{"id":5077,"date":"2014-09-11T11:57:13","date_gmt":"2014-09-11T17:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=5077"},"modified":"2014-09-11T21:21:18","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T03:21:18","slug":"students-and-their-devices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=5077","title":{"rendered":"Students and their devices"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"viewmaster\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“The practical effects of my decision to allow technology use in class grew worse over time,” writes<\/a> Clay Shirky in explaining why he’s decided to ban laptops, smartphones, and tablets from the classes he teaches at NYU. “The level of distraction in my classes seemed to grow, even though it was the same professor and largely the same set of topics, taught to a group of students selected using roughly the same criteria every year. The change seemed to correlate more with the rising ubiquity and utility of the devices themselves, rather than any change in me, the students, or the rest of the classroom encounter.”<\/p>\n

When\u00a0students put away their devices, Shirky\u00a0continues, “it\u2019s as if someone has let fresh air into the room. The conversation brightens, [and]\u00a0there is a sense of relief from many of the students. Multi-tasking is cognitively exhausting\u200a\u2014\u200awhen we do it by choice, being asked to stop can come as a welcome change.”<\/p>\n

It’s been more than ten years now since Cornell’s Helene Hembrooke and Geri Gay published their famous “The Laptop and the Lecture” study<\/a>, which documented how laptop use reduces\u00a0students’ retention\u00a0of material presented in class.* Since then, the\u00a0evidence of\u00a0the cognitive toll that distractions, interruptions, and multitasking inflict on memory and learning has only grown. I surveyed a lot of the evidence in my 2010 book The Shallows<\/em><\/a>, and Shirky details\u00a0several of the more recent\u00a0studies. The evidence fits with what educational psychologists have long known: when a person’s cognitive load \u2014 the amount of information streaming into working memory \u2014 rises beyond a certain, quite low threshold, learning suffers. There’s nothing counterintuitive about this. We’ve all experienced<\/a> cognitive overload and its debilitating effects.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Dan Rockmore, a computer scientist at Dartmouth, wrote<\/a> of his decision to ban laptops and other personal computing devices from his classes:<\/p>\n

I banned laptops in the classroom after it became common practice to carry them to school. When I created my \u201celectronic etiquette policy\u201d (as I call it in my syllabus), I was acting on a gut feeling based on personal experience. I\u2019d always figured that, for the kinds of computer-science and math classes that I generally teach, which can have a significant theoretical component, any advantage that might be gained by having a machine at the ready, or available for the primary goal of taking notes, was negligible at best. We still haven\u2019t made it easy to type notation-laden sentences, so the potential benefits were low. Meanwhile, the temptation for distraction was high. I know that I have a hard time staying on task when the option to check out at any momentary lull is available; I assumed that this must be true for my students, as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Rockmore followed the research on\u00a0classroom technology use, he found that the empirical evidence backed up his instincts.<\/p>\n

No one would call Shirky or Rockmore a\u00a0Luddite or a nostalgist or a technophobe. They are thoughtful, analytical scholars and\u00a0teachers\u00a0who have great enthusiasm and respect for computers and the internet. So their\u00a0critiques of classroom computer use are especially\u00a0important. Shirky, in particular, has always had a strong inclination to leave decisions about computer and phone use up to his students. He wouldn’t have changed his mind without good reason.<\/p>\n

Still, even as the evidence grows, there are many teachers\u00a0who, for a variety of reasons, continue to oppose any\u00a0restrictions on classroom computer use \u2014 and who sometimes criticize\u00a0colleagues that do ban gadgets\u00a0as blinkered or backward-looking. At this point, some of the\u00a0pro-gadget\u00a0arguments are starting to sound strained. Alexander Reid, an English professor at the University of Buffalo, draws<\/a> a fairly silly parallel between computers and books:<\/p>\n

Can we imagine a liberal arts degree where one of the goals is to graduate students who can work collaboratively with information\/media technologies and networks? Of course we can. It\u2019s called English. It\u2019s just that the information\/media technologies and networks take the form of books and other print media. Is a book a distraction? Of course. Ever try to talk to someone who is reading a book? What would you think of a student sitting in a classroom reading a magazine, doodling in a notebook or doing a crossword puzzle? However, we insist that students bring their books to class and strongly encourage them to write.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Others worry that putting limits\u00a0on gadget use, even if justified pedagogically, should be rejected\u00a0as paternalistic. Rebecca Schuman, who teaches at Pierre Laclede Honors College, makes<\/a>\u00a0this case:<\/p>\n

\n

My colleagues and I joke sometimes that we teach \u201c13th-graders,\u201d but really, if I confiscate laptops at the door, am I not\u00a0creating<\/em>\u00a0a 13th-grade classroom? Despite their\u00a0bottle-rocket butt pranks\u00a0and their\u00a010-foot beer bongs, college students are old enough to vote and go to war. They should be old enough to decide for themselves whether they want to pay attention in class \u2014 and to face the consequences if they do not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A related point, also made by Schuman, is that teachers, not computers, are ultimately to blame if students get distracted in class:<\/p>\n

