Question: How would IDEAL education and personal communications systems would change the situation?
* Michael J. Berry , Aubrey Westfall. Dial D for Distraction: The Making and Breaking of Cell Phone Policies in the College Classroom . College Teaching. Vol. 63, Iss. 2, 2015. DOI:10.1080/87567555.2015.1005040 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/87567555.2015.1005040
6 comments:
The most effective way to address this issue is to make learning experience more interactive and collaborative. The idea should be to involve everyone present in the learning process--this will discourage students from indulging in unproductive activities. Unfortunately, this is not the case. For instance, more collaborative environment can be created by sharing the whiteboard with students through their mobile devices. Also, frequent interactive quizzes during the class through mobile devices and linking it to grading will encourage students to be more attentive during the class.
Also, encouraging collaborative group tasks using shared whiteboard in a class can be very productive.
The solution has to be software based since there is not much difference in various devices (smartphone, phablet, tablet, laptop etc.) except for the form factor. Furthermore, the use case under consideration is not performance intensive.
Industry is already moving in that direction by developing platform based solutions and APIs. Google recently introduced new APIs (e.g. share button)for their classroom platform project.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/google-expands-its-educational-platform-classroom-with-a-new-api-share-button-for-websites/
The ideal educational system would fit each student with a learning style interface. That interface would determine how information was received and in what setting. Because learners are different, the introduction of outside communication devices or peer interaction would be dependent upon the student. Professors need only load the information, which would be delivered to an unlimited number of students in their individualized settings.
Students who learn visually would have holographic demonstrations appear simultaneously with lecture. Students who benefit from group discussions would be able to participate, while those who are less social might receive a key points summary of that discussion. All learning differences would be accommodated allowing each learner to receive what they need to understand and digest the material being presented. Length of class, presentation, participation would all be customized by the interface.
Student output might be verbal, written or demonstrative. Programming would be adjusted if grades fell below 95%.
The need / desire to multitask during learning time would become obsolete because each moment of instruction would require and inspire total engagement.
The ideal education system needs to:
Engage the students
To engage the students is necessary make the classes more collaborative and maybe add some gamification to improve the participation. To achieve this is necessary an App to manage the content of the class and provide other tools to make the class more collaborative.
For example:
Questions: there is a lot of people during a class that has a doubts about the content and for shame they didn't ask the question. The simple fact of having the possibility of doing the question through the system can help a lot of students to understand without speaking out loud.
Mini quizzes: Instead of asking just to one student the teacher can ask a question to all the classroom. Depending on the answer the student can have extra points for participation.
Recommended reading: For each topic of the class, the App can recommend specific material to help the students with their after class study.
Real life applications: the best way to engage the students is to deliver the content of the class associated to thing that can be useful for them. For example if Computer Engineer students are studying Algebra it will be nice to know that one of the applications in real life is in cryptography, which is directly associated to their field of study.
Do not disturb: The student can use the app in a “Do not Disturb” mode. This allows your phone still receive the calls and messages without a notification. After class you can see everything he missed while “Do not Disturb” mode was activated.
Initially it starts a means to distract oneself from a boring class, but soon it becomes addiction. Many studies are done on human behavior in and addition to technology / gadgets.
There is feeling of "left out", "missing out" when one does not use the cell phone constantly.
This psychology needs to be addressed. Students need to be advised on how it impacts their behavior, social interactions and their concentration in the class.
In most colleges in India, each student is given a locker box and they are requested to deposit their phones in the box, before entering the class; they can take it once their classes are over.
That is, cell phones are allowed in campus but not in class.
This policy can be applied to colleges in US, as deemed fit.
IDEAL Classroom :
1. CellPhone drop box in classroom before student enters and pick up when they leave - policy enforced by instructor such as it's tied to their grade etc
2. Make the classroom content and structure so engaging that there is no boring moment when anyone needs to check their phone
3. Teach student about distractions and spread awareness about how much context switch it costs to both parties when incidents like these happen
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