Ban laptop use in our classrooms, the Brown University editorial board tells the leadership of that school. Don’t pander to us anymore; laptops are creating morgue classrooms. Make us get rid of them.
Other universities have shut off the wireless connection in lecture halls so that students cannot log on to the Internet while in class. This is not an attack [on] technology but rather a modification tactic to improve the dynamic of the student-professor relationship in class. Brown is not immune to these problems and should take action to promote more constructive classroom environments.
A rather disgusting situation, no? Even though all universities are aware that research overwhelmingly demonstrates the astounding damage laptops in classrooms do, most universities cynically and lazily keep to them. This forces the victims of laptops – students themselves – to beg universities to do something about the situation.
March 4th, 2015 at 6:52AM
[…] idea of students as “victims of laptops” sounds extraordinarily funny to […]
March 4th, 2015 at 7:59AM
“Stop me, PLEASE, before I Facebook during a class!” Really means, “Make me study, please!”
Can’t this generation take responsibility for ANYTHING?
March 5th, 2015 at 5:37PM
[…] Brown University, USC… Students are beginning to ask their professors to help them out here. Will their professors listen? […]
March 5th, 2015 at 10:12PM
Unis have long promoted the wifi capacity of their institutions, and spent millions making it so. All that was done on the premise that students cannot survive without ubiquitous internet accessibility. Are admins going to admit that they were wrong?
March 6th, 2015 at 2:14AM
charlie: Of course this is one of the main underlying problems – many universities have been promoting bogus claims about the superiority of online classrooms — and paying dearly for those claims.
March 6th, 2015 at 2:44AM
Exactamundo UD. More on-line classes = fewer full time faculty needed to deliver content. Fewer full time faculty = more money for debt service of on campus building projects and administrative overhead. More on line teaching = a degraded education, delivered at a reduced cost, but with a far higher profit margin. That’s the corporate model of uni governance for yass…..