By Laura LaVacca
Campus News
One professor totally outlaws the use of electronic devices in class. Another lets you use them with reckless abandon – they are the future, after all, and the future is now. Still, you can’t help but check that text message or social media popup; it will only take a second… A third professor allows limited use but – eyes up! Pay attention!
Each class is a different electronic adventure, and there’s no standard policy on the use of smartphones while the instructor teaches. What’s the right formula for success – draconian banning or laissez-faire or somewhere in between? We tackle this question.
Chalk boards. Textbooks. Syllabi. Lectures. Some things are just synonymous with a college classroom. In recent years, it seems a new unwelcome staple has been added to the list: cell phones. In our technology-obsessed world, we can’t go anywhere without people looking down instead of up, without someone slipping a glance at their phone mid-conversation or worse yet, weaving through lanes on the highway all while yapping on the latest iPhone. The cell phone has become an appendage and the line of appropriate usage seems to be coming more and more blurred.
Nate Anderson, a philosophy professor at the University of North Carolina, chronicles the recent changes he has observed in the classroom in his article, “They’re abysmal students: Are cell phones destroying the college classroom?” He notes that in the early 2000s when he taught freshman writing, disengaged students couldn’t rely on their phones to distract them. He shares some humorous stories: “One male student used a light “get to know each other” first-day exercise as a chance to tell the whole class an aggressive story about how he once peed in his much-despised stepfather’s aftershave.”
He continues to note that it was this type of “old school subversions of the classroom experience, the unspoken challenge to the authority of the teacher” that he respected because, at least, “It takes creativity, it takes guts, it takes rebellion.” In other words, at least students were speaking, sharing and participating.
This former “acting out” has sadly been replaced with “tuning out,” as Anderson labels it. This tuning out comes in the form of surfing the web, answering messages and browsing social media sites.
Nassau Community College sophomore Bryan Miller admits, “I do use my phone in class. Honestly, I use it to do anything from play games to go on social media or to just text people.”
Anderson is not alone in his experience. MIT professor Ron Sigley suspected it is technology that is responsible for the disconnect in the classroom. After repeated incidents of cell-phone use, he gave his students an extra-credit assignment to separate themselves from the cell and write about their experiences. Less than half of the students did so and shared their reflections on the experience. Most reported better concentration in class and improvement on assignments. They did also acknowledge a sense of fear about being without it.
He concludes: “I have a real fondness for my students as people. But they’re abysmal students; or rather, they aren’t really students at all, at least not in my class. On any given day, 70% of them are sitting before me shopping, texting, completing assignments, watching videos, or otherwise occupying themselves. Even the ‘good’ students do this. No one’s even trying to conceal the activity, the way students did before. This is just what they do.”
“Even faced with punitive threats, students cannot easily disengage from their phones because nowhere else is the phone not an indispensable appliance in their multi-tasking universe. The phone accompanies them as they work, as they socialize, as they dine, and as they entertain themselves with music, movies, or gaming,” Nassau Community College Professor Matthew Posillico piggybacks.
Posillico feels it is this obsession that drives their behavior in the classroom: “Perceiving the phone as the only conduit between an often stagnant and inconsequential micro-environment and an insistent and compelling outside world, students cannot bear to temporarily relinquish the importance this connection offers them because the benefits are instantly and emotionally gratifying. In contrast, promises of intellectual fulfillment in a phone-free classroom seem abstract, distant, and not exactly trustworthy.”
Posillico does attempt to curb the usage in his classroom by putting some policies in his syllabus, although he admits they are often ineffectual: “I do not like to set forth precise and formal penalties governing the use of mobile phones within the classroom as some instructors do; instead, I will appeal to your good sense and judgment as an adult college student to recognize the counterproductive nature of using these devices in a higher education setting.”
Could there be another reason though for such defiant behavior? Miller offers some insight: 
“I will say, depending on the professor, my behavior changes. If the professor is engaging and you can tell he/she cares about and is passionate about his/her job and doesn’t just see it as something they ‘have to do,’ I’ll maybe put more effort into class and be less inclined to be on my phone. If the professor is a bit of a stickler and doesn’t get you engaged and doesn’t seem to care, not to sound disrespectful, but I’m not going to care as much and will be more inclined to be on my phone.”
Is this a glimpse into students’ attitudes surrounding the classroom? Are we blaming students when professors should be changing with the times?
Binghamton University student Anthony Calder shares a similar sentiment, “I use my cell phone only to answer text messages. I don’t restrict myself from doing so because I feel like it’s almost beneficial to take a quick 5 second mental break from a lectures that drag on for over an hour.”
Is the lecture style of teaching outdated? Should the cell phone be incorporated instead of being forbidden? Or is the problem greater than simply an obsession with technology?
Stay on the line. We will explore this topic further in our next issue.
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