OT: UM students, your GSI Is watching you online shop
A Michigan graduate student in Paleontology decided to take matters into her own hands with her students surfing the web during lecture, and the results were spectacular:
From an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education:
"We’re supposed to tell them to knock it off when we see it. But both myself and the other graduate-student instructor found really quickly there’s a bunch of students we couldn’t reach in the middle. And I actually started keeping the list just because it would help to remind myself, at the end of class, there was someone I couldn’t get to in the middle that I needed to pull them aside and say, 'Hey, you shouldn’t watching Planet Earth 2' in the middle of class."
And so she decided to project her list on the last day of class. Genius.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/An-Instructor-Saw-Digital/239841
April 20th, 2017 at 10:50 AM ^
Those kids paid good money to sit in that lecture. What does the GSI care?
April 20th, 2017 at 10:53 AM ^
To start, it's a distraction to their classmates, not to mention disrespectful to their instructor, who apparently set an expectation that electronic devices were to be used only for note-taking purposes in lecture.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:08 AM ^
how it's a distraction to their classmates unless they are playing a youtube outloud. It's only a distraction if the other students allow it to be. This is a dumb argument.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:10 AM ^
April 20th, 2017 at 11:11 AM ^
If your neighbor is playing porn / sex tapes on their laptops, you wouldn't be distracted?
April 20th, 2017 at 11:26 AM ^
That wouldn't shock me - that I could accept as something a person might actually do with a device in hand during a lecture. I am far more fascinated by whoever was looking at photos of sliced bread. Seriously? Sliced bread? Don't you want to look at the porn (or maybe MGoBlog? Why not BOTH?) like the people around you?
At my age, a nice piece of bread can be very tantalizing.
Now for a college age kid...don't know, must be starving.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:11 AM ^
I guess you've never sat next to someone in lecture watching a soccer game. I have. It's not about audio--visual stimuli are distracting, too.
To add to the original point, the idea that education is a transaction--"I/mom and dad/student loans paid for me to be here, so I can do what I want" is actually the dumb argument here. If you're in a classroom with set expectations from an instructor, as a student, you're expected to follow those expectations, turtlenecks be damned.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:15 AM ^
distracting if I allowed it to distract me. But this is just giving up responsiblity and self-control over to something else.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:38 AM ^
To follow up on Bando's point....imagine being in a lecture in March while Michigan basketball is locked in a tight Tournament game. Your neighbor has the stream going.
If that wouldn't be distracting to you, you have the focus of a monk.
April 20th, 2017 at 12:15 PM ^
If I was sitting next to someone during the a UM basketball game, I would watch the game on the laptop and not care about being distracted by the computer. Or if I didn't care about the game, it wouldn't distract me because I don't care about the game. Or I wouldn't show up to class and stay home and watch the game. But Bando's argument is that the kid with the computer is somehow distracting everyone in the class and wasting everyone's time is a dumb argument.
Lots of classes have group work and group requirements, even if the lecture is just sitting and listening. So you're OK with your groupmates watching porn instead of learning the material, then?
on the one hand I understand they paid to be there blah blah, but also agree if you are showing up to the lecture then pay attention. If I knew I wasn't going to pay attention or watch a bball game, I just ditched class.
OTOH, as far as distracting other students, thats BS and they need to get over it. If these people are distracted by those around them, they are in trouble if they have a work environment that doesn't have cubes. If you are in an open floor plan there are tons of simultaneous conversations and everyone has something different on their computer and you learn to pay attention to what you want / need to pay attention to.
April 20th, 2017 at 12:31 PM ^
April 20th, 2017 at 12:46 PM ^
those things aren't my gig, but couldn't pass up putting that out there.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:38 AM ^
Maybe the GSI cares that they do, in fact, receive the education they paid for?
And in general, it is disrespectful to your instructor to be screwing around online during lecture. Have the decency to give them your attention when you're in class.
I'm not sure why she waited until the last day of class to present her findings, though.
I don't think its wrong to say 'Don't come to my class and d*ck around'. Life isn't a free for all. Certain places call for certain behavior. If you want to watch soccer or go shopping or watch sliced breat ( my fave) cut class and accept whatever consequences those are.
IIRC JUB smashes phones brought out in his class. It's his class. He gets to set the expectations.
Just my opinion.
The problem is that everything seems boring, now that technology has destroyed our ablity to pay attention to anything that lasts longer than a Vine video.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:47 AM ^
It behooves everyone for these students to pay attention in class. Sometimes you need to protect students from themselves. It would be great if we could all sit around and watch Youtube videos all day, but sometimes, you know, there are more important things going on.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:49 AM ^
When I teach my seniors in high school I like to break down how much money/hour they are tossing down the toilet by blowing off classes. For some students it is eye opening and it does change some of the cell phone behavior I see in class.
but who am I tell someone how to waste their money.
