Law Schools, Technology

Boring Professors Ban More Interesting Things in the Classroom

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As 2010 gets underway, a couple of law schools are taking steps to keep students from accessing the internet while they’re in class. This would be a pretty mundane and much expected story, if we all lived in China.
The most extreme attempt by a law school to captivate an audience comes from Villanova Law. Professors there on a case-by-case basis have been banning the use of laptops in class. That’s right, some professors are going totally old school and forcing their students to take handwritten notes, just like students did in the 1800s. A tipster puts Villanova’s attempt to turn back the clock this way:

There seems to be a growing movement at Villanova Law to ban laptop use in class. Last year, an entire section of 1Ls was not permitted to use laptops and both a contracts and crim law professor in another section banned them as well. Now a Con Law professor teaching 2Ls has banned them for Con Law 2 this semester.
In general, the professors doing this complain that students who use laptops in class tend to surf the web or gchat/IM rather than pay attention, which distracts both themselves and classmates around them who look at their screens. As a result, these professors claim that class discussion is harmed. I can’t dispute that logic, but I do think laptops in class benefit many students. Personally, I take extremely thorough notes in class because of my laptop and only surf the web when some jackass makes an asinine point just to hear himself speak, so the laptop is a tremendous educational tool for me.

I had a very good professor who once said: “If you are more entertained sitting at home after you’ve already paid to attend my class, the fault lies with me.” Why don’t more professors internalize this basic truth? Professors — professors whose high salaries are made possible by the students they teach — should be able to be more entertaining and informative than “the internet.”
Shutting down the ‘net, even to the point of outlawing laptops altogether, isn’t going to make students pay attention. Trust me, students are capable of zoning out in any number of ways. Ever heard of a doodle?
Luckily, Villanova’s acting dean, Doris Brogan, tells us that the bans are the actions of a few professors who are experimenting, not the stated policy of the law school.
The news from Dean Brogan, and a look at Albany Law School’s draconian test run, after the jump.


I think Dean Brogan should get her professors some remedial training in having a pulse, but instead she’s letting them find their own strategies to cope with the digital age:

At Villanova Law School, the decision to ban laptops is made by individual professors for individual classes. It is not a school-wide policy. Professors here at Villanova, and indeed at law schools across the country, have been wrestling with concerns about the impact laptops have on engagement in the classroom and the consequent impact on learning. The concerns expressed by faculty focus not only on students engaging in other activities, but also on students falling into typing a virtual transcript of the class rather than listening, analyzing and synthesizing material. The debate among law professors here and nationally regarding this matter acknowledges the usefulness of laptops, includes many different positions, and is lively, well informed and sensitive to the students’ needs.

It’s a fair point that some students use laptops for transcription instead of actually thinking about the issues presented in class. Of course, competent professors could combat this problem with the intelligent use of “questions,” plus a modicum of extemporaneous thought. Law schools could help by keeping class size manageable, instead of squeezing as many tuition checks into the classroom as the fire code will allow. But I suppose just banning technology is one way to deal with the problem, not unlike using a shotgun to open an oyster.
Still, students have concerns:

I am extremely pissed about this policy for one basic reason — I am paying over 35K a year to be at Villanova and should be able to use every learning tool possible to maximize my education. If people want to IM in class, that is their business, but don’t penalize me. I disliked the policy for 1Ls, but could tolerate it because they treat 1Ls like children anyway. Now that they are patronizing second semester 2Ls, I think they have gone too far.

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Instead of banning the tool (laptops), Albany Law School has moved to ban inappropriate uses of the tool (like the entire world wide web). Albany students received this message when they got back to campus:

In December, Dean Guernsey surveyed the faculty and found that there was a consensus that laptops and access to the Internet has become a distraction or hindrance to student engagement in the classroom and that wireless Internet access should be shut down in the classrooms during class time, if possible. ITS has been working over the break to assess whether it is possible to shut down wireless access in the classrooms without disrupting access in other parts of the building. They have concluded it is. Therefore, we are setting up a four-week trial period in which wireless Internet access is shut down in the classrooms from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, starting Tuesday, January 19 (no Monday classes because of MLK Day). This will not impact access to the Internet outside the classrooms.
For those faculty members who use the wireless network as a teaching tool, ITS will have the ability to turn on access during their class time on an automated basis, when requested by the faculty member.
At the end of the four-week trial period, we will evaluate the results and determine, with your input, whether we should continue the program. Thank you!

The University of Chicago Law School implemented a similar ban, last year.
You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that Villanova, Albany, and Chicago have lost sight of the fact that students are s to be in those classrooms. This isn’t high school. Students spending class time playing Warcraft aren’t truants — instead, they are bored out of their minds, and deserve a better, more interesting class experience than their professors are providing. It’s like when baseball people bitch that they are losing the youth market to football and basketball. Raise your game or STFU. Of course kids would rather watch LeBron drunk on somebody’s head instead of watching Andy Pettitte scratch his balls for five minutes while Ryan Howard plays hopscotch with the batter’s box.
Similarly, if a tenured law professor can’t be more interesting than, say, Above the Law, for sixty minutes twice a week, that is pathetic. Students can check in with ATL or whatever other site whenever they want, but they can only access the legal education which they paid for during a special couple of hours. And these professors can’t hold their attention? These professors can’t write a lecture that is more engaging than spotting my typos? How do these people even sleep at night given what they are charging people for the classroom experience?
In any event, if professors want to go old school, maybe the students should too. Back in the day, people used to have these things called digital voice recorders. Let’s have professors lecture to an empty room full of tiny machines for a couple of classes. I bet that after a couple of weeks of being alone with their own boring-ass thoughts, professors will beg for seat fillers to come back to class, with their internet-equipped laptops.
Earlier: Hey Teacher, Leave Those Kids (and Their Internet) Alone!

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