Digital natives have a characteristic compulsion to always be plugged in to the lifeblood of the virtual world. Not knowing what is going on in our social networks is akin to being marooned on a deserted island to most. On the whole the advantages and disadvantages of checking Facebook every ten minutes are debatable but when it comes to juggling between listening to a professor speaking at the front of the class and simultaneously listening to your social networks chime in, a fair number of disadvantages come to mind.
The extent of usage of social networks and other frequented destinations of Web2.0 in class was termed "The Facebook Index" in an Opinions article in The Harvard Crimson a few months back. Off-late professors have been mulling over the Facebook Index and some are banning laptops in class or moving classes to non-wifi zones to reinstate their audibility in class. This has prompted a fair amount of hue-and-cry from digital natives who cannot live without their social networking fix for the hour or two they are in such a class. Recently a popular Art History class at Yale was moved to a smaller lecture theater that lacked wireless internet access and cell service this semester. And you can bet a lot of students did not like that, as this Time article states. The real questions that leaves us with is should professors take such measures and can they realistically sustain them?
There's no denying that multitasking reduces one's efficacy at a particular task. Scientific studies, such as the one expounded on in the PBS Frontline video "Digital Nation" (I highly recommend a watch!), have shown that it does and despite our consistent insistence that we can multitask effectively, we know that it's not all that true. The Yale professor mentioned before strengthens the case against multitasking by stating that students' grades prove that they're not as good at multitasking as they think they are. Given that, it would seem that such a move would be beneficial to students as far as learning and retaining information imparted during class goes.
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| Click here to watch Digital Nation :) |
We profess our support for academic freedom and frown upon measures that curtail such freedom. It would be hypocritical to deny our professors this same academic freedom in structuring their classes. If a class is such that it is taught best on paper and does not require much assistance from Google, students can get the most out of class without the internet. Therefore, in such cases, we probably shouldn't complain if professors insist on a non-wifi location for the class. Of course, students who are addicted enough to virtual realms will probably steer clear of such classes. The sustainability aspect of such moves therefore depends on how the appeal of the class competes with the appeal of the internet. It would logically appear that only the professors that are well-loved and those that instruct compulsory modules will be able to sustain a temporary disconnect from the virtual world for the duration of their class.
Also, it might just be liberating to not feel like you have ADHD that makes you want to check ten websites every ten minutes and not be able to focus on just one thing. I remember a time when I used to be able to focus intently on just one thing for hours on end and feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of it all simply because I got a lot done. Now those moments are further apart and seem to get more distant with time. So being forcibly unplugged might just be a pleasant and productive experience. We should perhaps give disconnected education (pun unintended) a shot before we moan, complain and start an 'occupy-the-internet' protest against it - it might just be good!
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(It is perhaps ironic that i'm posting this during an economics lecture...)
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