According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, this seems to be the case at St. John’s College:
The faculty stopped short of banning the devices, Ms. Harty said in an e-mail to The Chronicle. But professors made sure the college now has a policy that says that faculty members are “concerned that electronic reading devices also may present a distraction,” and students can be asked to keep them out of the classroom.
Professors worry e-readers will draw students’ attention away from classroom discussions at the college, known for a Great Books curriculum that requires students to read more than 100 texts before graduation. The faculty members, called “tutors” at St. John’s, also worry that students will opt for free digital versions of classical texts. These are often older and sloppier translations, says Eric Salem, a professor.
Sound like a bunch of fuddy-duddies to me.
Thanks to Michael von Glahn for the link.
What a shower!
The university classes I attend don’t allow electronic devices in the classroom per the department head. Otherwise, students tend to text and web surf during class. The web surfing is very distracting if you happen to be sitting behind the person. Even typing notes can be distracting because of the keyboard noise.
Just a little story about something that happened to me on Skype last year. I use Skype for work 95% of the time.
So I was on Skype and up popped a request for chat. The profile was empty. I agreed. It was a female. So I asked basic Q’s about where, who, age, sex (which!) etc. and after a short time it was clear it was a young girl of 21. Anyway to cut a long story short it became quickly clear she was in the US, and in university, and actually IN class at that moment. I expressed amazement and closed the chat. However she had added me to some kind of group chat (no idea how it works) and it kept popping up .. it was clearly an open chat between about 12 girls of the same age in different universities in the US and also IN class at the same time !
Th only thing I would say is that if a student doesn’t want to pay attention then that’s their problem. Maybe a wifi blocker could be used in classes ? if that is possible.
Isn’t there a class in ludditism at St. John’s College?
I’m currently in college. Most of my professors don’t mind ebooks much. I usually find that the free ebook editions aren’t actually very bad translations, so long as you’re not trying to like publish in scholarly journal or something. I currently have a professor that banned electronic devices in her class. I later convinced her to let me use my Kindle, when I could get the right editions in ebook form. It’s just sort of strange, because I’m always noticing times in class where it would be handy if a laptop was around (looking up definitions, Wikipedia). Also, ebooks don’t have pages, but it’s not much of a problem for in-class use, since you can instantly search them (which you can’t do with pbooks). The problem is guessing at page numbers for all those pbook users who can’t search their books. 🙂
Older and sloppier translations? Besides this nit being an unrelated gripe, it seems that those having a problem with said translations would show thier concern legitimate by uploads ‘proper’ translations to Project Gutenberg, if only for the sake of purity in literature…
Ironically, the introduction of that sideways slam totally distracted me from the original point the faculty was trying got make about iPads… and I only read it on a laptop.
I agree that banning tablets in classrooms is silly. Actually, I would go a bit further and ban the instructors. After all they are the ones that are frustrating the transition to in-class connectivity. Can’t they understand that there are much more important channels for learning? Students should be able to accomplish their education without such distractions.
I think a lot of instructors don’t realize how much textbooks cost, and if they did then maybe instead of nit-picking about which translation of Aristotle people are using, they could instead ‘standardize’ the class around a version that is in the public domain for older works like these ones.
I’ve taken college courses recently, in digital media, and we all surfed during lectures, usually as a result of something the lecturer says, and I never thought twice about it.
Our grades still depended upon how well we did in tests and in projects submitted and, no, we didn’t surf during tests 🙂
– Andrys