U. of Chicago Law School Blocks Internet Access

Scott Jaschik writes "While some individual professors have banned laptops from classes at various colleges, the University of Chicago law school is going further, cutting off wireless and wired access in its classrooms to confront what officials see as out-of-control Web surfing. The story was first reported in the Above The Law 'legal tabloid' late last month. Students and the university's CIO question the strategy." Things will get interesting when Sprint WiMax service lights up in Chicago later this year.

Re:About Time!

[Black-Man]

Uhhh... exactly why would lawyers want to change a system created by them, enforced by them, and controlled by them?

Just let them fail..

[Galaga88]

I can appreciate the reason they're taking such extreme measures, but wouldn't it be better for everybody if they just let the people goofing off in class fail?

I always assumed that once you hit college the hand-holding by instructors was supposed to stop.

Maybe they could use group projects to fix the problem. I know in my college classes I was a righteous dick to any group members who just goofed off on the Internet rather than contributing towards the project.

I loved my system analysis and design class where we could 'fire' group members for poor performance (and trust me, people did.)

Passing the buck.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Things will get interesting when Sprint WiMax service lights up in Chicago later this year."

Why should it? The problem will be on someone else network. And what makes you think Sprint wants it?

that is a great idea

[nomadic]

I think if I didn't have internet access in my law school classes my GPA would have definitely been a little higher.

You'd be surprised what these students do

[wile_e_wonka]

At my law school, students would sometimes view porn on their computers during class--this was very distracting in the tiered rooms, where about 15 students behind the "perpetrator" could see what was happening. It wasn't common but I sometimes heard complaints that "so-and-so would look at porn to try to distract everyone behind him." I imagine it didn't help his own scores either, though. Other students would sometimes send crazy stuff over email during class in order to embarass the person or distract him. Chatting, of course, was rampant during class--that may have been a bit distracting. For example, the teacher will have been silent, and there's nothing to take notes on at the moment, and you hear several people typing like crazy and snickering oblivious to their surroundings--more annoying when that person's right next to you.

Sadly, after the grades came out, it seemed that chatting and porn viewership had a low correlation with scores. (i.e. I actually took notes but was middle of the road for grades)

Re:Banning LAPTOPS?!

[SCHecklerX]

Those must be some insanely simple classes you are taking. Not sure how great a laptop would be in real time for writing complex formulas, or diagrams of how things like a thermo system or airfoil work.

Maybe a tablet that let you freehand sketch accurately in addition to typing. I still think that would be rather clumsy compared to a pencil and notebook.

Because programmers can be fired if they disobey.

[FatSean]

If my boss tells me to do something a certain way, despite my explanations, I can do it or be fired. There are always other programmers waiting to take my place and toe the line.

Politicians almost seem to have a union mentality. They look out for their class first, then do their job second. You fire one politician, your only choice for replacement are generally more people with the same attitudes.

Maybe we need MORE politicians, so some can be out of work, and hungry for employment, and will actually obey their bosses (We the people.)

Just a thought...

Re:Cue the knee jerk reactions...

[erlenic]

I'll stop browsing the web and playing Quake in class when professors start giving a shit and actually forming a coherent lecture. Until then, they're the ones wasting my tuition money, not me.

And has anyone else noticed that this kind of thing only happens in certain classes? I never once saw someone screwing off in my business law class, where the professor actually new what the hell he was doing, and did it well. But in my intro to business programming class, no one ever paid attention. We only even went to class because he gave pop-quizzes.

Re:Cue the knee jerk reactions...

[cfulmer]

It happens in all classes, regardless of how coherent the professor is.

Law schools generally do not use a "lecture" format in the classes -- students are expected to participate in a "socratic dialog." My experience has been that such dialogs are much less interactive in classes with web access.

Re:Instead, just force people to make a decision

[Idaho]

That the customer (the student) is wrong.

This is probably the key to your answer; treating students as "customers". No. The goal of universities is not (or rather, in practice it often is, but it shouldn't be) to graduate as many students/year as possible. It's not supposed to be a "graduation business" where you can exchange tuition fees for a degree (that will hopefully get you a better paying job in the future).

Rather, students are supposed to be taught how to think systematically, how to approach the solving of problems, in other words how to do research (as a side effect, knowing how to go about solving problems in general is also highly valuable for future employers).

The reason why you should be there, as a student, is because you want to learn something. If that's not the case please simply don't bother showing up at all rather than distracting everyone else, kthxbye.

By the way, if you honestly believe most of those people using laptops are actually "multitasking" or somehow able to unconsciously decide just when it is important to pay attention, I'm not sure whose viewpoints are failing any "rational test", to be honest.

