Reclaiming the Classroom with Old-Fashioned Teaching
Reclaiming the Classroom with Old-Fashioned Teaching..
When we professors were students, we were all guilty of being off task from time to time during a class. Maybe you thought there wasn't any harm in jotting a note to a friend. Perhaps, in more recent years, you stole a quick glance at Facebook during a lull in the lecture. No big deal.
But when I handed out an article in class the other day for my students to read silently, I was surprised to hear a keyboard clicking. I strolled over to see one student hurriedly pick up her article and pretend to read, and I quietly reminded her to stay off the Internet. No big deal.
Not one minute later, I was aghast to see that the same student had put her article back down on the desk and was now moving the mouse around. This time it was a big deal.
Being in my early 30s, and having recently finished my own coursework, I grew up on the cusp of the instant-gratification generation, and I understand that short attention spans crave constant stimulation. I also teach my "Introduction to Journalism and Public Relations" class in a computer lab, where the siren calls of online distractions is hard to overcome.
What differentiates me from students (who tend to be 18 to 22 years old) at my small liberal-arts university is that I felt a level of respect toward my professors that seems to be fading. As I spend too much time repeatedly asking the same students to stay on task, the gap between our versions of acceptable classroom behavior grows.
So when I asked my class for some anonymous feedback regarding online goofing off in class, what I got from several students was what I suspected, yet I was still shocked to see it in writing:"I don't care if I get caught."
When I was a student, the main deterrent for goofing off online was the prospect of getting caught and the subsequent embarrassment of getting called out by the professor. But when that boogeyman is no longer scary, what do we as teachers have left? Some might ask,
When we professors were students, we were all guilty of being off task from time to time during a class. Maybe you thought there wasn't any harm in jotting a note to a friend. Perhaps, in more recent years, you stole a quick glance at Facebook during a lull in the lecture. No big deal.
But when I handed out an article in class the other day for my students to read silently, I was surprised to hear a keyboard clicking. I strolled over to see one student hurriedly pick up her article and pretend to read, and I quietly reminded her to stay off the Internet. No big deal.
Not one minute later, I was aghast to see that the same student had put her article back down on the desk and was now moving the mouse around. This time it was a big deal.
Being in my early 30s, and having recently finished my own coursework, I grew up on the cusp of the instant-gratification generation, and I understand that short attention spans crave constant stimulation. I also teach my "Introduction to Journalism and Public Relations" class in a computer lab, where the siren calls of online distractions is hard to overcome.
What differentiates me from students (who tend to be 18 to 22 years old) at my small liberal-arts university is that I felt a level of respect toward my professors that seems to be fading. As I spend too much time repeatedly asking the same students to stay on task, the gap between our versions of acceptable classroom behavior grows.
So when I asked my class for some anonymous feedback regarding online goofing off in class, what I got from several students was what I suspected, yet I was still shocked to see it in writing:"I don't care if I get caught."
When I was a student, the main deterrent for goofing off online was the prospect of getting caught and the subsequent embarrassment of getting called out by the professor. But when that boogeyman is no longer scary, what do we as teachers have left? Some might ask,