I found my laptop to be very beneficial in my classroom learning during college, but only when I made it so. My secret was to avoid even connecting to the internet. I opened up a word processor, focused my eyes on the professor's slides or visual aids, and typed everything I saw, adding notes and annotations based on the professor's lecture.

This had the opposite effect of what this article describes: my focusing my distracted efforts on formatting the article and making my notes more coherent, I kept myself focused, and could much more easily engage with the class. Something about the menial task of taking the notes (which I found I rarely needed to review) prevented me from losing focus and wandering off to perform some unrelated activity.

I realize my experience is anecdotal, but then again, isn't everyone's? I think each student should evaluate their own style of learning, and decide how to best use the tools available to them. If the laptop is a distraction? Remove it! Goodness though, you're paying several hundred (/thousand) dollars per credit hour, best try to do everything you can to make that investment pay off.

FWIW I'm not totally convinced that the paper isn't also anecdotal. They selected for people who would agree to have their internet activity spied on in exchange for extra credit, and then from that group selected only for people using the internet -- not their computers, but the internet! -- in more than half the lectures. And did all of this in a large enrollment undergraduate gen ed intro course with lectures that lasted two hours.

Sure, the results pertain more to excluding the internet from the classroom, but really that's just splitting hairs imo

1) people who are more informed care more about privacy

2) you become more informed by being the type of person who seeks out and successfully obtains information and not being distracted

If 2) and 1) hold, your methodology will be biased to those liable to undertake distracting activities or be distracted. Furthermore, perhaps some would not even partake in the study because it's a distraction relative to why they're in the class in the first place.

Not saying that is demonstrable or true. Don't downvote the hypothetical messenger and all :p

And yes, I'd expect weaker students to be the more likely to spend their time / privacy on extra points.

There are studies that show that verbatim computer note taking is actually inferior to remembering the lecture content:

A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...

I think people should be careful when looking at such things. 'There are studies' is not really the same as 'there is scientific consensus with demonstrated repeatability'. Ultimately though, you can't tell someone they're doing it wrong when they're successful, so YMMV.

The first kind are notes that you take because the process helps memorize in that moment. The writing is a tool to help you manipulate and focus the idea in your head. The output is much less important than the experience. These are the records that -- in practice -- you will seldom go back to read.

The second kind are notes you take because you can't memorize them right now and plan to review or reuse them later in some way. When taking notes this way, you mentally avoid thinking too hard about what the note means, in order to copy it faithfully.

Personally, I think handwriting works better for the write-only notes, while typing (and copy-pasting, and links, etc.) are great for notes that are going to be reused later.

Additional benefits by using a laptop to take notes is that they are searchable, archived and accessible for however long you like, and sharable between classmates. Hand written notes can obviously be shared and archived as well, but nowhere near as easily.

That's exactly the point: you get a free exercise in divided attention, plus you are forced to digest your notes to only essentials, not full transcript of the lecture. That process is what makes handwritten notes superior - it forces you to focus and think, not just mindlessly type.

And for things that you didn't have time to note you still have a textbook. Handwritten notes are just outline, a basis to build upon.

I wonder how you do that - I can't imagine I would be able to make notes in LaTeX in real-time. To me, paper is just faster than any computer solution. Also sometimes you need to draw a diagram or arrow in the notes.

> Slowing down to a pace comfortable for you means, at least in my classes, that you'll miss the next thing in the presentation.

I was thinking about this recently. I teach (assembly programming) in our company using slideshow. But most teachers at my university used blackboard (for math). I am beginning to think that using blackboard is better, despite more effort, because it also forces the teacher to slow down.

Having worked on online learning applications since then, I still think that his was the best system for transferring complex knowledge in a classroom setting.

An example PDF that I found through a quick Google search: http://www.ittc.ku.edu/~jstiles/312/handouts/312_Introductio...

When I was in school I was often hard pressed to keep up with simple paper and pencil.

Only math is done in LaTeX, for clarification. They're rendered as images and imported into OneNote (via EqualX, if anyone's looking to do the same).

This doesn't work well in certain classes (e.g. math classes where you have to copy every word of a proof and analyze it later).

If you're at a computer looking for a reference then there are better sources available than hastily typed notes.

What makes handwriting different from typing in terms of memory recall, other than the fact that most, if not everyone, have written with pen and paper for far longer than typing?

