Cell Phones in the Higher Education Classroom
On Twitter today, I received a tweet from someone who punishes their class by having a pop quiz every time a cell phone goes off in their classroom. I’m assuming that this is a university or college class. What a bizarre pedagogical technique. I will not be following that example
For today’s student, a cellphone is an utterly essential piece of personal equipment. They will have been carrying them round for years, use them frequently every day, and regard them as necessary devices for personal living. To try and suddenly amputate this part of their daily lives in a higher education classroom setting, when they are an adult, makes no sense to me. It is quite reasonable to ask them to mute the phone to prevent other students being distracted, but is unreasonably authoritarian to demand an absolute ban. If I hear a cellphone going off in my class, I do a little imitation of the cellphone ring. This gets a laugh, and quickly emphasises to the entire class that we are all sharing the fact that the phone is going off. I rarely have to do this more than a few times a term before the message gets through.
So I actively encourage the use of the phone, because I get the students to use them as classroom response devices (clickers). Currently I’m using Poll Everywhere, having moved from Socrative because I need larger class sizes, and the University has purchased a software licence for Poll Everywhere. So I embrace the technology, not try to deny that students (and everyone else) has ubiquitous access to it. As I commented on Twitter, trying to ban phones in the Higher education classroom would be like trying to enforce a ban on those pesky, distracting, wrist watches thirty years ago.
If your teaching is suffering because your students are distracted in class, then it’s time to change your teaching methods to be more engaging. Embrace the new technology, devise pedagogically sound methods to use it, and move into the twenty-first century.