Of course I'm not saying there are no useless classes, by the way. So in that sense students can certainly be "right" about that. The way you vote about this is with your feet, i.e. by simply not showing up or simply not taking that course. If, however, both attendance and taking the course are obligatory, I'd tend to agree with you. That approach looks more like a high school than a university to me anyway, so yeah, screw that..

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Re:Cue the knee jerk reactions...

[afxgrin]

What's worse is when you try to exhibit altruistic behaviour, the people who want to prove altruism is bad or non-existent go out of their way to make you not want to be altruistic. It's really fucked up.

Then again, silence is defeat people. If someone is doing something around you that's pissing you off, speak up dammit. Some people just don't know it bothers you.

Now if you continue to do obnoxious behaviour even though people vocalized their dislike, then you're just being an asshole.

From a professor

[supercrisp]

I teach courses in literature, most frequently poetry, at a major Southern university.

This semester I've been trying to decide how to deal with students texting in class and with students who use laptops recreationally in class. I haven't come up with an ideal solution, but I'm leaning toward banning cellphones. The laptop thing is harder; many students use them to take notes and for reference, which is laudable. I think I might tell students using laptops to be prepared to e-mail me notes on demand at the end of class so that I'll know who's using a laptop to take notes and who's goofing off.

So that's background. I'm posting in response to some ideas from the student perspective that I see repeated here.

Several posters say that students are capable of multi-tasking. This is true, but research [sciencedaily.com] indicates that you're not capable of doing anything well nor of retaining it when you multi-task.

Several posters suggest that they should be allowed to be the judge of what's worthwhile. I'm all for agency, but if you decide to tune out, you might miss something that would interest you. Furthermore, some material isn't so exciting, and though a teacher should attempt to generate interest, some students expectations are unreasonably high when it comes to the entertainment value of literature. Maybe, too, it would be well to look on a lecture as a form of work.

A few people say they can pass without paying attention in lectures. That is probably true. I often find myself dumbing down my lectures, assignments, and exams so that students who have tuned out during class can pass. If I fail too many students, my enrollments go down, my evaluations suffer, and I may even lose my job, as I am on one-year contracts and get rehired based on student evaluations. If I do that, for fear of my job, the content of the course suffers.

Finally, a few people here say lectures are outdated and that content should be online. What about procrastination; would students just shrug off all this content until finals? What about dialog; will all exchange in your life take place via chat? What about seeing others modelling an interest in material only understood or valued by a minority? Do you want to give those faculty who are already distant from students one more excuse to tune you out completely?

I guess I'll conclude by saying that the small minority of students who text in class or play on their laptops in class are the worse students in my class. They waste a lot of my time asking me about things covered in class or begging for favors and special attention. And they tend to earn poor grades. I wouldn't want to be their boss and certainly not one of their fellow employees. Though as their boss, I could fire the lot of them, and that would be very gratifying.

Re:Banning LAPTOPS?!

[edremy]

Wow- I'm sorry you had such bad professors. I'm hardly a great teacher (I know lots of people better) but there's no way that's going to work in one of my classes- I've sat through far too many "I will now read my Powerpoint slides" lectures to ever settle for teaching that way. I'm not going to do examples out of the book- that's what the book is for. I'll add and delete information from the text as needed- most textbooks skip the interesting bits and have great swaths of crud. Lecture slides*? You've got to be kidding- my typical lecture notes are about 2-3 pages of scrawl in a notebook that nobody but me can read. (And sometimes not even me, to the great amusement of my class) They're only there so that I can remember the sequence of what I wanted to write on the blackboard and to keep all the numbers straight. If you can't do the rest extemporaneously you don't know the material well enough or you're just plain lazy.

You have the right idea by listening though-don't try and copy everything your prof writes down, just the highlights along with the references to what s/he's talking about. For most people though, taking some kind of note is essential or you will drift off after 30 minutes or so no matter how interested you are.

*Speaking as someone who's been doing instructional tech work for more than a decade, Powerpoint is a tool of the devil. The first thing you need to say to yourself if you ever think about using it for more than projecting a few pictures is "No", then ago talk to your local IT guy and ask them for a better way.

Re:Cue the knee jerk reactions...

[ari_j]

Most law school classes, especially those that are large enough for you to get away with browsing the web or talking on AIM through without the professor noticing, are taught in some form of the Socratic method. The Socratic method only works if enough people are paying attention to contribute to the learning. "Lecture" is the wrong word to use in describing these classes, and the quality of everyone's education goes up the more viewpoints and, more importantly, the more unique trains of thought get expressed aloud.

Re:A Word About Law School Exams

[KiahZero]

In my experience, being a 2L at a top-ten law school, the reason you're closer to the median on final exams is BECAUSE you're dumping "as much black letter law onto the page as possible." That's what I tried to do my first year, and it didn't end well. This year, I've been focusing much more on analysis, and I did much better, grade-wise.