Typing vs handwriting is like finding the right door in an unnumbered hotel vs a picturesque medieval town

I still don't get how that'd be any different. Location on a page corresponds with which notebook and section I may have taken notes down in OneNote, especially since you can also position notes all over the page.

All kinds of factors fit both of the media, IMO.

I spent my first year and a half of college at a community college. They arent exactly known for their academic rigor. However first semester I took World History 1. There were only like 3 tests and 5 Quizzes that made up our grade. The tests were not multiple choice or fill in the blank like some professors might do. They were several short essay questions and a long form essay. You would have a choice of like 6 short essay questions which you had to pick 3 to answer. and then had a choice of 3 long essay topics from which we had to pick one.

The Professor about 2 weeks prior to the exams gave us a handout of 12 short essay questions and 6 long essay questions. He randomized the questions that were on the test so that while we knew what questions were possibly going to be on the test we did not know which ones would. He also expected us to know both the facts such as people, places, dates and events. but also the concepts. If you only got the concepts but did not know the factual material you were in trouble and vice versa.

I took all my notes in that class on a laptop using OneNote 2003 (It came out right at the start of my first semester in college.)

As the semester went on I got into the habit of skimming over my previous notes for that class and adding annotations about connections to other concepts and facts in the class. I also would review my notes at the end of the day while it was still fresh in my mind, but had taken some time to digest the material to add things that I missed or make my notes more clear.

When it came time to start preparing for the tests the first thing I did was take my notes, create a new section in my notebook just for that test. I took all my notes for that test and instead of organizing them by lecture, i condensed them into a more concise and coherent form that linked all the different concepts and facts together. I also outlined my strategy for each question. Then I printed it out and put it in a ring binder, as I refined my notes, I printed out new copies for the binder. I probably printed about 200 pages for each test.

Maybe Writing them out would have been more effective for memorization in most cases. But to me there was simply too much information to memorize in one pass. and Wrot memorization was not going to cut in this class. I also think the fact that I was constantly working with those notes and synthesizing new material from them, replaced alot of the feedback loop of writing it all out by hand.

I learned a lot of history in that class. But more importantly I learned how to interpret requirements, sift through large amounts of information, making connections between that information and developing strategies to accomplish a goal.

Worked pretty well for most courses and meant I had explanations of everything come revise time. The only problem is it took about 4 years to really nail down the routine and by the time I had it perfect (I really wish I'd done it in first year), it was time to leave. Such is life.

The poster is doing this in addition to actually writing the notes - I've done something similar. Sometimes I take the initial notes on a computer. Later I hand-write them once or twice. Once immediately and once later on to narrow focus down on things I was having more trouble remembering.

The biggest benefit is that such a system gives some repetition. For me, this repetition is superior to only reading notes because I wind up working with the information physically as it changes form. I do get better results in some subjects if I work plenty of problems in addition to this - for example, foreign/second language and maths.

The only times I've found this sort of thing generally unhelpful is with things like music, art, and physical education/sports. These rely on a lot of muscle memory, and it is hard to get by writing.

The common thread in all of these is practice and review. The main difference is in the way they are carried out.

Typesetting gave me a set of digital, neat lectures notes (goodbye folders of paper). I also understood everything better because I'd read through it twice. Most importantly it was good bargaining material for skipping lectures and getting notes from other people.

I also flash-carded all my lectures in 3rd/4th year which undoubtedly bumped my grade up. The key was timing it so your peak recall was at the exam, given the volume of information. It was useless for long term memory though.

The full study is paywalled, but based on the SA article it had students take notes two ways, then tested them on retention and synthesis later - without any secondary study. That's not necessarily a good mirror for actual long-running courses.

I used both approaches in college. Longhand note-taking was vastly better for my retention of material, I don't dispute that. But computer transcription let me get everything, and sometimes that mattered more. I had to study more outside class when I typed, but I was aware of that and it was a worthwhile tradeoff for completeness.

Professors are not necessarily good, or even tolerable, at supporting effective learning strategies. They can click through dense Powerpoint slides faster than I can type or write. And they can refuse to release those slides, then test on material from them not available elsewhere. If writing means I get 60% and retain it, while typing means I get 90% and have to study further, typing wins without question.

More broadly, my take would be: many real classrooms are vastly less student-friendly than your average study environment. That changes what works.