You want students to close their machines and pay attention? Put them in a smaller seminar where their presence actually registers and matters, and be engaging enough \u2014 or, in my case, ask enough questions cold \u2014 that students aren\u2019t tempted to stick their faces in their machines in the first place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem with blaming the teacher, or the student, or the class format\u00a0\u2014 the problem with treating the technology as a neutral object \u2014\u00a0is that it ignores the way software and social media are painstakingly\u00a0designed to exploit the\u00a0mind’s natural inclination toward distractedness. Shirky makes this point well, and I’ll quote him here\u00a0at some length:<\/p>\n

\n

Laptops, tablets and phones\u200a\u2014\u200athe devices on which the struggle between focus and distraction is played out daily\u200a\u2014\u200aare making the problem progressively worse. Any designer of software as a service has an incentive to be as ingratiating as they can be, in order to compete with other such services. \u201cLook what a good job I\u2019m doing! Look how much value I\u2019m delivering!\u201d<\/p>\n

This problem is especially acute with social media, because . . .\u00a0social information is immediately and emotionally engaging. Both the form and the content of a Facebook update are almost irresistibly distracting, especially compared with the hard slog of coursework. (\u201cYour former lover tagged a photo you are in\u201d vs. \u201cThe Crimean War was the first conflict significantly affected by use of the telegraph.\u201d Spot the difference?)<\/p>\n

Worse, the designers of operating systems have every incentive to be arms dealers to the social media firms. Beeps and pings and pop-ups and icons, contemporary interfaces provide an extraordinary array of attention-getting devices, emphasis on \u201cgetting.\u201d Humans are incapable of ignoring surprising new information in our visual field, an effect that is strongest when the visual cue is slightly above and beside the area we\u2019re focusing on. (Does that sound like the upper-right corner of a screen near you?)<\/p>\n

The form and content of a Facebook update may be almost irresistible, but when combined with a visual alert in your immediate peripheral vision, it is\u2014really, actually, biologically\u2014impossible to resist.\u00a0Our visual and emotional systems are faster and more powerful than our intellect; we are given to automatic responses when either system receives stimulus, much less both. Asking a student to stay focused while she has alerts on is like asking a chess player to concentrate while rapping their knuckles with a ruler at unpredictable intervals.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A teacher has an obligation not only to teach but to create, or at least try to create, a classroom atmosphere that is\u00a0conducive to the work of learning. Ignoring\u00a0technology’s influence on that atmosphere\u00a0doesn’t do students any favors. Here’s some of what Anne Curzan, a University of Michigan English professor, tells<\/a> her students when she explains why she doesn’t want them to use computers in class:<\/p>\n

\n

Now I know that one could argue that it is your choice about whether you want to use this hour and 20 minutes to engage actively with the material at hand, or whether you would like to multitask. You\u2019re not bothering anyone (one could argue) as you quietly do your email or check Facebook. Here\u2019s the problem with that theory: From what we can tell, you are actually damaging the learning environment for others, even if you\u2019re being quiet about it.\u00a0A study<\/a> published in 2013\u00a0found that not only did the multitasking student in a classroom do worse on a postclass test on the material, so did the peers who could see the computer. In other words, the off-task laptop use distracted not just the laptop user but also the group of students behind the laptop user. (And I get it, believe me. I was once in a lecture where the woman in front of me was shoe shopping, and I found myself thinking at one point, \u201cNo, not the pink ones!\u201d I don\u2019t remember all that much else about the lecture.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Our attention is governed not just by our will but by our environment. That’s how we’re built.<\/p>\n

I suspect the debate over classroom computer use has become\u00a0a perennial one, and that it will blossom anew every September. That’s good, as it’s an issue that deserves ongoing debate. But there is a point on which perhaps everyone can agree,\u00a0and from\u00a0that point of agreement\u00a0might emerge\u00a0constructive action. It’s a point about design, and Shirky gets at it in his\u00a0article:<\/p>\n

\n

The fact that hardware and software is being professionally designed to distract was the first thing that made me willing to require rather than merely suggest that students not use devices in class. There are some counter-moves in the industry right now\u200a\u2014\u200asoftware that takes over your screen to hide distractions, software that prevents you from logging into certain sites or using the internet at all, phones with Do Not Disturb options\u200a\u2014\u200abut at the moment these are rear-guard actions. The industry has committed itself to an arms race for my students\u2019 attention, and if it\u2019s me against Facebook and Apple, I lose.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Computers and software can be designed in many different ways, and the design decisions will always reflect the interests of the designers (or their employers). Beyond the laptops-or-no-laptops-debate lies a broader and more important discussion about how computer technology has come to be\u00a0designed \u2014 and why.<\/p>\n

*This post, and the other posts cited within it,\u00a0concerns\u00a0the\u00a0use of personal computing devices in classes in which those devices have not been formally incorporated as teaching aids. There are, of course, plenty of classes in which computers are built into the teaching plan. It’s perhaps noteworthy, though, to point out that, in the\u00a0“Laptop and Lecture” study, students who used their laptops to look at sites relevant to the class actually did even worse on tests of retention than did students who used their computers to look at irrelevant sites.<\/p>\n

Image: “Viewmaster<\/a>” by Geof Wilson.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The practical effects of my decision to allow technology use in class grew worse over time,” writes Clay Shirky in explaining why he’s decided to ban laptops, smartphones, and tablets from the classes he teaches at NYU. “The level of distraction in my classes seemed to grow, even though it was the same professor and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5077"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5093,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5077\/revisions\/5093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}