Dr. Steve Eskow wrote:
Dr. Johns,
I can't imagine someone paying for concert tickets and then choosing not to attend the concerts.
But students pay their money for our courses, and if we didn't compel them to come, they would not.
It depends on what kind of attendance you expect, what you are doing in the class to make things relevant, make it worth their while in terms of a cost benefit analysis (do I go to class at 8 AM after only getting 5 hours of sleep?) I teach large sections of general education courses and never have required attendance at the lecture, and discussion sections have assignments in the class that account for 25% of the grade. Tests are drawn from a mixture of electronic and good ol' book materials, with lectures.
But we--and they--spend much time communicating with each othe voluntarily--online.
What does all this mean, if anything?
Don't they find value in our face-to-face classroom encounters?
Are the encounters relevant to their learning? Do we pose questions that a bright undergraduate can't think up on their own? Do we communicate in such a way that it is worth their time to show up, and I don't mean entertainment? If we as faculty/ practitioners perceive no value to something, do we attend it? Not that I am saying we provide no value. I am concerned about the perceptions that students have of our education processes in general, and what the future of the university will be in 20 years. What will out students' children's perceptions be?
Did they feel differently about our classes before the laptop?
Doubtful, students have been skipping classes since I was a freshman (Fall 1986) and it won't change unless we deliver something solid when we are face to face. We should use technology as our aid, but without of quality at the core of what we teach, in those face-to-face settings, we are wasting our time. Darren Purcell
Steve Eskow ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark D. Johns" <mjohns@luther.edu> To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2007 7:45 PM Subject: Re: [Air-l] laptops and Internet access in class
Dr. Steve Eskow wrote:
... Do most faculty members here require class attendance?
Yes, absolutely. I take attendance and take away points for unexcused absences. But once in awhile I will declare that our class will have a "silent discussion." Everyone sitting in the classroom is told to log into a Moodle chat session, and I pose a question by typing it into the chat. It's an interesting dynamic. And sometimes instead of typing "LOL" they really *DO* laugh out loud.
The classroom IS an information environment, just as the chat room is. Both spaces have different characteristics that can be exploited for learning. It's always fun to talk about the differences between what kind of interaction takes place online and how it differs from F2F. -- Mark D. Johns, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Communication Studies Luther College, Decorah, Iowa USA http://academic.luther.edu/~johnsmar/ ----------------------------------------------- "Get the facts first. You can distort them later." ---Mark Twain _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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