But that is the main issue, isn't it? The social media machine with its hunger for "eyeballs" and its myriad of notifications and popups. Shallow entertainment in the form of Youtube videos, always just one click away. Heck, even hypertext with its going-off-on-a-tangent links to external documents.

If you really want to do a focused, deep study of something, turn off the Internet.

If you hate what you're doing so much, that you have to do something so unhealthy as locking yourself in isolation to perform the task, you probably shouldn't do it. Listen to yourself, and go do what you want to do instead.

You can love something to pieces, yet still find yourself unable to do it, merely because the draw of the internet is too powerful. We are not optimized to deal with the stimulus of the internet. I have found that unfettered access to it is reducing life quality, and I'm not waiting for twenty double-blind peer-reviewed studies to show this obvious reality.

It is much healthier to admit that we have limits, that we are fallible in the face of such overwhelming pleasure, and accept the approach of physically distancing ourselves from the internet.

Firstly, the internet does not permanently and completely eliminate our agency, it reduces our agency due to the fallible nature of self-control.

Secondly, all of the other activities you listed do not reduce our agency to the extent that the internet does. Some things are more addictive than others. To claim that meteorology and the internet have the same risk to our agency is absolutely absurd.

Thirdly, establishing distance from the internet (e.g. not involving computers when they aren't necessary, using the computer at the library instead of keeping one at home, adding restrictions to a smartphone or using a dumbphone) is not the same as giving it up altogether.

You're correct, you did present a slippery slope.

> Firstly, the internet does not permanently and completely eliminate our agency...

> You can love something to pieces, yet still find yourself unable to do it, merely because the draw of the internet is too powerful.

Which is it? Is the draw of the internet simply too powerful to ignore? Or is it possible to partially ignore this distraction?

> Secondly, all of the other activities you listed do not reduce our agency to the extent that the internet does.

Internet access reduces your agency? Sorry to hear that. Internet access increases my agency.

> Thirdly, establishing distance from the internet (e.g. not involving computers when they aren't necessary, using the computer at the library instead of keeping one at home, adding restrictions to a smartphone or using a dumbphone) is not the same as giving it up altogether.

> We are not optimized to deal with the stimulus of the internet.

You're excusing convenience. If the internet is so harmful, why risk any contact? And are all parts of the internet equally harmful?

Back to the original point, if you don't want to use the internet, then don't. But if you don't want to use the internet, why are you using it to tell other people that you don't want to use it?

Construct safe spaces for yourself, that always provide what feels good to you, but will only let you contribute to your own (and other people's) long life and prosperity.

Moreover, school has also classes one hates and student need to finish those too. They don't cancel out entertaining classes.

The lecture format is what needs changing. You need a reason to go to class, and there was nothing worse than a professor showing slides from the pages of his own book (say) or droning through anything that could be Googled and read in less time. If there isn’t some live demonstration, or lecture-only material, regular quizzes or other hook, you can’t expect students to fully engage.

I imagine that many classes could be presented in a similar format. I also imagine it would be a lot of work on the part of the educators to do this.

I can imagine that taking a lot of planning and refinement over multiple offerings to get the timing just right on the exercises.

Web page for the course here:

http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/three-day-rdbms/

That's a bit of a straw-man - nobody said anything about turning every student in to star pupils, it's a matter of degrees.

There is no question in my mind that a device capable of being online, using social media, and that is constantly pushing information at you is going to be a higher level distraction than a pen and paper. Reducing that level of distraction will be beneficial for many students, even if they only pay attention to 30% of the lecture instead of 15%, that's still an improvement.

So the answer to “what if?” question is really just that students are ultimately responsible for their own outcomes, and figuring out that laptops are a liability is part of that.

1) Eager learners who have reflected on the same material before coming in, to the extent that they know the gaps in their understanding.

2) A lecturer who is above the students' level (on the material) and willing/able to answer arbitrary questions about the topic.

3) Students keeping up and asking questions to ensure that they stay that way (but not so often that progress crawls to a halt).

That was probably typical of medieval universities that taught that way (just a guess though, haven't actually researched it).

Today? Not so much, and so the typical lecture is almost pure waste.

>In this case, however, boredom was not the answer – at least not entirely. Students who reported lower interest in the class did tend to have lower exam scores, but this relationship did not account for the relationship between internet use and exam performance.

