Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Turn off that cell phone and learn. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution Blogs.

Have a cookie.
by Rick Diguette

My students learn on the first day of each semester that their cell phones must be turned off when class begins and remain off until class ends. There are negative consequences if they fail to abide by this rule. One is that they lose points toward their final grade; this normally gets their attention.

Show me a student who isn’t obsessed with his or her grades and you just might be dealing with a visitor from a galaxy far, far away.

Since day one my cell phone rule has received its fair share of criticism, and not only from students. Some colleagues consider it Draconian at best, Neolithic at worst. I’ve been reminded that this is the 21st century, while also being counseled to develop a sense of humor, locate a good shrink, and/or get out of the teaching profession.

If you thought the halls of English departments always echo with the sound of melodious harps, I have news for you. Otherwise well-mannered people who quote Shakespeare and William Butler Yeats can be witheringly opinionated.

I wasn’t always hard-nosed about cell phones. Once upon a time I accepted the fact that some students would rather be texting than listening to me. But it also seemed reasonable to believe that inveterate texters were capable of learning despite sending and receiving text messages all the time. Then I had a change of heart.

The Rest.

9 comments:

  1. Hey, a 1% deduction from a student's total grade for each instance of me telling that student to stop texting is a good idea. I'll put it in my syllabus, 16 pages and counting.

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  2. Yeah, something like this is going in my syllabus this year. I've been letting them slide, but I'm just tired of it. If they want to pass notes, let 'em do it the old fashioned way. If they need distractions, they can doodle (boy, can they doodle: had a snowflake last year doing fantasy manga art in the 1st row, with colored pencils....)

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  3. My rule is that if a phone rings then three things will happen.

    1) I will dance to the music. It's always music.

    2) Every student may laugh and point at the student, not at me. Mind you, it's hard to tell the difference.

    3) The offending student owes me a bag of M&Ms with peanuts, Do not bring the plain kind as those are Smarties in drag. You also must get them from a store as the bags in the vending machine are stale.

    Trust me, it never happens twice in the same class.

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  4. Oooooooh. I like the M&M's idea. That's FABULOUS.

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  5. I've been doing something like this for about 10 years. I deduct 5% from the current project. I require that cell phones be turned of put on silent and stowed. Out. Of. Sight. Cell phones do occasionally go off, but it's rare.

    Same applies to FaceBooking, MySpacing, Twittering, etc.

    If a student complains that other students have done this. My response is that, yes, I may not catch everyone at it. However, should a student wish to gamble, then it is just that - a gamble. And they may or may not get caught. The risk is their choice.

    Hmmm... M&M's. I could go for M&M's! But I can't dance.

    ReplyDelete
  6. ^^^wrong sign-in. :p

    Last semester I did verbal warnings that did nothing. This semester, after much thought, my syllabus states that catching them doing something with a cell phone will result in an absence. I can make the situation either a big embarrassing deal, or I can quietly just acknowledge they have been caught. It will depend on my mood.

    I've been glued to this site for two weeks now. Referred here via customerssuck.com. This is like reading about sucky customers in their "pupae" stage.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've had the same policy for the last few semesters--students who are caught diddling in class get an absence or a significant deduction in participation points. More and more often, though, I've had students who openly call the bluff or make a scene, two things I strive to avoid in class. And my evals took a hit as well. So the whole thing has become a trade-off in my mind--can I live with this person texting in front of me? Is it worth derailing the whole fucking class?

      Things sure have changed in the past few years. I'll never forget the first time I caught a student texting--I was absolutely shocked, and I told him right there, in front of everyone, to put it away. Completely cowed, he complied. Now students seem to be a bit bolder, to say the least. They also seem to take more bathroom breaks. I guess their bladders are getting bolder too.

      Delete
    2. Here's the cool thing-our whole Hamster Appreciation/Hamster History department has the same policy on all of our syllabi along with the same absentee policy. We all hammered it out this past Summer with the chair. The result of the long smoldering anger building amongst us.

      The rest of the syllabi contents are of our own personal class agendas.

      Delete

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