Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Professors Vie With Web for Class's Attention

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2003 16:54:11 -0500

January 2, 2003

Professors Vie With Web for Class's Attention

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

     Universities are rushing toward a wireless future, installing networks that let
students and the faculty surf the Internet from
     laptop computers in the classroom, in the library or by those ponds that always seem
to show up on the cover of the
campus brochure.

But professors say the technology poses a growing challenge for them: retaining their
students' attention.

In a classroom at American University in Washington on a recent afternoon, the benefits
and drawbacks of the new wireless
world were on display. From the back row of an amphitheater classroom, more than a dozen
laptop screens were visible. As
Prof. Jay Mallek lectured graduate students on the finer points of creating and reading an
office budget, many students went
online to Blackboard.com, a Web site that stores course materials, and grabbed the day's
handouts from the ether.

But just as many students were off surfing. A young man looked at sports photos while a
woman checked out baby photos that
just arrived in her e-mailbox.

The screens provide a silent commentary on the teacher's attention-grabbing skills. The
moment he loses the thread, or fumbles
with his own laptop to use its calculator, screens flip from classroom business to
leisure. Students dash off e-mail notes and send
instant messages. A young man who is chewing gum shows an amusing e-mail message to the
woman next to him, and then
switches over to read the online edition of The Wall Street Journal.

Distraction is nothing new. As long as there have been schools, students have whispered,
passed notes and even gazed out the
window and daydreamed. The arrival of laptop computers, however, introduced new
opportunities for diversion, and wireless
introduces an even broader range of distraction, said Dylan Brooks, a senior broadband and
wireless analyst at Jupiter
Communications.

"They could have played solitaire or Minesweeper before," Mr. Brooks said. "Now they can
do that or seven million other
games, or watch a full-length feature film."

This is especially galling to law professors, many of whom still live in the world
depicted in "The Paper Chase," the 1973 film in
which an imperious Prof. Charles W. Kingsfield Jr. held his students in terrified thrall.

"This is an addictive thing that hurts the students themselves," said Ian Ayres, a
professor at the Yale Law School who opposes
much of the Internet's entry into the classroom, saying that computer use is rude and that
other students are "demoralized" by
seeing their peers' attention wander.

"When you see 25 percent of the screens playing solitaire, besides its being distracting,
you feel like a sucker for paying
attention," Professor Ayres said.

Unless law students are fully engaged in the class, he said, they miss out on the give and
take of ideas in class discussion and do
not develop the critical thinking skills that emerge from "deeply tearing apart a case."

Professor Ayres tried to prohibit all Internet use in his classroom. The students "went
ballistic," he said, and insisted that their
multitasking ways made them more productive and even more alert in class.

Lately, he said, he has loosened the restrictions, telling students they could surf from
the back rows, so others would not be
distracted.

One professor at a law school in Texas became so upset by the level of student distraction
in 2001 that he took a ladder to
school, climbed up to reach the wireless transmitter in his classroom — and disconnected
it. The students protested. The
administration told him to plug it back in. But the point was made, he said, and he
regained the attention of the class.

In 2002, he told his students that they could not use laptops in his class at all, even
for taking notes.

"It has made an enormously positive difference to shut those computers off," he said.

Today's college students are a truly wired generation. A study in 2002 by the Pew Internet
and American Life Project in
Washington found that 86 percent of students have gone online, compared with 59 percent of
the general population. Although
the study did not focus on wireless technology, the authors did delicately predict that
"issues readily apparent with the spread of
cellphones, such as etiquette and distraction, are likely to emerge as students are able
to access the Internet anywhere, including
in classrooms."

Dozens of colleges are going wireless, including Dartmouth, Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh,
the University of California at San
Diego and the University of Minnesota.

The wireless rollout at American University is especially ambitious, because it integrates
cellphone coverage into a single
data-delivery network that can deliver messages to laptops, handheld devices and
telephones anywhere on the 84-acre campus.
The university plans to stop offering traditional phone service in its dormitories
eventually.

In any building, the wireless access ports are likely to be there, looking a little like
the top half of a Lava Lamp, painted white and
stuck upside-down to the ceiling.

The director of e-operations at the university, Carl Whitman, said being early to the
wireless world created an advantage in
attracting students who demand the latest technology and "becomes a plus for us."

Matthew Pittinsky, founder and chairman of Blackboard Inc., the large Internet education
company that puts Professor Mallek's
class materials online, said wireless access had "made higher education much more of a
24/7 educational environment than ever
before," with instant access to classroom materials and research resources and a growing
potential for collaborative study.

Mr. Pittinsky said the greatest power of wireless showed up in the dorm, the library and
the commons. "There's less of an
obvious use for wiring the classroom," where the benefits have to be balanced against the
distraction, he said.

At American University, Professor Mallek said the benefits of the technology in his
classroom far outweighed the problems. He
ran the pilot project at the business school that helped the American decide to put in a
campuswide network and said he had
grown used to students' flipping their screens.

"It's a new type of social commentary, to hear clicking," he said. "It's an audible vote."

He suggested that it might even be making him a better teacher. He takes the threat of
losing his students to e-mail and online
newspapers as a challenge to keep lectures interesting and lively.

"As a professor," he said, "if you are not productively engaging them, they have other
opportunities."

Mr. Whitman, the director of e-operations, said he was testing new programs that might
address some of the problems of online
distraction. A system that takes the locations of students into account could be used to
set rules that varied from place to place.
Any use of the Internet might be acceptable in the library or the dean's office, he said,
"but if you're downstairs in Jay's
classroom, you could not surf the Internet or you could surf the Internet but only go to
CNN.com for in-class reading."

Joseph Sun, a first year M.B.A. student in Professor Mallek's class, takes notes with pen
and paper. He owns a laptop but does
not take it to class. Although it "comes in handy to look up an article or quote during
discussion," Mr. Sun said, he has to resist
"the temptation to surf the Net during lectures."

Students say they are finding a balance in the classroom between the good uses of online
technology and its temptations. Tetse
Ukueberuwa, a major in environmental studies at Dartmouth, said, "Over all, it's a great
thing," being able to check e-mail
messages and conduct online research anywhere on her campus.

Ms. Ukueberuwa said she preferred to take notes by hand, however, saying: "I feel I'm more
in touch with what the teacher is
saying. You're looking at the teacher instead of looking at your computer."

As a junior, though, she realizes that she may be "old-fashioned." Every incoming class,
she said, seems "more technologically
advanced" than the last.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/02/technology/02WIRE.html?pagewanted=print&position=top

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