Texting Our Way Through Higher Education

I am enthralled by sitting in on first year lecture courses, and not always because of the material. What I find truly fascinating is the number of students who try to hide their phones beneath their fold-down desks and text while the professor speaks.

Before I go any further, for you students out there who do this: just stop.

Now we can continue.

My first reaction to this observation was frustration. Okay, I'm still a little appalled by what appears to be a blatant sign of disrespect. But I think it's too easy to chalk this behavior up to an increasing disconnect to live interaction and our simultaneous need to be constantly connected, the slow erosion of respect in contemporary culture, or whatever other cultural malady my generation and younger generations are afflicted with.

I think this texting problem may, in part, be symptomatic of the evolving, or devolving, way education is viewed as passive entertainment.

Education as Entertainment

I'm guilty of this. I really enjoy the classes where the teacher does the academic equivalent of a song and dance to keep the students interested in the topic. Let the jokes fly, bring in the props. But is this now the standard expectation? If the material is dry and students aren't entertained, is it okay, like passive TV viewers, to try to change the channel by facebooking, texting, tweeting? Is it solely the responsibility of the professor to engage students in the material, or does some of the onus also rest on the students?

Isn't it our job as students to be thinking about the material as it is presented to us? Shouldn't we be furiously scribbling down both what the professor says and what we think about what they are saying?

Engaged Learning vs. Fast Food Learning

Pedagogical theorists talk about the "McDonaldization" of education. Increasingly, universities are focused on creating more capital (by enrolling more students) and promising that they will provide everything they need for satisfaction in future careers. Unfortunately, when you're mass producing education, the quality of education often turns out like the quality of a frozen fast food patty. Everything is shaped a certain way, tastes a certain way, and loads on the calories without real nutrients or satisfaction of a good meal. Students can leave large university lectures with loads of knowledge (if we're following the simile, knowledge = calories) without the ability to critique this knowledge (the essential nutrients and deeper satisfaction). Large lectures can leave little space for students to critically engage with the material, isolate students from the real application of the knowledge, and erode the possibility of a student/teacher relationship that involves students actively challenging the ideas the teacher sets forth. Of course people will start to wander if they are not actively engaged, and it certainly does not look easy to engage 150-300 students all at once. You can try to give people formative reasons to pay attention, make connections between the material and real life, ask students questions and expect them to answer, but the real connect occurs in those small group settings. The real connect occurs when students can talk to students about the material, when they can talk to the teacher about the material, when interaction, debate, and development are not only modeled by the teachers but engaged in by the students. When education is active, hopefully it engages. When students are engaged, hopefully they disengage with their cellphone.

Changes need to be made on all fronts of academics, from student engagement, teaching methods, to systemic policies that allow for overcrowded lectures. Remember the video of Ken Robinson on TEDtalks? His model of alternative education that promotes creativity is just one way we might reconstruct education. What are other ways of improving classroom dynamics and the quality of education? Any thoughts?