These days, despite the textbook publishers' best efforts, the information is freely available (up until you run into paywalled research papers, but that's at a whole different level from undergrad work, mostly) but the lecture format has barely changed.

There's a reason why people demand you copy stuff down on your own.

If someone demands from you (instead of just suggesting) to copy stuff down by hand on your own it's probably because they want to fuck with you (or because they are too lazy to do actual teaching). I can see no other explanation. That was especially true during elementary, middle and high school.

Most lecturers tended to post their content online (either as a .ppt or as a scanned pdf).

People realised that with all of the notes provided in advance there wasn't a huge incentive for them to be physically present for the lectures and the theatre would get progressively emptier throughout the semester. I admit I skipped more than a few lectures during course of my degree did not feel like I missed anything particularly relevant.

At my university the lectures were supplemented by "tutorials" - wikipedia tells me this is an Australian thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial) essentially the lectures were 150+ people sitting in a theatre taught by a Professor and the tutorials were usually 10-20 people in a classroom overseen by a postgrad student. We'd spend the tutorial reviewing what was covered in the previous lecture and working through problem sets in a small group. It had the benefit that you would be able to get 1 on 1 attention from the tutor if you needed it. Most lecturers would not even field questions during their lectures whilst the tutors would allow you to email them question etc outside of classroom which was very helpful.

>In this case, however, boredom was not the answer – at least not entirely. Students who reported lower interest in the class did tend to have lower exam scores, but this relationship did not account for the relationship between internet use and exam performance.

The next cut some students come to class, put a recorder on their desk and leave, then pick it up later.

Eventually there's a scene of the professor lecturing to a bunch of empty desks with just recorders.

And the final scene there's the professor's tape player playing to the student's recorders.

The other course were more challenging and more interesting.

In a 25 person class, even if it's nominally a lecture, I'd expect it to be far more interactive.

No lectures.

Office hours if needed. Had to listen to tapes in chem building

(jimmy Carter president)

Tons of journal articles on this are available if you look.

There's a very specific part of the brain responsible for the movement planning and fine motor control required for writing. Some folks have it underdeveloped, and need to spend an inordinate amount of effort and concentration in order to write. And even then, their writing will often degrade over time as they fatigue.

I first head about Dysgraphia 10 right here though - the symptoms a familiar enough for a self-diagnosis, but as all self-diagnosis there might be something else.

Although in grad school I never used to a digital method of annotating papers and did it by hand anyway.

If a student has a medical condition that makes it so their handwriting is not legible then they probably had the same issue in HS and should be able to navigate College bureaucracy well enough to get the exemption status.

Not to be too personal, 99% of college students (including myself back in the day) are lazy rationalizers in some fashion. In my experience it's not until Junior/Senior year that some majors start squeezing that out.

Most people do grow up tho.

This kind of complaint magically appeared after students got Internet-enabled laptops and were allowed to bring them at school.

That's bullshit of the same level as "I can take faster and better notes with my laptop". No you can't. You can't draw graphs, you can't draw diagrams, you can't draw small maps quickly and properly as you can by hand. You can't either type fancy maths, physics and chemistry formulas as fast and as "aligned" as you can do do it by hand.

"But it is searchable". Wonderful. As if you used to be lost in a 30 pages long course (which has a logical organisation and/or progression) that anyway you have to learn one way or another, by practice or rote memorisation.

There is zero benefit in typing notes vs writing them down. At best, in an unlikely optimistic case, it could be equal.

Laptop in a classroom are used to play, browse the web and social networks; the rest are made-up justifications to be allowed to bring them.

I had the same kind of problem since elementary school, I was first allowed to use a computer during class in uni.

> That's bullshit

Just because it doesn't occur to you it does not mean that it's not true. Just because you started paying attention to it now it does not mean that it wasn't there before either.

> No you can't

Well, you might not be able to but many people can.

> You can't draw graphs, you can't draw diagrams

Sure you can. There are many tools for this job, both text and graphical ones.

> You can't either type fancy maths, physics and chemistry formulas as fast and as "aligned" as you can do do it by hand.

With Latex + Emacs I can type fancy mathematical formulas much faster and much more aligned than when writing them down.

