Editorial Board/FIUSM Staff
Although we might not always admit it and instead pretend to be the perfect, attentive student, every single one of us has at one point or another allowed our minds to wander away from the lecture before us.
For some, it is as simple as daydreaming in the middle of class. For others, it is the complicated task of switching back and forth from social media to the sometimes monotone professor at the front of the room.
The actual complexity of this task might vary from student to student, but it still raises the question of whether or not this is something to condone or an unnecessary distraction.
From our perspective as students, it is very easy to say it should be overlooked and tolerated.
Regardless of where you are in your university career, we have all been in that one class that is the equivalent of being tortured by the sound of fingernails scratching a chalkboard.
What makes it worse is that the source of this torture is almost always a combination of the subject itself and the professor leading the lecture, in addition to that one student we have all come across that drags the class further.
Be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and any other social media site in between, they have all served an honorable purpose of relieving us from that class we just cannot help but zone out of.
Now, from the perspective of the professor, and sometimes even our fellow peers, one can be very quick to say the use of social media in the classroom is indeed an unnecessary distraction.
For our professors, it can be considered blatantly disrespectful when their students completely ignore them.
This is especially true in a class on a subject that requires students to be fully engaged and interactive for class discussions. Most of the time, professors find themselves at the front of the room staring back at a class of blank faces, saying “Anyone, anyone?” like in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
The question now is whether something should be done about this.
We doubt students would voluntarily give up their use of social media in the classroom, which is why some professors have enforced rules regarding the use of electronic devices. Some have completely banned them while others have been a bit more lenient.
Leniency is really appreciated, as it shows that professors are willing to meet us on our terms. At the same time, we should be putting the effort as students to be more respectful and cooperative with our professors.
So, put the phones and laptops away for the time being, unless they are absolutely needed.
opinion@fiusm.com
There’s evidence that unstructured laptop/tablet use in lectures and classes is problematic. That non laptop users report it as distracting, and that unstructured laptop users get distracted by mail, browsing etc, report getting less from lectures, and score lower than non users in standardised tests.
The key might be the unstructured aspect. More and more reports are finding that students often don;t translate their technology use well into learning contexts, and that to use technology well, they have to be shown how, and why. This is true for both devices, and platforms.
If we want our students to use VLE’s well, as staff, wehave to use them well too, and probably provide support for them. If we want them to use social media well in class, we have to structure that, support them in it, and use social media well ourselves.
The debate may not be, should be ban them or not ban the,, but, rather, can we get increased engagement, participation, and processing from students with social media, and technologies more general, and is it worth the cost in terms of the support required to achieve that for both staff and students.
There seem to be two key drivers to deriving benefit from social media classroom use. Support band training – here’s how and why. And then good, productive and focused use of the target technologies by the instructors running courses.
Students who turn up in class with a twitter account and a laptop and no support will tend to do worse on testing.
Students who turn up to class with a alptop, a twitter account and instruction on how to use them may do better.
Students who turn up to a class with a twitter account, a laptop, with training, in a teaching context that demonstrates and actively deploys the tech well will tend, it seems, to do better than average.