All Posts Tagged With: "classroom"

University installs scanners to track attendance

With back to school parties and the generally lax approach taken in the classroom, convincing students to attend class during the first week of university is always a bit tricky. For students at Northern Arizona University, however, they may have little choice. The school has installed digital scanners at classroom doors to track attendance.

Funded with $85,000 worth of federal stimulus money, the pilot project will see scanners posted outside 20 classrooms. So far the program, which requires students to swipe their id card at the door, is being limited to larger first and second-year classes, with at least 50 students. “NAU believes it will save instructors valuable time from calling roll,” Thomas Bauer, director of public affairs, told Maclean’s. Although the university has no generalized attendance policy, instructors will be encouraged “to make attendance and engagement part of their syllabus.”

The hope is that making it easier to track students will encourage them to become engaged and help to improve retention and graduation rates. Approximately 30 per cent of NAU students leave after finishing their freshman year. “Students can’t be engaged if they are not there,” Bauer said.

The program has generated no shortage of opposition from some students who say the scanners are condescending. “Having students make it their own decision to go to class is part of the process of becoming mature adults,” Rachel Brackett, a third-year chemistry student, said. To oppose the plan, Brackett has started a petition that already has more than 2,000 signatures.

While professors have always had the option to take attendance, Brackett fears that the scanners will be misused. “A teacher can take attendance, and only that teacher will know,” she said. “With this new system, attendance will be in a data base that, in theory, many people in the university can access and track a student’s whereabouts.”

Bauer says such fears are based on a misunderstanding. “The program is a tool for professors to use if they choose. Additionally, any type of student information is protected by federal law and can only be used within those limits,” he said.

Profs say laptops are creating culture of ‘constant partial distraction’

I’m sitting in the back row of a darkened lecture hall at the University of British Columbia. Nearly half of the 200 students have their laptops open, giving off a piercing blue-white glow that reminds me of driving at night.

A girl directly in front of me is toggling between two chat windows, a website of song lyrics, email, her Facebook profile, and, every now and then, her lecture notes. It’s hard to concentrate. I feel a pang of sympathy for the professor at the front of the hall. His multitasking students are certainly busy, but by bringing their online lives into the classroom, are they paying enough attention to him—or their educations?

Université de Montréal business professor Jean Boivin decided enough was enough a few years ago, when he read in the newspaper that one of his students had lost thousands of dollars in the stock market—while trading online during a lecture. Boivin was then at Columbia University in New York, and in consultation with students, he banned laptops from the classroom. It’s a rule he brought with him when he returned to Canada.

“I’ve never had any students complain about the policy,” says Boivin, He says bright, flashing computer screens, particularly when used for surfing the web, are a terrible distraction. He believes the laptop ban has led to his students paying better attention and scoring higher on exams.

But ask many other students and the idea of forbidding laptops is practically sacrilegious. “My attention span only lasts so long. I don’t know what I’d do without my laptop,” says Stephanie Poato, a second-year communications student at Simon Fraser University, whose laptop screen shows a large Facebook profile photo of herself. “Plus, I pay for this class, and it’s my money, so if I fail I only have myself to blame.”

Students are under too much pressure to concentrate exclusively on any one thing, says fellow second-year student Nadia Saeker. “I know you can’t really be focused on everything at the same time, it’s just not possible,” she says. “But we all have jobs and are trying to get everything done at once. I don’t have the luxury of sitting here and concentrating only on my lecture.”

While some professors seek to exclude the devices from the classroom, others are creating multimedia-rich curricula in which students can draw on online resources and interact with each other. Banning laptops is just plain wrong, according to Don Krug, associate professor at UBC’s department of curriculum studies. He says students are adults, and the best a professor can hope for is a “respectful learning environment,” where students limit their own behaviour. “If they really want to learn the information, they will. They’re paying a lot of money,” he says. “We’re better off teaching them how to be responsible learners.”