Student Union
Student Learning Goes Up When Devices Shut Down
More college professors are pulling the plug on their students.
And they say it’s improving student engagement and attention.
“Over the past eight years, my survey course on Politics and Education in the U.S. at the Harvard Graduate School of Education came to resemble an Internet café more than a classroom," said Martin West of the Harvard University School of Education in Massachusetts.
The revolt was nudged last year by University of Michigan's Susan M. Dynarski, professor of public policy, education and economics, who published, "For better learning in college lectures, lay down the laptop and pick up a pen." Her findings looked at whether modern learning was improved by devices vs. paper and pen, and was published by the Brookings Institution and the New York Times.
"A growing body of evidence says ‘No,’” Dynarski wrote. “When college students use computers or tablets during lecture, they learn less and earn worse grades.”
Test scores improve
Recent evidence includes research from professor Arnold Glass of Rutgers University, who published a study with student researcher Mengxue Kang in July 2018 in the journal Educational Psychology.
Glass looked at 118 Rutgers students taking the same psychology class at different times. The students were permitted to use electronic devices on some days of class but not others.
The students took a short test every day, longer tests every few weeks, and a final exam covering the semester’s material. The daily quiz showed no impact from technology in the classroom. But the results of the longer tests and final exam told a different story: All students performed poorly on material taught while they used technology in the classroom.
Devices divert students
Glass said this shows that electronic devices divert students from processing what’s being taught at the front of the classroom. While students might hear what is taught, if they are shopping or emailing online, they are not really thinking about the subject matter.
And that, Glass said, makes it harder for the information to lodge in their long-term memory.
“Even though a few minutes later they know what the professor said, a week later, if you ask them, all they remember is that they were in class a week ago,” he told VOA. “They no longer remember what the professor said because they eliminated the opportunity.”
When students started bringing laptops to class about 10 years ago, University of Michigan professor Kentaro Toyama, who teaches information technology, thought it was a good idea. He said it could help students take notes or quickly provide information during class discussions.
But then he started noticing troubling behavior.
“Students would be looking at their laptop and they would suddenly smile, and it wasn’t because … there was anything funny happening in the class,” Toyama noted. “What I realized very quickly was … these students … were on social media … and that’s what they were smiling about. And over time, as … this increased, I just felt like I no longer had the attention of my students.”
Students distracted
In Dynarski’s study, even students who could see the screen of a classmate — but not on a device themselves — scored 17 percent lower on comprehension than those who were not distracted.
“It’s hard to stay focused when a field of laptops open to Facebook, Snapchat, and email lies between you and the lecturer,” Dynarski wrote.
So Toyama barred laptops in his classes during lectures. Students could still use technology, but not when he needed their full attention.
After reading Dynarski’s report, Distinguished Professor of Economics at Ohio State University Trevon Logan instituted a ban on devices in his classrooms.
“No laptops, tablets, phones, nothing,” Logan tweeted. “I was curious to see what would happen.”
Student performance improved, especially on the earliest midterms, Logan reported. Average scores improved significantly. But more telling was student reaction.
'Very encouraged'
The policy “encouraged them to focus,” Logan said his students reported to him in class evaluations. It helped them take better notes. Kept them engaged. And they enjoyed the course more.
“I did not expect this at all. … Everyone who talked about it enthusiastically endorsed it.”
“I thought I would get much more pushback on this from students, and I didn’t think student outcomes would be so significant. Given these results, I’m very encouraged to continue with the policy.”
“As more universities (including @OhioState) roll out iPads and tablets to all students, we need to think long and hard about whether and how this technology will be beneficial. It does works in some settings, it doesn’t work in others.”
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Tips for first-year international students in the US
Book your flights right away, get a U.S. phone plan, make sure you have linens for your dorm and attend orientation – that’s some of the advice international students have for first-year college students coming from abroad.
U.S. News & World Report compiled helpful tips for students studying in the United States for the first time. (July 2024)
Survey: Social integration, career prep are important to international students
A recent survey of international students in the United States found that before starting school, they were concerned about personal safety, making friends and feeling homesick.
Inside Higher Ed reports that international students want specialized orientations, peer connections, career preparation and job placement to help make their college experiences successful. (July 2024)
US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
American Academy of the Arts College announces closure
The American Academy of Art College in Chicago announced it would be closing after 101 years of preparing students for careers in art and illustration.
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5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