I think this is the proper tone. If the GSI presented this as a personal affront, my internal reaction would be, "kiss my ass." If it was presented as "you guys, this is ridiculous. Maybe think about how you want to spend your time" I'd have no problem with it. I do subscribe to the theory that you paid for this opportunity and you have the right to pay attention or not. In a similar vein, I think required attendance in college is ridiculous (exempting classes that are primarily seminar/interaction based). Whether daddy paid for it or if one paid his own way is irrelevant to the argument.
As a former GSI (albeit in the pre-smart phone days) without any particular talent for teaching, I couldn't really blame students for checking out sometimes. Some people are better book learners, some people struggle with attention span, and sometimes the material that is required to be discussed is god-awful boring. I remember doing a lecture on amino acid structure which at some point comes down to "you just have to memorize this shit somehow" and there is no way that I know of to convey that in a stimulating lecture.
As for it being detrimental to other students, I think that argument is largely hollow. Specific examples may not be: the pornography in class crosses a line in my mind. Overall though, this feels like an argument made by people eager to be offended. If it is that distracting, go sit in the front row...no one else will be there.
One of my favorite professors at Michigan said on the first day of class:
"I don't care if you ever show up for class. If you don't need to be here, don't waste your time".
April 20th, 2017 at 12:50 PM ^
Um. Okay.
-signed, a former GSI
It could mean the class is boring, but a lot of people are simply addicted to technology nowadays.
It's a little unsettling. The young generation are basically guinea pigs, being given these devices while researchers are trying to figure out how much impact they have on their developing brains.
I know people said this about TV and video games when I was a kid (I'm in my 30s) but back then, when I left the house, I no longer had access to them. With today's technology, people are connected now all the time, if they want.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:12 PM ^
with my wife. When we hit campus, Pine was OMG cool and we still CRISP'd. I remember waiting in line at a payphone after a mini-riot after an ND game so I could call my folks and tell them I was okay. I worked at the campus computing sites.
I go there now and NUBS is just gone. Students everywhere are plugged in in a way we just couldn't be. In some ways its super cool. In others, I don't know. The kids in her HS socialize way less than we did in real life.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:14 PM ^
April 20th, 2017 at 10:50 AM ^
classic.
little disappointed 'mgoblog' didn't show up.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:17 AM ^
Disappointed and actually quite suprised.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:50 AM ^
When I was in school, I probably visited MGoBlog at least once every class when I had my laptop out. especially when bored. not much has changed now that I am working
April 20th, 2017 at 11:58 AM ^
and the front page of the WSJ. those two existing only in print at that time, no such thing as the interweb.
kids these days....
April 20th, 2017 at 10:51 AM ^
Chinese rap videos
Pornography
Buying $240 worth of turtlenecks
how come you only provided links to the first thing on the list?
April 20th, 2017 at 12:21 PM ^
Oh right, you didn't get in...
but I did! And am therefore a better person than you!
I kid, I kid
jdon
April 20th, 2017 at 10:51 AM ^
I really like this.
Also, why is somebody looking at sliced bread?
April 20th, 2017 at 10:59 AM ^
Sliced bread made it and MGoBlog didn't. Seth and Brian might need to make sure they have content that connects with this upcoming, turtleneck-loving generation.
April 20th, 2017 at 11:22 AM ^
Most likely it is the great grandchild of Otto Rohwedder doing some family research.
instructor said "best thing since sliced bread"
student wanted to understand the colloquialism
therefore, valid use of internet
April 20th, 2017 at 10:54 AM ^
would have been 1000x more effective to post this on the 2nd day of class
April 20th, 2017 at 10:55 AM ^
I mean, it takes a minute to build up a horde of turtleneck purchases and Chipotle menus. But, yeah.
April 20th, 2017 at 10:56 AM ^
April 20th, 2017 at 11:14 AM ^
Kids are idiots, that's why.
brb buying $240 worth of turtlenecks while taking a selfie and listening to Chinese Rap Videos.
April 20th, 2017 at 10:56 AM ^
I didn't have too many big lecture classes at UM, but definitely played some Call of Duty during a few of them.
April 20th, 2017 at 10:59 AM ^
If this was Orgo or Neuroscience I'd be upset. It's Earth 222. Must have an attendance requirement. I would have been downloading the slides and only there for the first two days of class and for midterms and finals.