Please close your textbook and open your Facebook

I’m a big fan of Clay Shirkey’s work so when he released a blog post mentioning that he will not be allowing devices that can access the Internet from his classroom; I was intrigued and a bit surprised.   Clay teaches Internet and Society at NYU and is widely known as an expert on the topic.  So I had to ask myself - why would he not allow students to go online during his class?  I, as well as many of my colleagues, have been struggling with this issue as well. It’s always difficult going into a classroom to witness a sea of laptops obscuring your interaction with students.  Compound that with mobile addiction and now smart watch fascination we have a veritable hodgepodge of devices and applications that are competing for student’s attention.  Oh and don’t forgot about he Internet of everything. So that in the near future their smart pencil/pen (reminding them that they are soon out of lead or ink), connected notepad and online clothing will clamor for their attention as well.

In my naivety, I often believe that students are using their laptops to access websites or applications I discuss in my Measuring Social class. Perhaps visiting Wikipedia or using Google translate.  After all there are a variety of sites and applications that can add to the richness of the learning experience.  Some of that does occur, but I compete with Candy Crush, World of War Craft, FB, Snapchat, even HW and case assignments from other classes.  With a fleeting attention span (something around 8 seconds) if I don’t capture student’s attention instantly and draw them into the conversation, I stand a pretty good chance of losing them for a substantial amount of the class.  After all it is a three-hour lecture.

So I did what other marketing professors have most likely done during their careers, I did a market study and asked them.  I had each of them read Clay’s commentary and come up with a position for or against allowing devices that could access the Internet in class.  To my surprise, the class was split right in half.  My Indian students were mostly against Internet access during class.  They felt that it was a distraction and took away form the experiential component of the learning environment.  Also, it was not allowed in many of their undergrad programs so it felt foreign and impolite to be in a classroom were students were online during lectures.  My non-Indian Asian students felt differently.  They often need to use translation applications and reference US based examples where they might have little familiarity.  The US students were also split 50/50.  I’m also split on this issue. I believe students should have some sense of personal responsibility but I also fall to the need to check e-mail, Twitter, FB, etc during lectures and workshops where I am in the audience

We are going though a major disruption in higher education.  In one part due to students having access to all the world’s information instantly.  Another part is due to all the apps, networks and other activities competing for attention.  There is also the tenure track issue but lets not go there.  So I think the way we deliver education has to change and it is.....Plenty of professors/instructors have been changing the way they deliver lectures whether through flipping the classroom (lectures you can watch at home while class time is designed for group work), adding more class based participation exercises, or conducting site visits/guest lectures to break up the monotony of teaching for a 16 week period every week.  In my classes I often have student teams solve challenge problems to work on critical thinking and reasoning skills.  I have the students develop class discussions on topical issues within the social space like: Was FB’s acquisition of Whatsapp for 19B worth it and how would you prove it? Or will social be able to accurately predict elections and what effect will that have on the campaign process? 

This issue of attention deficit within higher education will only get worse.  As educators, we need to re-think the learning process and adapt to next generation students.  There are all sorts of ways to get students engaged - gamification concepts, in class exercises, mentoring relationships, field trips, etc.. .  It will be a huge challenge but an interesting experiment….