College Fix: After professor bans laptops, grades improve; ‘results were significant’.
An economics professor at Ohio State banned laptops from his class last semester and the results were very positive, with students’ grades improving significantly, the scholar reports.
“Student performance improved, especially on the earliest midterms. Results were significant—average scores were about half a standard deviation higher than previous offerings. This is well above the long run average in both courses— this term was an outlier,” economics Professor Trevon Logan stated on Twitter in May.
“The students said the policy (1) encouraged them to focus, (2) helped them take better notes, (3) kept them engaged, and (4) increased their enjoyment of the course. I did not expect this at all,” he added.
“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.” read more
I went back to school seven years ago. In my first year, the labs were taught by one person. He had a strict no cell phone and MP3 player policy. When I was in my second year, the first year lab was split between two instructors. One was by the instructor I had, the other by another instructor who was not strict on cell phones or players. That instructor was not able to finish the curriculum by the end o the term, and his students did not have the grasp on the subject that the other instructor’s students did.
Funny how that works out.
I remember when having a calculator in school was against policy, considered cheating or something. Phones weren’t around yet, but I had a numeric pager, that had I been caught with it would have lead to suspension, or at least detention. My dad made me carry it in school because my mom was very ill, on her death bed.
It’s my opinion that electronics (laptops, phones, calculators) in the educational setting lead to a disorganized lifestyle.
You have to have a physical grasp on the work, the worksheets, books, pens, notes, papers, etc., before you can efficiently do your work on electronics. Kids these days aren’t given the opportunity to organize a traditional lifestyle and no one gives a crap if their laptop is in disarray since no one sees that work other than the student. Remember organizing your desk, locker, sharpening pencils, writing legibly, throwing away old papers?? These things don’t exist with the modern student and it is damaging. They don’t exist because they were a byproduct of traditional teaching, and there is no specific class that teaches these forgotten skills.
Heck, chalk and the blackboard don’t exist anymore – Someone probably complained about dust in the air – and now we have electronic whiteboards where the work is done by some education farm probably in India and downloaded by teachers without any thought, then regurgitated to students without participation.
“Download the worksheet and upload it to find out your score.” – Doesn’t really teach anyone jack.
For the last three classes I took, I took notes AND taped the prof’s lectures. Came home and filled in what I couldn’t write down. Re-wrote the notes…got “As.”
I used to color code my notes so that I could remember concepts by color when test taking. I still have them. Lot of great diagrams.
I did most of my note taking in college with a fountain pen and in cursive no less back in the day and I was a darned good student. Also wrote a lot of letters in cursive using my trusty fountain pen. I also wrote a lot of my papers and took tests in a blue book using that fountain pen and none of my professors complained because I had decent penmanship and they could read what I wrote.
In more pressing news, is “Ohio State” the same school as “THE Ohio State?”