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Reblogged:Bag That Computer, Retain That Material

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A recent studyat West Point has shown that using computers in class for whatever purpose harms performance, and the more intelligent the student, the worse the problem:

Now there is an answer, thanks to a big, new experiment from economists at West Point, who randomly banned computers from some sections of a popular economics course this past year at the military academy. One-third of the sections could use laptops or tablets to take notes during lecture; one-third could use tablets, but only to look at class materials; and one-third were prohibited from using any technology.

Unsurprisingly, the students who were allowed to use laptops -- and 80 percent of them did -- scored worse on the final exam. What's interesting is that the smartest students seemed to be harmed the most. [bold added, link dropped]
The story blames the devices for distracting students and concludes by cautioning that, "multitasking doesn't work." Based on other results concerning how computers might actually hamper note-taking, I'd say taking one to class is generally a bad idea.

-- CAV

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I blame the teachers, not the students (or worse, the technology). Computers are incredibly versatile, and have been used to improve human activity in pretty much every area.

Teaching is not an exception. Obviously, if it's just used to replace a pen and paper, then that's not very helpful. Pens work fine for note taking. But if the teacher was to actually construct his classes in a way that benefits from the technology, there are plenty of great uses for it.

For starters, instead of forcing students to take the notes, it's the teaching staff that should be providing a full record of all the materials being taught, in electronic format (along with a detailed table of contents, to replace note taking). And part of the class should be spent teaching students how to use those materials efficiently.

And that's just the very basics. Computers and the Internet are being used in incredibly creative ways in employee training and professional development. Video tutorials, live interaction with teachers, interactive software tools, full blown simulations, etc. are being deployed in corporate environments (and at seminars, , conferences, etc.) all over the world.

The fact that many university classrooms are still limited to a teacher standing at the blackboard and talking for two hours every week, forcing students to write down what he has to say, is just sad. That's not what teaching should look like, in the 21st century. Schools should be ahead of the corporate world in deploying these technologies, not decades behind (because, unlike corporations, schools are supposed to specialize in teaching).

What's even more sad is that they're spending their time doing research trying to prove that computers are useless in the classroom. I would argue that what's less useful about that setup is probably the classroom, not the computers.

Edited by Nicky
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Apart from changing the fundamentals of the way education is organized, studies like this come with a couple of issues (a good book on the topic is "The Longevity Project"):

  • X may work better than Y, but -- unknown to the study -- Y might actually work better than X for some sub-set of folk. [e.g. taking notes on the computer might work better for some kids, but taking notes on paper may work better for others; similarly, high-protein diets might work better for some than others]
  • There may be something that can be learned, to make one work better than the other. Overall, people taking paper-notes may be absorbing the material better. But, if one looks at kids who are taking computer notes, a subset may be doing something (perhaps still re-writing the lecturer's ideas in their own words, or organizing things in some way later, etc) and they might be doing better than the paper note-takers

Meanwhile, for an individual student, who takes computer notes in today's teaching environment, the message is: try taking paper notes for some classes, and see how that works for you. It might work well, or it might give you some ideas about how to change your computer note-taking (or later summarization) for the better.

 

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