> There is zero benefit in typing notes vs writing them down

Except that writing down notes for me and for many other people is useless, tiresome and distracting.

>There is zero benefit in typing notes vs writing them down. At best, in an unlikely optimistic case, it could be equal.

Have you used org-mode? I really like the ability to organise many notes, link them together (like a small personal wiki) and others. Typing is also significantly less fatiguing, at least for my hands, and I suspect at equal or even faster speed, though I have nothing to back that up, I can type at around 110wpm comfortably.

Typing notes also comes in quite handy if the course comes with digital material. You can copy that graph in, you don't have to draw it out. Tablet-laptops (if there's a word for them, I don't know it) let you draw diagrams with ease. It may also benefit to record what the lecturer is saying with the laptop's microphone, though you can do that with a separate device, it's more useful and convenient to have that as embedded media in your notes.

It also means you can do things other than note-taking. If the course requires some amount of memorisation of facts with definite answers, you can use spaced repetition flashcard programs such as Anki, and fill them in during the lecture, or better, copy-and-paste from your typed up lecture notes. This is especially useful for definitions of things.

Whether laptops are used as they could be used is a different matter, and my own lecturers have told me anecdotes of their misusage, though I think it's unwise to stop people who would otherwise use them well from using them. The people who misuse their laptops will find that not paying attention has consequences.

As a side note, if you actually need/want to take notes on an electronic device such a laptop, it doesn't mean that the device MUST have a browser AND be connected to the internet. If there was a word processor ONLY laptop with no browser nor games on it, air-gaped from the internet, THEN it would be just a matter of preferences.

And I would go a bit further on the handwriting (excluded medical conditions) having a decently readable handwriting only costs some time in exercising wanting to better it, and it is a form of respect towards yourself (when you have to re-read your notes) and towards others that may need to read what you write.

Maybe you will manage to live your whole life only writing "electronically" but why risking to be unable to communicate in handwriting?

Once upon a time you couldn't get past first few years of elementary schools unless you had a decent handwriting, no need for it to be "beautiful" or "calligraphic", only readable.

The fact that it may be slower than typing ( and this BTW happens only for exceptionally fast and accurate typists) it's not in itself a bad thing, while you write by hand you somehow need more concentration to avoid mis-spelling as you haven't the equivalent of a backspace (or in some cases a spelling corrector) and this usually helps for memorizing what you are writing while you write it.

They stopped making them in 2013.

In the same vein, I think "notebooks" of the Jupyter style for R, mathlab or Julia etc - could be a great addition to many classes - allowing interactive exploration etc.

It's an odd time to think computers won't be transformative to learning (also in the classroom) - because we just got useful hardware in affordable packaging.

True, the past decades, computers could probably help better with writing projects - but I know of few places that for example simply let students cooperate on writing up projects with their own wikimedia instance - rather than using crappy dtp/word processors.

On the other hand, I don't think I knew anyone that got top marks on essays in high school who worked only by hand - it's a slow process to work through two-three drafts of a multi-page essay by hand.

[s] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad

I just want to point out that laptops for maths, engineering and science are not useless if you type sufficiently fast [1] and "master" [2] LaTeX.

And I know of one person who actually does it in chemistry, his notes are stunning and complete (which makes him love to look at them and improve them).

As for myself, I use pandoc (Markdown + LaTeX + a long set of custom commands accumulated during lectures) to take notes of mathematics (and it can get ugly sometimes with matrices, which require me to resort to SAGE generating the good LaTeX instead of me.)

And, the advantage? I can actively listen and participate to proofs while taking complete notes quickly.

As for the spatial problem, I agree that for certain topics, it makes sense, but the cost / quality provided by a laptop was a lot higher, though I take the time to do some sketch on paper and work my drafts on paper because it's a lot faster than on a computer.

Second point regarding spatial organisation: You can use mental maps to build spatial representations, along the way, there should be some tool to build any kind of spatial representation.

tl;dr: It is actually possible to take notes on laptop for subjects like maths, engineering and science thanks to tools like Pandoc and LaTeX, though it's still preferable to use paper for drafts and problem solving or to organise spatially your knowledge.

[1]: depends on your lecturer's speed, in fact.

[2]: mastered for the stuff you have to type (e.g. diagrams, advanced maths, etc…).

I knew plenty of fellow students that eschewed paper notes during their time there.

