Several years ago I watched a particularly memorable “Law Revue” skit night at Yale. One of the skits had a group of students sitting at desks, facing the audience, listening to a professor drone on.
All of the students were looking at laptops except for one, who had a deck of cards and was playing solitaire. The professor was outraged and demanded that the student explain why she was playing cards. When she answered “My laptop is broken,” I remember there was simultaneously a roar of laughter from the student body and a gasp from the professors around me. In this one moment, we learned that something new was happening in class.
Shortly after seeing that skit, I wrote an Op-Ed for The New York Times describing the surprisingly strong student reaction when I asked students to use their laptops during class only for taking notes.
I predicted that we would soon hear of surfing at the opera (and maybe even in church).
But I also called on schools to flip the default code of conduct. Currently most students believe that it is fine to play games, surf the net, check their email etc. unless their professor expressly tells them that they can’t. (Some may think it’s okay, even if the professor tells them they can’t.)
I wanted schools to announce that laptops, by default, should be used during class only for class-related activities unless the professor says otherwise. I’m not the only one calling for action in this area.
I’m happy to report that Saul Levmore, the dean at the University of Chicago Law School has recently announced an end to classroom surfing. It is a little unclear from his announcement whether his policy is merely a default or a mandatory rule. It’s also left (I imagine, intentionally) unclear what the repercussions are of violating the policy.
In praising Levmore, I should be clear that there is no good a priori argument against multitasking. The case is at best an empirically-informed hunch about what is the best way to teach. I see some power to a parentalism argument that teachers should ban surfing because it impedes students’ ability to learn.
Law students are adults who generally can decide for themselves what is in their best interest — but I still don’t think it would be a good idea to have beer or magazines available in class. As someone who has played way too much Minesweeper in my day, I think some activities are just a bit too tempting.
Still, I’m worried that my own weakness is leading me to take away the rights of others. My sainted father brought me up short when, after reading my original oped, he said, “I thought you were a liberal?”
The “negative externalities” of surfing provide a stronger basis for switching the default:
The laptop screen is a billboard that is very visible to other students sitting behind the gamer. Surfing and game playing in particular can be very distracting — both visually and in the signal they send to others that you don’t care about class. Multitasking also makes students less present as participants in class discussion. Surfing doesn’t stop students from taking notes, but it degrades the quality of their attention.
Doonesbury has a great strip on just this point. In bouncing back and forth between his notes window, the surfing student is less likely to be following the discussion and to be able to ask or answer a question.
In recent years, I’ve tried to balance student liberty with my negative externality concern by allowing surfing, but only in the back row of class. In the back row, at least, it isn’t a visual distraction. And I view these back-benchers as virtually a step away from non-attendance.
But what’s still missing is basic information on how much surfing is going on. (Levmore claims, “Every teacher underestimates the amount of Internet surfing going on,” in his or her classroom.) The content of the laptop screen is visible to the class, but remains a mystery to the professoriate. I still hear colleagues tell me that surfing is not a problem in their class because they walk around the room.
In a world where alt -tab quickly shifts between windows, it is a fantasy to think that walking around is a sufficient deterrent.
I am tempted to ask students to collect data on how much surfing is actually going on (even when it is banned). I bet some readers will be upset with the idea of such monitoring. There is a growing sense of entitlement not just to surf but to keep your professor in the dark about whether you are surfing or not.
If the admission application simply asked students to check a box if they were willing to forgo classroom surfing, I imagine virtually all applicants would forgo their God-given right to play solitaire.
But even here, students push back that the implicit contract was also that professors would not teach badly. Some students see surfing as a medication to reduce the annoyance of poor pedagogy. Indeed, some clever students have even argued that surfing has a positive externality — Ayres and Levitt and Wolfers will have better incentives to teach well if they have to compete for students’ attention.
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But isn’t goofing off with a laptop just a new way to weed out the strong from the week? It used to be the guy staring dreamily out the window was the guy shortchanging himself on an education. Now it’s playing games on a laptop.
And if you took that away, there are a hundred other ways to “zone out.”
This is just another way of allowing the cream to rise to the top. Even in those ancient days when notes were taken by hand, there were some who took incredible notes…and others who didn’t.
I understand that opposite view on this–the desire to ensure that everyone gets a good education. But until we can control the mind–which allows a student to look fully attentive and yet be a million miles away–we have to accept that there will always be stronger and weaker students…and that they must take responsibility for their own education.
Of course, I am presuming that the tests will quickly let us know which students are actually paying attention. Once they know that they are in danger of failing, it would seem that market forces come into play–they either change their classroom/study habits or fail.
I wish I could have surfed the web during the many poor lectures I suffered through – my time was more productive reading the textbook instead of listening to a professor standing in front of the class plodding away solving equations without any context – often my fellow students felt that we learned physics in spite of our professors not because of them. Truly some subjects could benefit from an update to the standard classroom method – I learned far more from solving problems with my peers than in class, so how about inventing some games and simulations to illustrate concepts… We pay professors to teach us a subject, they should be willing to make an effort instead of just doing what their own professors did – that includes using new technology and teaching in a method appropriate for the material – they should embrace technology not ban it – unfortuately for professors a lot of subjects don’t need a professor giving lectures, they need labs, simulations and someone to just set the pace of study.
As a current law student, I think surfing the internet has more positive externalities than negative ones. Thus, the benefits outweigh the harm.
First off, students are able to use their time more efficiently by surfing the internet. If during class a professor is going off on a tangent, a student can check the daily news that he would otherwise check later. This happens more than people think.
Secondly, personally, I do not find it particularly distracting when other students are surfing the internet. Nor have I heard another student complain of a classmate distracting them. While some students may be distracted, I do not think it is as big a problem as the author of this post makes it out to be.
Lastly, if students are going to play games during class, it is clearly going to affect their performance. Thus, it seems there already exists a deterrance to not surf the internet during class.
What do other people think?
As a professor, I’m curious how you get surfing students to sit in the back row – do you penalize those you observe surfing who aren’t sitting in the back? Or do you just trust that students will honor your policy?
I always looked at class as an investment, particularly the price of the individual class in regards to the price of the whole semester. In my case, the cost to attend each individual class session was roughly 50 dollars. I convinced myself that skipping, sleeping, or generally not paying attention was akin to walking up and handing the professor 50 dollars. I’m paying, I might as well learn. Why pay my 50 dollars to surf porn, send emails, or check myspace when I can do that for the lesser cost of my internet connection at home?
What a great topic. It is certainly not a black and white issue.
My kids will surely have laptops in college, but I’m not comfortable knowing my tuition payments might actually be used as a video game scholorship.
I suppose I could predicate my tuition contributions based on their grades, starting their Senior year of High School. That might promote better decisions in class that lead to better grades.
The Doonesbury comic was classic. As long as we have Google and Wikipedia, do we really need to remember every detail? Aren’t virtual classrooms and distance learning growing more every year, taking teaching out of the physical classroom?
So, are we talking about students in college? That’s what it sounds like. If so, I honestly cannot believe the arrogance on display here. Those students pay money to go to that class. They have the right to do whatever they see fit when they’re there. Sure, it way be a waste, but it’s certainly within their right.
It’d be like a coffee house getting frustrated that their customers are spending too much time surfing and not enough time enjoying their great coffee. They ban their cutomers from surfing the web and now they have no customers.
Who are you to tell your customers what they should or shouldn’t pay attention to?
As a back-bench surfer, I always wanted an opt-in program where my internet could be cut off while in school. I had to resort to physically removing my ethernet card.