… completely bann[ed] the use of mobile computing or communication devices in his classrooms, barring extenuating circumstances.
Indeed McGill may be on the way to an institution-wide ban.
The professor cites “multiple studies linking evidence of the use of such devices in the classroom to poor academic performance, greater distraction for users and fellow students, and decreased ability to ‘digest and synthesize’ main points.”
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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
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The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
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More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
September 21st, 2010 at 11:18AM
I love McGill, it’s my alma mater, but I have to say that professors like this one are obviously angry that they can’t teach well enough to interest students more than Facebook or Twitter. I don’t have a problem with students using any kind of device they want in my classroom. I think if my lecture is boring and they prefer to listen to their iPod instead, that’s my fault, not theirs.
September 21st, 2010 at 11:21AM
This was a little troubling though: “‘If the professor is boring, then I get distracted, but if the professor is really engaging, then the laptop doesn’t distract me.'”
In other words: “Unless I’m being entertained then I am going to be online no matter what you say or do.”
Not all highly intelligent people that can teach us things are innately entertaining. Sometimes conversations that help us understand the world are boring. Life is not endless entertainment streaming in your face.
September 22nd, 2010 at 4:57AM
Hey, I did this starting last year and no one wrote a big newspaper story about ME….!!!!! Seriously, it’s been easy and fine to do in smallish classes ( I have one that meets at 8 in the morning with 15 students–a senior seminar; and another with 35, discussion is going just fine in both, no one misses their laptops and cell phones). The problem comes in with the 100+ megalecture, where discussion is hard to do and anomie quickly sits in, esp with my colleagues who powerpoint their way through the presentation. The big problem may not be in the use or lack thereof of these devices but rather in the practice of big lecture classes themselves, which for financial reasons our administrators are pushing (demand for more tuition paying students while keeping faculty at same size=bigger classes).
September 22nd, 2010 at 7:16AM
Jonathan: Absolutely. The University of Arizona now has a 1,200-student lecture hall, outfitted with all the electronic stuff.
September 22nd, 2010 at 12:59PM
@ Jeff: Students are adults. It’s their choice whether they want to learn anything or not. If they don’t want to learn from me, that’s their loss. I have no interest in policing them or acting as a truancy officer. That’s not my job. My job is to make knowledge available to them, not to force it down their throats.
September 23rd, 2010 at 9:27AM
I, the taxpayer, object if students are checking out Facebook during classes. I’m subsidizing their educations, and if they’re paying their own way I doubt that they’re using electronics during class. Far more likely, their parents are paying their way and I bet the parents are fine with banning electronic distractions in lecture halls whether there are 15 students or 500. And to students who complain that the classes are boring, I say, grow up. Either it really is boring, but you have to pay attention anyway, with the option of writing a bad teacher evaluation at the end, or it only seems boring because you’re making no effort to engage.
September 23rd, 2010 at 9:39AM
EB: You make a good point. Students who say We’re adults and if we want to piss away our education we can forget that people like you are subsidizing their education.