The software I used for handwritten notes was Microsoft OneNote. It was even somewhat successful at translating my scrawl into text behind the scenes in order to make my handwritten notes completely searchable.

Back when I attended, most people were on the Fujitsu Lifebook t901 I think, but looking at their IT site now, the latest models the school uses are http://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/pc/tablets/....

I loved those tablets, the stylus and screen digitizer felt top notch back when I used them.

Software-wise, most students used OneNote for note taking/annotating text and a few professors required https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Journal for assignments. Not sure the preferred approach these days as Journal seems dead.

I use latex for special symbols and some diagrams. I do the rest of the diagrams with some form of painting/vector program or ascii art.

> rather than the limited order of a text editor or word processor

What do you mean by that?

Abstract: Laptop computers are widely prevalent in university classrooms. Although laptops are a valuable tool, they offer access to a distracting temptation: the Internet. In the study reported here, we assessed the relationship between classroom performance and actual Internet usage for academic and nonacademic purposes. Students who were enrolled in an introductory psychology course logged into a proxy server that monitored their online activity during class. Past research relied on self-report, but the current methodology objectively measured time, frequency, and browsing history of participants’ Internet usage. In addition, we assessed whether intelligence, motivation, and interest in course material could account for the relationship between Internet use and performance. Our results showed that nonacademic Internet use was common among students who brought laptops to class and was inversely related to class performance. This relationship was upheld after we accounted for motivation, interest, and intelligence. Class- related Internet use was not associated with a benefit to classroom performance.

Ugh.

Also, from the paper:

> Five hundred seven students enrolled in an introductory psychology class in fall 2014... Each lecture lasted 1 hr and 50 min with a 10-min break in the middle.

Alternative headline: "500 person intro courses with meat-space lecture periods lasting TWO HOURS are stupid, and everything else is water under the bridge"

edit2: Also from the paper:

> Participants who logged in for less than half of the sessions were excluded from analysis

Why?! You don't think that frequency of use could correlate at all with type of use?! It's like they're willfully introducing unnecessary threats to validity...

And it keeps going like that for the entire paper. I smell experiment design hacking.

This sort of thing is exactly what pops up in my mind as well. I think they just looked at complete set of data, which might have shown that there is low-to-moderate correlation (assuming most people only use laptops when there is a part of course that is completely irrelevant/boring/already known); once they dropped the most significant use-case, all was left is the butt-in-seat users.

Also, I don't know why they never produce figures of a scatter plot for the data they are analyzing. A simple grade vs laptop time (academic, non-academic, total) figure would explain the results so much better than the raw tables. Maybe I'm just used to other kind of articles though.

P.S. There is also a really funny correlation in table 3, showing negative grade influence from playing games, where table 1 has 0 minutes spent for that across the board.

Thanks to bs articles like this that try to over generalize their results, I was unsure if I "needed" a laptop when returning to school.

Got a Surface Book and here's what I've experienced over the last 2 semesters. - Going paperless, I'm more organized than ever. I just need to make sure I bring my surface with me wherever I go and I'm good.

- Record lectures, tutorials, office hours, etc. Although I still take notes to keep myself focused, I can go back and review things with 100% accuracy thanks to this.

- Being at 2 places at once. ie: Make last minute changes before submitting an assignment for class A or attend review lecture to prepare for next week's quiz in class B? I can leave the surface in class B to record the lecture while I finish up the assignment for class A.

If you can't control yourself from browsing the internet during a lecture then the problem is not with your laptop...

It occurs to me that educating younger students about "how to use a computer" for organising and the like, would be essential in early education before bad habits set in.

I took lots notes. Some people claim it's pointless and distracts from learning but for me the act of taking notes is what helped solidify the concepts a better. Heck due to my horrible handwriting I couldn't even read some of the notes later. But it was still worth it. Typing them out just wasn't the same.

That's the key I think! The forced paraphrasing (while summarizing) helps process the information better.

Also re: other comments: A video lecture is to a physical lecture what a conference call is to a proper meeting. A professor rambling for 3h is still miles better than watching the same thing on YouTube. The same holds for tv versus watching a film on a movie screen.

Zero distractions and complete immersion. Maybe VR will allow it some day.

I also like 15-minute meetings or less. Other folks seem fine with multi-hour meetings where everyone is goofing off on his laptop.

