Should wireless laptops be banned from the classroom?

YES

Dennis Adams
Don’t make me compete for mind share

In an Oct. 14 Wall Street Journal article, Gary McWilliams highlighted some of the challenges that faculty face when students use their laptops in a wireless, Internet-enabled classroom. Students get online, chat with each other and those not in the room, shop, and in general cruise the ’net. Some students use it for class (not necessarily the one they are attending), some for entertainment and some for their jobs. I had a student a few semesters ago who told me that he was working his company’s helpdesk while in my class!

The challenge is that our students have grown up with the expectation that learning should be fun, fast-paced, colorful and full of facts. Sometimes called the Sesame Street syndrome, it has accustomed students to being entertained while learning. I can’t blame them. I prefer “fun learning” to “not fun learning.” This generation of students is voting with their feet. They prefer audio books to real books. They prefer video games to movies or television. They often prefer online classes to traditionally delivered instruction. They prefer infotainment to drill and practice.

My problem is competition for mind share. Like most faculty members, I don’t have the time or capital resources or even the creativity to develop a multimedia extravaganza for each of the 30 or so class meetings I have per course per semester. I try to be entertaining and relevant in my lectures and pepper the class with questions and other participative learning techniques. But even the most dedicated student has a difficult time not sneaking a glance at e-mail at least once during class. The desire may be to be fully attentive to the words of wisdom coming from the front of the room, but students’ minds have been trained from the time their parents still measured their ages in months to learn in colorful, animated, audio-enhanced one- to two-minute chunks. They can’t help themselves.

I simply want to be able to create a learning environment in my classroom where I can help them focus. Give me the ability to turn technology on and off; to use it in class when it makes sense. If the distractions are removed, it is still my job to be relevant and entertaining, but then I’m only competing with doodling and daydreaming.

Dennis Adams is chair, decision and information sciences, C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston.

NO

Rudy McDaniel
You might as well ban pencils and paper

Much like a professional speaker will adapt her speech in response to cues from the audience and environment, so should a lecturer acknowledge those clues in the classroom. Numerous computers open to dating services and sports blogs should indicate that the lecture is not as successful as it could be. Instead of immediate disciplining, why not gather information and improve the situation for both parties? Find out what students are engaging with and assess the problem using that new data. If there is too much chat, ban only instant messaging or suggest periodic random “sharing” of screens with the class. If feckless browsing is the problem, direct students to a few of your own favorite sources and ask them to find some of their own.

It may turn out that those wireless mavens are more innocuous than you suspect. In my own classes, I’ve found that some students will supplement my course notes during lecture with resource materials they find online. In this case, my job is to separate the digital wheat from the chaff.

My advice, then: Forgo the draconian wireless ban and instead focus on taking advantage of the technology to improve the quality of your lecture and to better connect with your students. Ask students to research unknown words using an online dictionary and share definitions with the class. Have them follow along with you as you visit Wikipedia and delve deeper into the details of a complex or controversial theory. Remember that the Internet was created to function as a knowledge-sharing network.

There always will be students who take advantage of technology to escape from academic engagement. The next time you spot students with glazed eyes peering into a laptop during your lecture, consider a new approach: Ask them to find an online example of a topic you’re discussing and share it with the class. Repeat as necessary with new offenders. That “distracting laptop in class” problem might just take care of itself.

Rudy McDaniel, an assistant professor of digital media and English at the University of Central Florida, is a member of the United Faculty of Florida.