Should students use laptops in the classroom?

Step into any classroom and you'll see rows of students with laptops open tapping away at their keyboards.  Some of these students are taking notes, some are checking facebook or instagram.

Aside from distractions, I've wondered whether laptop usage is a good thing or not.  Turns out, the evidence is pretty clear.   We shouldn't use laptops for note taking.

Here are a few articles...

Scientific American reports that deeper understanding comes from handwritten notes:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/

See also:
http://lifehacker.com/the-benefits-of-writing-by-hand-versus-typing-1778758792

Laptops are a distraction to not just the owner, but also other students: http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2013/08/20/new-study-shows-computers-in-class-distract-both-users-and-non-users/

And one Prof even writes about being a Luddite:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/28/confessions-of-a-luddite-professor/

I think that we should seriously consider imposing laptop bans in classrooms, but also encourage online students to be low-tech and keep notes using pen and pencil.

Multitasking in class?

Most professors allow students to use laptops in class.   Many students use them to take notes, to look at spreadsheets etc - but many students also use them for multi-tasking.  And I use the term "multi-task" very broadly.

When I sit in other professor's classes to review teaching, I often am surprised by the amount of "multi-tasking" that is going on.   I usually sit at the back where I can get a good view and invariably, students that are engaged in "multi-tasking" are on facebook, checking the weather, checking email etc.   They aren't really multi-tasking, they are just doing a different task from what they are supposed to be doing.

That's why this article was particularly interesting to me.   A Professor of New Media at NYU has basically banned laptops from class (except for specific projects).   He's reporting a much improved environment.

A counter argument from a student might be:"Hey, if the prof says anything interesting or important, I'll pay attention", but I think this is perhaps a little delusional.   I know that if I am at home watching a movie and in the quiet bit, I answer an email on my laptop, I invariably end up having to ask my wife: "what happened?"   I am pretty sure that I can't multi-task effectively.

Grade Inflation

My colleague, Steve Allen, discusses grade inflation.  Grade inflation is a problem that "cheapens" the effort of the hardest working and brightest students.

I'd agree with Steve that the correlation between grades and teaching evaluations is weak at best.  One possible solution is to scale teaching evaluations by the course GPA.  This would reduce the incentive to "buy" evaluations.

Technology and teaching.

The Economist magazine argues that MBA programs should use more technology in their teaching.  As Professor who teaches in an MBA program, I hear this a lot.

I'm not at all averse to technology - I'm a bit of a geek really.  I run linux as my primary O/S and I think cloud storage (dropbox, evernote) is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  But I also think that you should use the simplest technology that gets the job done.  My primary teaching tool is a large white board and a lot of colored markers.  I'll use powerpoint to put up talking points, excel to show examples, and of course the web to grab data.  But beyond that, what is there?

The use of hardware technology seems very overplayed.  Do Ipads, kindles and Ipod touches really help?   Are smart boards, where you can manipulate the items on the screen really worthwhile?  For that matter, is excel 2007 so much better than excel XP?

I think that all these technologies are cute toys, but if I'm teaching target date immunization, they would just get in the way.  Of course I might just be a luddite.

I welcome comments on this topic.  But please, don't suggest that I use Second Life.

What's really wrong with Business Schools.

This is a bit old, but it recently came to my attention again and I thought that I would post it for those who haven't seen it.

A few years back, the paper "How Business Schools Lost Their Way" caused a bit of a stir by basically saying that B schools fail because they are too focussed on teaching theory and quant methods and don't teach enough practical stuff. Their summary was

Too focused on “scientific” research, Business schools are hiring professors with limited real-world experience and graduating students who are ill equipped to wrangle with complex, unquantifiable issues—in other words, the stuff of management.

I pretty much completely disagree with their article. Most students in our MBA program have real world experience. Every day they are solving "real business problems" - they don't come to school to solve more "real world problems". The value added of a business education is the analytical tools and methods that will help them understand and solve these types of problems in the future. This means that we have to teach theory. We have to teach quant methods.

As a professor, my job is to create and disseminate knowledge. Most of the stuff I teach is the result of the research of previous finance and economics researchers. You can't teach finance using anecdotes and cute war stories from the real world - although such things can provide nice little breaks in a 3 hour lecture on portfolio theory!

A very well written, and I think entirely on the mark rebuttal to the Bennis and O'Toole paper is by DeAngelo, DeAngelo and Zimmerman. These authors argue that more rigorous training is what is needed in B'schools and furthermore, that counter to the argument by Bennis and O'Toole, "Research competence does not imply teaching incompetence".

Should lecture notes be open source?

This article appeared a couple of weeks ago and Greg Mankiw linked to it.

The basic question is whether lecture notes should be available to anyone with an internet connection. Some big players are already well established, notably MIT's open courseware.

My 2 cents - I don't think that I am ready to embrace it quite yet....too many unresolved issues such as intellectual property ownership and whether the materials can be redistributed in a different form and by whom.

What to do when a cell phone rings during class...

From the BBC website. Act cool like Hugh Jackman.

Student evaluations

At most schools, students get to evaluate their professors using a rating scale and also written comments. In general, administrators pay attention to the ratings (1-5) and professors pay attention to the written comments.

I was just re-reading some of my comments from the spring, and one from my MBA investments class struck me as particularly good..

[professor is] wise enough to know that he can never know enough and that his trade is not as well mapped out as he would like it to be...

I think that this comment is relevant to all who work in investments - and in fact to life in general...