That being said, you can't control them; however, I like to look at different performance styles. What makes someone binge watch Netflix episodes but want to nod off during a lecture. Sure, one has less cognitive load, but replace Netflix binge with anything. People are willing to engage, as long as the medium is engaging (this doesn't mean easy or funny, simply engaging).

[Purely anecdotal opinion based discussion] This is one of the reasons I think flipping the classroom does work; they can't tune out. But, if its purely them doing work, what's your purpose there? To babysit? There needs to be a happy median between work and lecture.

I like to look at the class time in an episodic structure. Pick a show and you'll notice there's a pattern to how the shows work. By maintaining a consistency in the classroom, the students know what to expect.

To tie it back to the article, the laptop is a great tool to use when you need them to do something on the computer. However, they should be looking at you, and you should be drawing their attention. Otherwise, you're just reading your PowerPoint slides.

I personally find that if the air quality is not perfect for my needs, I tend to go drowsy really fast. Since I hate the artificially dry air, in any setting where there is either excessive heating in the winter, strong AC in the summer or too many people in a classroom where you get excessive CO2 concentrations, the attention span plummets. A 15 min break every hour helps, where you can get outside for at least 5 minutes and get some fresh air. Also, rooms that have windows that actually open are a lifesaver.

Breaks help and are definitely needed, the classes I've taught have been anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. I'd typically do a 1 hour block, 10 minutes and finish (or 50 min then break depending on room vibe and natural progression of material).

However, I cannot control things like AC or number of people. AC in a large-scale building is an unsolved problem as-is, I have no control over every person's thermal comfort level (plus everyone's different). In that situation, I view it more internally as "What can I do to stay engaged?" rather than "What can they do to keep me engaged?"

With more students enrolling, all you can do is offer ways to let them receive the material outside the prescribed time. No one has a photographic memory and can remember literally everything - that's why I make Khan Academy-style videos of my lectures.

I'd love to mirror a martial art class, where I can rely on more experienced students to help others, as they may be able to offer another viewpoint I skipped over (since, I already understand the material, they just figured it out). However, in a college setting, it's a harder thing to do, given its hard to convince TAs attend the class again and act as an assistant.

Repetition is a very important tool for learning, but current Western education philosophy dislikes it. I could go on, but I'm starting to ramble on a tangent...

I have a feeling that people who aren't paying attention weren't going to anyhow.

However, I'd also guess that at least some people use the computer to look up additional information instead of stopping the class and asking, which helps everyone involved.

No it doesn't. Practically the only point of lectures is so students can ask questions. Otherwise just read the material and don't go. Moreover there are probably others in the class too shy to ask the same question, but at worst it reinforces everyone else's learning.

Are you sure about that? Intuitively, wouldn't it be the opposite? Asking questions results in the teacher giving an answer that can benefit the whole class, whereas if you just look something up yourself you're the only one who benefits from that additional piece of information.

Lectures still serve to help for more difficult questions, and the time is better spent on them instead.

Are students taught how to take notes effectively (with laptops) early in their academic lives? Before we throw laptops out of classrooms, could we be improving the situation by putting students through a "How To Take Notes" course, with emphasis on effective laptopping?

It's akin to "how to listen to music" and "how to read a book" courses -- much to be gained IMO.

In college I slid into the pattern they saw here. I started spending more time on social media, paying less attention in class, slacking on my assignments. As my burnout increased the actual class times became less a thing I learned from and more just something I was required to sit in. One of my college classes literally just required me to show up. It was a was one of the few electives in the college for a large university. The students were frustrated they had to be there, and the teacher was tired of teaching to students who just didn't care.

Overall I left college burnt out and pissed at the whole experience. I went in wanting to learn it just didn't work out.

The former was definitely the superior of the two options.

I wonder if that could be skewed, because it only takes one request to pull up a course syllabus, but if I have Facebook Messenger open in another tab, it could be receiving updates periodically, leading to more time recorded in this experiment.

Trying to fix the problem by applying only patches, as us technically inclined would say, always leads to horribly unreliable and broken systems.

This is a potential methodological flaw. It takes me 5 minutes to log onto my university's VLE and download the course materials. I then read them offline. Likewise, taking notes in class happens offline.

Internet use does not reflect computer use.

