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Step into any college lecture hall and you are likely to find a sea of students typing away at open, glowing laptops as the professor speaks. But you won't see that when I'm teaching.
Though I make a few exceptions, I generally ban electronics, including laptops, in my classes and research seminars.
That may seem extreme. After all, with laptops, students can, in some ways, absorb more from lectures than they can with just paper and pen. They can download course readings, look up unfamiliar concepts on the fly and create an accurate, well-organized record of the lecture material. All of that is good.
But a growing body of evidence shows that over all, college students learn less when they use computers or tablets during lectures. They also tend to earn worse grades. The research is unequivocal: Laptops distract from learning, both for users and for those around them. It's not much of a leap to expect that electronics also undermine learning in high school classrooms or that they hurt productivity in meetings in all kinds of workplaces.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Saturday November 25 2017, @08:01AM (5 children)
As with anything, laptops in the classroom are a mixed bag. But technology marches on, and it's frankly a bit stupid to try to stand in its way. I mean, we could also return to the kind of rote learning still practiced in some parts of the world - but we've moved beyond that, and that's a good thing.
I have students who use their laptops in some pretty amazing ways during class. I'm sure that some others are busy surfing Facebook or whatever. I walk around the classroom a lot - just by the nature of the way I lecture - which tends to limit the latter.
Frankly, I'm far more worried about the "dumbing down" of college that I see, especially in the US, but also here in Europe. More and more students want to get a degree. University administrators want those sweet, sweet tuition dollars - what motivation do they have to reject unqualified students, or to fail students who are not able to do the work? Short-term financial interests will trump long-term concerns about reputation almost every time.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 25 2017, @08:28AM (3 children)
Maybe the universities should only be paid for failed students. That way they have an interest to actually sieve out the best: If they deny too many degrees, or if they don't properly give the degrees based on achievements, people will go elsewhere, and they won't get paid. But if they give too many degrees, they won't get paid either.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday November 25 2017, @08:56AM (2 children)
> Maybe the universities should only be paid for failed students
Fascinating idea, open for abuse in some markets though. Students that have few short term prospects might earn some buck by failing exams and splitting the proceedings.
And, people is then likely to receive letters from Harvard like "...We are sorry, you are too smart to enroll in our courses...".
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:32AM (1 child)
But then, imagine you can show your prospective employer a writing from Harvard that you are too smart for them …
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday November 26 2017, @09:42AM
"The candidate is pretty qualified but can't play dumb well enough"
"Don't worry, we don't need him in sales"
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @09:53PM
It's hard to dumb down something that was already abysmal. It's mostly just a way for lazy employers to weed out candidates, thereby reducing their workload. Don't bother interviewing applicants to see if they know what they are doing; if they don't have a degree, forget them. For most, a degree is just about jobs and money, as well as partying while you're pursuing it.
It's just easier to test for rote memorization, so that's what the vast, vast majority of schools do. This means that most won't have an actual understanding of the material unless they self-educate, but since the vast majority of the populace has no idea what a good education looks like, very few people notice or care.