With horror, I'm beginning to realize that classes (at my law school, anyway, and at many others as well) are actually starting up again this coming week, bringing summer '09 to an end, alas. Time for my annual plug for my "Writing Guidelines" -- if you're a beginning law student, or a returning law student, or just someone who writes, you're encouraged to download a copy and look through it. I've put much of what I've learned about writing well over the years in there, and, from the reaction of people who've downloaded it in the past, I think it's a decent guide to the art. (Not, incidentally, as a replacement for Eugene's terrific book on "Academic Legal Writing," but as a supplement, looking at the craft of writing from a somewhat different perspective).
And speaking of classes, I've made the decision this semester to ban computers from my classroom(s). It's something I've been thinking about for a couple of years, and it's not something I've come to (I hope) without giving the matter some serious thought. This is particularly so because this semester one of the courses I'm teaching (and in which I'll be implementing this new rule) is a course on "Cyberspace Law" -- I know it's going to strike some students as bizarre that they won't be allowed to have their laptops in a Cyberspace Law class, but I'm prepared to defend the decision. Simply put, I think they'll learn more without them because they will be forced to engage with the material being presented (or at least they will have fewer alternatives to engaging with the material being presented -- you can lead a horse to water and all that). Several years ago, I sat in on a Law and Economics seminar taught by a colleague of mine at Temple Law School, Dave Hoffman, in which he forbade students from using laptops during class. It was pretty clear to me that the quality of student engagement in the class discussion benefited immensely from the decision. The computer is a powerful distractant -- when the discussion gets messy or difficult (indeed, especially when the discussion gets messy or difficult), it's awfully tempting for students to check out for a few minutes to check their Facebook page, or send out a few emails, or organize their files, or do a little Lexis/Westlaw research, or check the baseball scores, or . . . and then, 9 times out of 10, they're lost for the whole class. I want confused students to tell me they're confused -- to put their hands up and say "Excuse me, but what exactly are you talking about?" They don't need good excuses not to do that.
I also rarely took notes in class. My belief was that by actually paying attention and absorbing the discussion, I would benefit far more than if I mindlessly transcribed every word the professor uttered. To that end, I believe law school classes would be more beneficial if the professors encouraged the students to not take notes and, at the end of the lecture, handed out an outline to the students covering the topics covered in that day's lecture.
1. Proper note taking does not necessarily (and should not) mean merely transcribing every word the professor utters. the students who note take obsessively will still be furiously scribbling in notebooks, the students who don't take many notes will still not be taking many notes.
2. Perhaps that method works for you, but I strongly prefer to take notes, particularly if the material is going to be tested in a closed book final. (The majority of seminar classes I took had either a paper or an open book final as the majority or all of the grade). On the whole I would much much rather take notes in typed form than in handwritten form because typed notes are only only easier to read, they are much easier to rework and add too or highlight and modify when it comes time to study later.
3. My own personal opinion is that Professor Post is being almost embarrassingly naive about confused students engaging or not engaging because of the presence of a laptop. It may be true that a laptop provides an easy "out," but it realistically won't have any effect on a student who may be confused actually being willing to admit that in class. Students become engaged when the class draws them in, not necessarily because of the presence of an outside distraction.
Your decision will probably give a good nudge to folks who don't have the self-discipline to pay attention in class when there's a laptop in front of them, but it will be at the expense of those who do have that discipline and benefit from using a laptop. It could be that you're totally comfortable with that tradeoff--after all, you benefit by maximizing the number of students who are listening and interested in what you're saying. But to achieve that you are harming some students who've done nothing wrong.
I would not have taken a class that did not allow laptops when I was in law school (and did not), and greatly appreciated the haven they provided from blowhards who thought they were so brilliant they didn't need to actually add any value to the text for me to want to listen to them.
Stop making rules for the lowest common denominator in the class. If someone can use the laptop and do well, kudos to them. If someone uses the laptop and can't do well, it's a tough universe.
I'm always amused by the people who pay good money (or maybe their parents' good money) to sit in class while they surf the internet.
Professor's class, professor's rules. If attendance is mandatory (and it is, thanks to the ABA's accreditation committee), then it is entirely appropriate to require that one pay attention while acquiescing to that mandate, whether one considers the professor a blow-hard or not. If you can't actually write because of some learning disability, ask for an ADA accomodation.
Why shouldn't the professorate compete in the open market for attention? Law professors should:
(1) pump up their lectures,
(2) stop reading Powerpoint slides to me,
(3) stop reading verbatim the same twenty-year-old notes, and
(4) realize that kids of my generation can multitask like none other.
Banning laptops doesn't help law students. But better lectures sure would.
Compete or perish.
But boy oh boy, can it be a distraction too. I'm pretty good, I think: I don't use Internet chat in class (unlike at least a quarter of the group), I don't do anything that takes active thought. But even passive reading or glancing can suddenly take your attention away just long enough that suddenly a fast-paced professor can be on to another point before I've taken my notes. At the same time, I have attention deficit disorder, and my weekend classes are three hours long, often with just one break. Without some sort of distraction, by the end of class you'd see me burst from the room screaming. Having some sort of quick, one-minute distraction actually helps me focus more in the long run, a trick I've learned both in classes and in the workforce.