The biggest problem isn’t distractions, or computers and social media. It’s that hour long lectures are an awful method of transferring information. In my first year we had small groups of ~8 people and a student from 3rd/4th year and we’d go through problems from the maths and programming lectures. I learnt much more in these.

Honestly learning would be much more improved if lectures were condensed into half an hour YouTube videos you can pause, speed up and rewind. Then have smaller groups in which you can interact with the lecturers/assistants.

The discussion on a topic like this can go in two ways. (1) Is to talk about how a laptop can help if students use it to xyz and avoid cba. It's up to the student. Bring a horse to water...(2) The second way you can look at this is to compare outomes, statistacally or quasi-statistically. IE, If laptops are banned we predict an N% increase in Z, where Z is (hopefully) a good proxy for learning or enjoyment or something else we want. IE, think about improving a college course the same way we think about optimizing a dating site.

On a MOOC, the second mentality will tend to dominate. Both have downsides, especially when applied blindly (which tends to happen). In any case, new thinking tends to help.

So making claims like "doing X works better than Y" is meaningless without pointing to a specific learning style.

That's why you hear people defending writing to paper, while others prefer just hearing the lectures or others have better performance while discussing with peers (and some hate all of the other interactions and can perform better by isolating and studying on your own... which is probably the one who will benefit the most of having a laptop available).

"... Coffield's team found that none of the most popular learning style theories had been adequately validated through independent research." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles

sounds more like lack of funding than pseudoscience.

Personally, I'm very happy that we have devices that are capable of doing so many things.

I think most solutions to the problem are far too complex and this shall suit my needs just fine.

There are technological tools to help you. There are psychological tools to help you. You can call upon your friends and family for help.

But for gods' sake, don't blame the computer. That's not going to help anyone.

[1] - Addiction by Design (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Addiction-Design-Machine-Gambling-V...)

[2] - Chomsky on Advertising (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CFwSQiTu3I&t=186s)

That said, if you're in a programming class, having a laptop to follow along and try out the concepts is really handy, when we were in an C++/ASM class, seeing the different ASM GCC/G++ and Microsoft's C++ compiler spat out was quite interesting.

To avoid making purely meta comment, in my opinion the ship has already sailed; we are going to have computers in classrooms for better or worse. So the big question is how can we make the best use of that situation.

I think that I'd be one of them; in the absence of a laptop, I'd spend that time daydreaming. How many people can really concentrate through a 100 minute nonstop lecture about differential geometry or the decline of the Majapahit empire?

The same is true for meetings at work. In a good session, people are using their laptops to look up contributing information. In a bad one... well... you know.

Some students are of course better with a laptop in the classroom

Use of digital devices should be limited because the very use of digital devices separates us from what is going on around us. Students should listen and take notes (in a notebook) as necessary.

[0] http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/solitaire.asp

We're not animals, we don't get born with instincts. This is why humans require education and upbringing to teach. And yes, this (gasp!) sometimes means you need to make a non-adult person to do something against their first whim.

And I don't disagree that there's a degree of difference between hiding a comic book behind a textbook and having a machine that can likely grant instant access to the majority of comics, movies, games, etc., known to humankind, not to mentions texting, chatting, snapchats, social media, etc.

But I think it's ludicrous to think someone's ready for college if they don't have the self control to not give in to that temptation for a 50 minute lecture.

It's not the laptop that created uncommitted just-show-up-ism and incessant digital nothing-chatter or the thoughtless and blasé acceptance of app-based magic voodoo without thought towards its implications.

There's a much larger and more omnipresent failure at play. Deciding not to put games on your phone shouldn't be an amazing and praiseworthy anomaly.

Human beings don't lack for volition when sufficiently aware of it.

However, a laptop is very useful to get work done during breaks or labs when you're actually supposed to use it.

15 of the top 20 universities in the world are in the US.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...

Choose any other well-regarded ranking and you'll get similar results.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/news/shanghai-r...

You're part of the problem.

The real solution is to engage students so they don't feel the urge to get distracted in the first place. Then you could give them completely unfiltered Internet and they would still be learning (perhaps even faster, using additional resources.) You can't substitute an urge to learn, no matter if you strap them to the chairs and pin their eyeballs open with their individual fingers strapped down, it won't do anything. It just makes school less interesting, less fun, and less appealing, which makes learning by extension less fun, less appealing, and less interesting.