embarrassed, because I actually read Underworld, but did not recall the meditation. I was probably so overwhelmed by marching through that intimidating book that I wasn’t focused enough to remember!
I do love the references to ‘the data’ in White Noise…
I’m glad to hear from theprofessor that half of his/her faculty has adopted a blanket ban on electronic devices. Curious – any ill effects from the voodoo dolls?