The Vanderbilt community faces the task of managing the rising influence of technology against its often tempting (and distracting) uses in the classroom. With digital textbook use gaining popularity among students, and as a dependence on laptops for in-class note taking becomes engrained in student culture, it is pertinent that students and faculty re-evaluate the means by which technology can foster a productive learning environment.
Although digital course material creates an opportunity to move forward in the application of classroom technology, it also creates an interesting problem for professors battling to maintain the attention of their student audience.
Dr. Derek Bruff, acting director for Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching and senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematics, discusses the ways in which professors and students can utilize technology to make class time more collaborative.
“All the research that I’ve seen on attention span, is that students can maintain focus for 20 minutes. Then unless something changes, they’re going to lose focus for a little bit,” Bruff said. “One piece of advice we give instructors is to do something different every fifteen minutes.
He highlights the creative opportunities in laptop use, inserting video clips and the potential for professors to engage in what he dubs, “agile teaching,” through the use of Classroom Response Systems, commonly known as “clickers.”
The clickers function as tool for professors to pool a classroom audience for a response, and serve as a powerful resource in that the professor is able to engage all students in the classroom at once.
Vanderbilt professors vary in their tolerance of in-class computer use. Some allow the use of computers for note-taking, hoping that students will exercise discipline and avoid unnecessary use of the internet, while others have barred the use of computers altogether during lectures.
Dr. Paul Stob, professor in the Communications Studies department at Vanderbilt, weighs the costs and benefits of making a class ‘paperless.’
“I have no aversion to making my classes paperless, because students can, over time, get used to reading electronically. It may take some time, but the right tools - like Kindles and iPads - can allow for just as much, and sometimes more, engagement with the material.”
Stob is not opposed to student use of computers during class. "My position is always that students are paying for these classes, they're the ones earning the grades, and if their work suffers as a result of Internet activity, that's a lesson they'll have to learn," Stob said.
Similarly, Dr. Ronnie Steinberg, professor in the Sociology department at Vanderbilt, is open to creating a ‘paperless’ course.
“Because my students have lived with technology throughout their lives, I see no reason why students would be less engaged with online text material,” explained Steinberg.
However, her view on in-class laptop use differs from Stob’s. “The policy I have about not using laptops in class is a relatively new one for me. It emerged as a result of students who sat through class catching up on Facebook, or reading other material.”
The rising influence of technology on academics creates an interesting tension between the pressure to move forward and the desire to keep students' minds in classroom space, not cyberspace. Bruff points out that research on attention span has not changed in past decades, rather what has changed is the quality of distractors. He makes the point, that before students were distracting themselves on laptops, they were staring up at the ceiling. Once an individual’s attention span has been derailed, it’s only natural to find something else to occupy the mind.
Most importantly, Bruff stresses what he says is the greatest challenge facing students today, an overabundance of information as a result of the Internet. "We as educators are going to be called upon to help students navigate information," said Bruff.
