Disengaged Students

Recently, I had an exchange with a student that would not let me go. I've been thinking about it a lot and I concluded that it reflects many trends and dynamics that are plaguing higher education environment today.

My college, a small residential private school, provides the students with personal laptops that they are supposed to use to facilitate their learning, including note-taking in class. As old-school note-taker myself, I know they don't really take notes on the computer beyond copying some of the slides in case the professor checks (I don't do that as I'm not there to police their bad choices).

But standing in front of the class, I can tell when they use the computers to surf the Internet, by their eye movement and disengagement from the class material and discussion. If I ask them a question and call them out by name, they raise their empty eyes at me and ask, "Could you repeat the question, please?"

They think they can multitask. I teach communication where information-processing theory is still a thing and know that their idea of multitasking is different from what happens in reality: humans have not yet mutated or developed their brains so that we can process and respond to two information-related tasks at the same time.

We can combine motor or automatic tasks with information tasks, such as washing dishes and watching TV at the same time, but no one can drive and text at the same time or engage in meaningful conversations and watching the political debate at the same time. When it comes to information processing, you are either there or here. One information-processing tasks distracts us from the other, takes our full attention away, and our partners in conversation express their frustration by saying something like "You are not listening to me," or "Please put down your phone when I'm talking to you."

I try to start a class with some brain teasers, little questions or situations that would gear the students to our topic of discussion. So, that day I did the same, came up with two different versions of a request for the same thing and asked the students to identify which one was a simple request and which one was a persuasive attempt to influence the decision. They were displayed on the board for the students to read and think about them.

One student who rarely engages in class discussions voluntarily, couldn't peel his eyes off his computer and didn't even read what was on the board. When I asked him to respond to the question on the board, he looked at me with a sort of indignation that I interrupted whatever he was doing on the internet, and said, "I'm not the only one in the class you can ask, you know." He said it in a tone implying I was picking on him.

To say I was shocked is to say nothing. The audacity! Or, should I say, the chutzpah! He completely threw me off and it took me a second to collect my thoughts. My first one was, "Would you say that to a male professor?" which probably tells more about my gender dynamic awareness than his anyway. I of course did not say that out loud, not to make it embarrassing either for him or for myself. I finally pointed out to him that I'd noticed he was not paying attention and that's why I called him out. He mumbled something in response while another student came to the rescue and answered my question.

Now, this student has taken classes from me before and on previous occasions I had to fight with him to keep his phone away from the desk. At least now he uses the computer rather than the phone, but oh my, how often I want to ask him, "Why are you here? You are obviously not learning anything, so why waste time, both yours and mine?"

It is incredibly demoralizing and makes me wonder about the nature of learning and shifts in learning patterns and how long I will be able and willing to stay in academia. And no, it's not about me being a boring professor. I know I'm a good teacher and a great expert in my field, which has been recently confirmed by my tenure and my teaching evaluations from the students who want to learn. Many other teachers are complaining about the same problem of disengaged students.

Maybe it's the sign of our times, when people think that they have all the information at their fingertips. Just Google it, why even try to learn anything, right?