I wonder if I'm in the minority, though. Many are the times I've seen people simply not look up from their Internet for an entire class session. And while the "survival of the fittest" paradigm has some attraction here, I think that taking steps to make sure people are attending by preventing laptops isn't such a bad thing either.
My brother took a class in college called Logic. He received As on all of the exams, but received a C in the class for poor attendance. Besides the obvious lack of logic in that event, I think the point is valid. If I can pass your class or even do well without paying full attention, you either need to make your tests harder, or quit complaining. I loved the intellectual nature of law school, but some students don't and that is entirely their choice, especially when they are paying the exorbitant law school tuition in these economic times.
I don't think it matters how engaging or interesting the professor is in some classes. The people who are going to surf will still do it. I've never surfed the web in class. But I still can be distracted by other students. It is hard to give full attention to a professor when the person in front of you is watching a tv show. The moving images distract and annoy me to no end. Since seats are assigned the first day, it's not always easy to avoid that situation. I like being able to take notes on my computer, but don't like being distracted by others. I don't know that there is a good solution besides being able to put the people who won't pay attention into a different class.
Naw. Sometimes I wanted to check out, but I couldn't cuz I didn't have my laptop so I had to listen to the prof.
@blog fiend, why should they have to compete for your attention again? Somtimes you have to sit through boring lectures to learn stuff. At least, that's how it used to be.
That's your call to make, I'd just ask you to make that clear well in advance of the deadline for course selection. Many students will regard your policy as obnoxiously paternalistic and wish to avoid your course as a result.
I took notes on my laptop in every single class in law school, never suffered from a lack of engagement, so far as I could tell, and did very well academically. I would have never knowingly signed up for a course that didn't allow taking notes on a laptop.
"87 years ago this country was founded and dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality. Currently, we are engaged in a civil war which will determine the fate of our country. Today, we are present at a battlefield of this war to dedicate a memorial to those who died here. The sacrifice of the soldiers who fought here consecrates this ground far more than any of our words. Our goal, rather, should be to continue to fight for the cause of the Union so as to give meaning to the deaths of these soldiers."
1. iPhones, Blackberries, and other internet-surfing cellphones. It seems as if 50% of students these days have one.
Banning laptops just means that the students who would have goofed off on a laptop are now going to goof off on their iPhones or the like, where they can play games, surf the internet, chat with their friends in class, and do all sorts of things. Are you now going to ban cellphones?
2. Laptops bans hurt students who can't handwrite quickly. They help professors who cannot maintain the attention-span of their students. I'm sorry but, most "good" students in law school realize early on that most law school classes are basically about learning what cases are about and learning the law to derive from them. It's why after 1st year law school is pretty easy.
If you can do this from your reading before class, then class becomes 90% filler as the professor regurgitates what is already in your notes you're bringing to class. If the professor runs the class differently and less like a 90-minute case briefing session, then students would be more likely to pay attention. This is completely on the professor.
Similarly, I will wait (actually I no longer have to wait) for the obligatory "damn kids and their fancy computers and short attention spans" crowd to appear and tell others how disrespectful and lazy young'uns are today.
Professors can justify these rules any way they wish, but I have yet to hear a good explanation over several years of posts on this topic for why they can't just shut off the wireless in their classroom and still allow students who type their notes to do so.
I'd like to believe it is a pedagogical stance, but I now tend to believe it is mostly an ego thing.
Professors can justify these rules any way they wish, but I have yet to hear a good explanation over several years of posts on this topic for why they can't just shut off the wireless in their classroom and still allow students who type their notes to do so.
--Simple, cutting off the university's wi-fi in the classroom will not prevent internet access through other networks. Some people pay for access on their laptops, and in some places other wi-fi networks are freely available.
When my sister was in law school, she bought a used text book for a class. In the margins, the previous students wrote all the 'jokes' that the professor said in class. Turns out, they were the exact same jokes in her year too.
When I was in law school, we had a professor so bad that students openly read the newspaper in class, holding it up high enough to hide their faces from everyone else. Others merely put their head down on the desk and slept. None of us had any idea what the class was about (something about the stock market), but no one ever asked a question either.
Additionally, as far as being engaged in the class, it comes down to how good the professor is. I have been in classes (with laptops) where the professor was so engaging that all you saw on the screens were Word and OneNote and people taking notes and paying attention. I have been in other classes where all you see are games, blogs, and espn. What is the difference? The good professors get students to pay attention, no matter if they have a laptop, a doodle pad, or a feather ink blotter.
As someone who made the rough transition from clerk to document reviewer a few years ago, I wish this was true, but I don't believe it. Far more important are your ability to manage your time, your ability to interact with people with massive egos who don't care about you, your ability to work for weeks with little sleep, and your ability to determine whether a document is privileged and/or responsive. Unless you're writing a brief for the Supreme Court, quality written work is something most practicing lawyers claim to care about, but few actually do.
I hope that you make it easy for students to get such dispensations. Needing a doctor's note (since I don't see a doctor for the condition) or to jump through some other hoop would probably dissuade me from taking the class.
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